A Gold Medal for Yoga
October 23, 2008 by Susan Watiker
Filed under Fitness
Cruising around the internet today, just checking out what’s new, I came across a sort of surprising story. A push for yoga to become an Olympic sport. Hmm.
Not exactly sure what I think about it at the moment. In competitive yoga, yogis take the stand and perform a three-minute routine of seven asanas or postures. Judges score each competitor on alignment, grace, stability, confidence, balance and presence.
Competitive yoga is not an entirely new concept. Olympic yoga would most definitely be taking it to the next level. I thought about it, and about the lifestyle, and I am not so sure. Should yoga be about people pitting themselves against one another to see who can be the most dominant? Is the spirit of competition–of which aggression is a strong and natural component–the kind of spirit we should be welcoming into our practices?
While I agree that yoga can be a transformative experience for many, and that it’s a very healthy development to see it increasing in popularity around the world, I’m not so sure I want to see yogis in star-spangled leotards fighting for the top position.
I’d be interested in hearing what you think. Are we really ready for this? Would it be the right path to take? I’m still wrapping my head–and my legs around it.
Peace.
To respond to this there has to first be a clarification of terms. The term “yoga” has been misappropriated. Therefore the discussion is about including asana in the Olympics not yoga. Yoga is a vast body of wisdom providing tools for human evolution. One tiny sliver of that is asana.
In Yoga there can be no competition though some would have you believe otherwise. The fact that something is old or has been occurring for many years is a weak argument. An easy example would be war. It has been around since the beginning of man, few however think it is a correct action.
Asana that involves an extrinsic view (one that makes a determination of who you are based on who someone else is) is contradictory to classical yoga texts. What we know from those texts is that yoga itself is an awareness practice AND that awareness mandates that the practitioner shift their paradigm from one of extrinsically referential to one intrinsically referential. How then can Yoga be a competitive anything?
bowling’s still not an olympic sport, so i couldn’t push for yoga… and having never tried yoga i really can’t offer a great opinion :) (but at least i reveal my bias!)
Making it an Olympic sport would provide another method of people enjoying yoga. This would not effect people that wish to do it more spiritual reasons because most likely, students are attracted to teachers who teach it for the purpose they are interested in.
Tim Rosanelli
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Yoga is such a personal journey that it seems weird to make it competitive. But I’m no yogi. ;)
Interesting concept… it seems strange that yoga would be competitive! I’m not sure if that would be good for spreading awareness about the benefits of yoga or if it would be detrimental by increasing the competition and turning it into something impersonal…
Yoga in the olympics? This seems wrong to me. The whole point in doing yoga is to forget the world around you and focus on yourself. This doesn’t seem to fit into the extreme competitiveness of the Olympics. I say nay!
I think it defeats what yoga is all about. Interesting, though.