Competitive Yoga?

Focusing on calming minds and strengthening bodies through series of challenging poses; yoga has been a non-aggressive form of exercise for centuries. Today, large groups of people are lobbying to have yoga as a sport in the 2012 Olympics, arguing that it is exactly the same as figure skating and gymnastics. But is it really? Yoga requires a person’s complete attention, focusing the mind on becoming still and united with the body. Competitive yoga sounds contradictory. It has been argued that it allows people practicing yoga to compare themselves to others and see how they are doing in their own practice.

Yoga practitioners understand the powerful meditative state that yoga puts one into. Requiring a person’s undivided attention, yoga cannot be truly experienced with distractions present. In a competitive atmosphere, yoga could not have the concentration that it deserves. Imagine yourself, in a room filled with people and a panel of judges. Now imagine yourself being able to calm your mind and perform pose after physically challenging pose; it isn’t easy to picture.

Yoga poses; physical challenges designed to work the body in a peaceful manner. These range from beginner poses like the Cobra Pose, placing the body in a mild backbend, to the King Pigeon Pose which is an extreme backbend and can be very dangerous if not done correctly. In a competition, the point is to win. With yoga, that could mean someone would try an extreme pose that their body is not ready for and hurt themselves in an effort to win. Especially with the advanced poses, they look dazzling but if not done right, could severely harm the spine, neck, and other parts of the body.

Many are arguing that competitive yoga is not about winning. It is about simply comparing your yoga practice to those of other competitors. This is, of course, not to see who is better, but rate your own practice to see what you have to work on further. By performing your yoga routine in front of a panel of judges and a room full of people, you will be able to get feedback about how your posture was, and your routine in general, this type of constructive criticism could be useful.

Isn’t yoga supposed to be about self-enlightenment? By comparing yourself to anothers practice you will miss the important teachings of yoga. You will no longer focus your mind on the yoga you are performing, rather on how the person next to you is doing. It is possible, that by comparing yourself to another, you may harm yourself by forcing your poses deeper and backbends higher to keep up with the other competitors.

Is this what yoga is to become?