The Internet Can’t Get Enough of Justin Trudeau’s Gravity-Defying Yoga Pose

A 2013 photo of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau doing a yoga pose on a desk has resurfaced online in the last week.

Two years ago, just before he took over the Liberal Party leadership, the politician retweeted a photo of himself showing off his “peacock pose” or “mayurasana‬.”

Last week, on March 24, Toronto-area yoga instructor David Gellineau shared the photo on Facebook. Since then, it has racked up more than 4,500 shares, nearly 10,000 “likes” and inspired comments like “He’s balancing the budget.”

His passion for the practice appears to run in the family. In a 2013 CBC interview, he discussed a 1970 photo of his father Pierre Trudeau doing the same pose and said that he could do it too: “Not on the floor, but I do it on railings and on the edge of tables, and stuff. I used to do it an awful lot when I was younger. Now that I’ve hit 40, I’m not quite as able to do it as I used to be.”
In recent years, he has been seen performing the exercises with his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, a yoga instructor who has studied hatha yoga and once taught classes at a public school as a volunteer. In fact, after a news conference in June 2013, the couple struck a pose for the cameras on the front lawn of Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where yoga sessions have regularly taken place.

Sometimes, however, he can’t keep up with her enthusiasm, he admitted on Twitter:

Namaste.