People take part in an early morning yoga session ahead of World Yoga Day, in New Delhi. (Reuters)
The heart of Delhi will transform into a sea of colourful mats on Sunday as thousands perform the camel, cobra and other postures for the first International Yoga Day championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shortly after dawn at Rajpath, some 35,000 bureaucrats, students, soldiers and others are to take part in the 35-minute mass outdoor yoga session, hopeful of qualifying for the Guinness Book of Records.
Yoga enthusiasts in other countries are also expected to stretch and bend for Sunday's celebration of the ancient Indian practice, including in Britain where mats will be rolled out along the banks of the River Thames.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a vegetarian who practices Yoga daily, has made Yoga Day a key initiative of his government since he took office 13 months ago.
"Yoga has the power to bring the entire humankind together!" Mr Modi tweeted last year after pitching the idea during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
Preparations in India have been gathering pace since the UN agreed to the day, with schools, military barracks and even jails encouraged to participate in their own sessions on Sunday.
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and others have been roped in for promotion, and Mr Modi's many officials ordered to take yoga classes.
Posters and other advertisements have also been published throughout the country encouraging residents to descend on their local park for "yoga for harmony and peace".
Mr Modi calls yoga "the anchor of my life", helping him work long hours on little sleep.
But the PM will make only a speech on Sunday and not take to the mat himself at the mass session along the Rajpath.
Starting at 7:00 am, instructors will teach the session, to be beamed on giant screens along the historic avenue.
Mr Modi wants to reclaim yoga as an historical part of Indian culture which has been lost to the West because of its enormous popularity.
The PM has set up a ministry dedicated to promoting yoga, Ayurveda and other traditional Indian treatments. And he has started free yoga classes for his government's three million bureaucrats and their families.
"Yoga is the soft power of India and through that soft power the whole world can be one global village... (and) violence can be removed with this kind of peace," Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has told reporters.
Ms Swaraj will be at the UN's headquarters in New York for the day's launch when scores are expected to strike a pose in Times Square.
Scholars believe yoga dates back 5,000 years, based on archaeological evidence and references to yogic teachings in the ancient scriptures of the Vedas.
Experts like Ishwar Basavaraddi, head of the Delhi-based Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, described it as India's "best cultural export" that transcends religion and soothes hectic lifestyles.
"The foundation of yoga is science and philosophy, not any religion," Mr Basavaraddi told AFP, defining it as "holistic exercise through energy and mind management".
Yoga novice Halil Ahmed, a paramilitary soldier in Delhi who has been taking part in government-sponsored classes, agreed.
"Yoga brings peace to the body and mind," Mr Ahmed told AFP after a recent yoga session. "Yoga has benefited me in multiple ways."