This year, the Olympics welcomed new sports such as mountain climbing, skateboarding, breakdancing, freestyle BMX, surfing and 3×3 basketball. Now, yoga could join the list.
Could Yoga Be An Olympic Sport?
Of course, for millions of people, it isn’t considered a sport you can win at. However, India’s recent proposal to include it as a sport in the Asian Games, and hints about the possible addition in its bid for the 2036 Olympics, have rekindled the debate.
The president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), PT Usha, recently revealed that the Asian country will seek to have this ancient practice integrated into the Asian Games, an event that is held every four years as a kind of regional Olympics.
Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya welcomes IOA President PT Usha’s decision to include #Yoga in Asian Games
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has officially recognised Yogasana Bharat for advancing and fostering #Yogasana as a competitive sport within the country… pic.twitter.com/xMf3QV2KFN
— DD India (@DDIndialive) June 29, 2024
“It is only fair that in keeping with its wide popularity, yoga becomes a competitive sport and is in the Asian Games,” said the Indian Minister Mansukh Mandaviya.
Yoga is set to take its place in the Olympic pantheon as “a competitive sport with its own scoring system,” according to the minister. In this regard, the Indian Express newspaper reported that India is considering this discipline as a sport in its bid for the 2036 Olympic Games.
Yoga is practically a matter of state in India, where scholars James Mallison and Mark Singleton record the earliest definition of it in the 3rd century BC in their book ‘Roots of Yoga’.
The Indian government goes further and claims that the discipline began at “the dawn of civilization,” dating back to 2700 BC and Vedic culture, in a discourse that the aforementioned authors consider “purely speculative.”
Beyond controversies is the growing popularity in recent decades, which in India is already officially a sports discipline in several state competitions since 2020: yogasana.
This practice has already been recognised by Yogasana Bharat, the organisation based in New Delhi, which on its website states that it only considers the physical aspect since you can never evaluate the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects in a sport.
How would you win a competition?
Although the rules are different for each event, Yogasana Bharat details a series of common points in its regulations: athletes must perform a series of postures “for at least five minutes”.
The transition from one posture to another “should be slow and artistic”, the rules continue, a performance to the rhythm of music and which can be performed by a single athlete, or groups of up to five. For all these reasons, the discipline has been compared to artistic gymnastics. Similarities that are a source of controversy between yogis and enthusiasts.
The desire to give a sporting twist to this sport, comes from India’s attempts to re-appropriate a discipline that was born in its territory and is now worldwide. However, many purists believe that it shoudn’t become a sport because it would lose its ancient essence.
This article was originally written in Spanish by Miguel Fernandez in CC News
