The Association Pinna APDPE in collaboration with the Indian embassy in Tunisia had organized on July 20-22 the Culinary Yoga camp. The event, whose theme on «The Symphony of the 5 senses», aimed to promote the village of El Haouaria located in the Cap Bon Peninsula as an ecotourism destination by creating a yoga environment focused not only on yoga workshops, but also ecotourism activities such as responsible snorkeling, hiking, birdwatching and the promotion of local businesses and cultural aspects of the region.
“We practised yoga, ignites the entire bodily system through practice. A series of deeper balancing, stretching, back bending, twisting and inverted variations are used”, Head of Association Pinna APDPE and tour leader Chokri Mansour told TunisianMonitorOnline.
The practice concluded with Deep Relaxation, breathing and concentration meditation inducing deep calm and simultaneously invigorating the students, he went on saying.
Chokri Mansour said that the weekend included 2 yoga classes per day conducted by Yoga Coach Dayaram Sharma who was provided by the embassy of India in different amazing spots and beaches.
Our yoga community-based weekend was structured like a nature-based weekend. The members have varying roles in accommodation, food, crafts, and transportation or guide services, among others. More importantly, the financial benefits of this experience were shared throughout the community, he indicated.
Besides, Chokri Mansour said that the choice of implementing this project in the Haouaria region of Tunisia has multiple reasons including that the aim of organising a yoga workshop is to make the programme interactive and allow the participants to actively take part and to feel comfortable in making their questions and needs to be known.
In another connection, the Head of Association Pinna APDPE placed emphasis on the lack of promotion of ecotourism in the Tunisian destination, besides the attractivity to the yoga practitioners.
Accordingly, he underlined the need to market nationwide and worldwide and promote the Tunisian regions as major global tourism destinations, highlighting its uniqueness and calling for assisting the development of its tourism products and services, in view of increasing tourist arrivals and tourism investment using the community-based ecotourism concept.
Some 20 Tunisian Indian, Canadian and Italian participants took part in the event, hosted in a farm called “le coin perdu” whose owner Mohamed Ayed supports such an initiative of ecotourism saying that it empowers the local communities.
Mohamed Ayed indicated that “le coin perdu” farm is an area in which agroecology is practised by using the ancestral methods in farming through local seeds and traditional know-how in this field that can be extended to other communities and generations throughout the country. It is also a good opportunity to disseminate this local culture to the visitors and nature lovers.
Defining agroecology, Mohamed Ayed said that it is an ecological approach to agriculture that views agricultural areas as ecosystems and is concerned with the ecological impact of agricultural practices.
Additionally, the participants who took part in the weekend workshop gave orientations on the use of yoga as an attractive product and the random use of outdoors activities.
The Pinna APDPE is an environmental association that endeavours for raising awareness for Ecotourism and disseminating the culture of environment and nature protection among Tunisians.
TunisianMonitorOnline
