Yoga as sport. Are you game?



Courtesy Dizzy Crane

Just read this ESPN Q&A article online, on Andrea Nikki Ortiz, the 26-year-old interior designer and yogi from New York who rose to the spotlight this year as our nation’s national Asana champion.

 

If you were unaware of the competition, it’s organized by the United States Yoga Federation (USA Yoga), a non-profit organization that aims to...
develop and promote Yoga Asana as a sport.

With all of the up-an-coming young yogis out there, a blog post on this controversial topic is in order.

Ortiz’s response to the naysayers?

“Every form of movement has competitions, like dance teams, for example. Why not yoga? I think competition is inspiring. It’s amazing to me the progress you can make when you push yourself to compete. You can really see what’s possible,” she says in the ESPN piece.

To those that deem yoga a spiritual pursuit and not a contest, Ortiz says, “No one is trying to show off. We’re just aiming to choreograph something like art, and hoping not to fall out of the poses we do every single day.”

And unlike other sporting rivalries,  according to Ortiz, “With yoga, everyone is trying to help each other succeed. No one in a yoga competition ever wishes someone else will lose."

The ESPN piece is worth a read, especially to learn about the annual competition's structure and how participants are, dare I say it – judged.

Does this sit well with you? Should competitive yoga trickle down to the kids and teens age set, too?