Should a spiritual discipline like yoga become an Olympic sport? Is this just another sign that our society is too competitive and materialistic? Or does it show that we are becoming more open-minded and culturally diverse? Would you be interested in watching (or competing)?
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This is very interesting topic to discuss. I consider yoga as psychical activity, not as physical one. In my opinion, yoga is mostly about your mind. People do yoga in order to achieve certain psychical balance or even temper. During Yoga, you discover your body and you learn how to control your energy. By practising Yoga you’re more self-possessed. People, who are able to control themselves to a great extent, so they’re good yogis, are able to do special exercises. Their balance is amazing. Due to this they can do impressive poses, such as standing head-to-knee pose.
ReplyDeleteRajashree Choudhury claims that the Yoga competition is based on mentioned exercises and performances. There’s always someone better and worse, and so a winner can be determined. However, in my opinion, Yoga competitions are not such good idea. Why are people doing Yoga? They want to control themselves; they want to be in harmony. If they did it only for the feeling of winning some competition, it would lose its sense. It would not be about their minds, it would be just about wanting to win.
Nowadays, there’re only few people practicing Yoga who do not understand its main aim . I mean they practice it, but they do not try to control their energy. Majority of Yogis is aware of the sense of Yoga. If there would be some attractive competition, such as Olympic Games, more people would start to practice Yoga. However, I can see a potential risk of misunderstanding the Yoga’s sense. These people would do it just for winning. They would not consider self-possess and mind’s harmony as the most important things in Yoga. If they decided to change the Yoga’s meaning, they would be able to do it (of course only if there were enough people of this opinion). This would lead to a different aim of Yoga. Yoga instructor Mary Catherine Starr thinks, it’s not a good idea to make Yoga an Olympic sport. I completely agree with her. She explained about what Yoga is and about what it should not be. Her statement is similar to a potential misunderstanding of Yoga which I’ve mentioned.
I consider Yoga as an activity which is mostly about human mind. It’s not like a football or swimming. You do it just for yourself. You want to know your body, you want to know to control it. No competition would be helpful for better outcome of Yoga. It wouldn’t help you to control your energy better. Due to this, I think it’s quite useless to have Yoga as an Olympic sport.
Yoga is a physical dicipline, very similar to gymnastics/athletics. Since these branches of the sports are already allowed, and yoga is very similar to them, it could be allowed as well. However, yoga is not only about a physical activity it is also a spiritual and mental discipline. This means that the participants should have enough time and should be enough relaxed to be able to practice. The goal of the person who is practicing yoga is the reaching of a state of perfect spiritual insight. I fully agree with the statement of the yoga instructor Mary Catherine Starr when said that “by making yoga an Olympic sport you take away the personal, intuitive aspect of the practice, plus, pushing past your edge… pushing past your limit to win.”
ReplyDeleteYoga is some kind of a mixture from the long existing disciplines and activities. Though, I don’t think that yoga is a sign of our society being too competitive or materialist. I know many people that really enjoy it, and they don’t do it only because it is “trendy”. More or less, it may be a sign of people becoming more open-minded and culturally diverse. People who I know and they practice yoga, are usually very calm and not stressed so I think that if practicing yoga regularly the aggression of people decreases. Yoga takes a lot of time, though the possible poses and the possible mental state are quite good persuaders to at least try it.
If someone gave me an offer to compete I would definitely say yes. However, I like more dynamic activities, but I would at least try it because it might surprise me. Though, I would only participate if it wouldn’t be much of an Olympic sport because it would really push me to do better and better poses in less time, where I wouldn’t get relaxed as I would be supposed to. In addition, I wouldn’t choose watching yoga because I don’t really like watching these types of disciplines; I rather watch something more active from the sports like football or hockey. Though, if they would allow yoga to be in the Olympic Games, I would watch it at least once, to see how successful or unsuccessful it is.
Yoga is not a discipline which should be on Olympic Games. It’s a spiritual and relaxing type of gymnastics. In the article, a yoga instructor Mary Catherine Starr told the reporter that "By making yoga an Olympic 'sport,' you take away that personal, intuitive aspect of the practice." and I completely share her opinion. Basically, yoga is not about being competitive with the person next to you in a yoga class but about something totally different. It’s about meditating, using different types of breathing and poses to relax and release all the negative energy you are storing in your body. Moreover, Yoga is mainly about self awareness. Mary Catherine also said "pushing past your edge is not a part of yoga — yoga is all about honoring your edge ". Olympic Games are all about pushing your strength and health to the edge so you win and break the record and yoga is the total opposite.
ReplyDeleteLast month, my mother persuaded me to come with her to a yoga class. My mother said it’s the most relaxing and best sport she ever went to. After 10 minutes of class, I had to leave because it was so boring. I can’t imagine how people could watch yoga on TV or life at the Olympic Games for several hours. It’s too slow and there is no action. I personally would watch it maximum 5 minutes.
I mean, if the yoga instructors are happy doing competitive yoga, they should, but I don’t think it should be a part of the Olympic Games.
At the end, as Matus wrote in his comment, swimming and football are perfect examples of Olympic sports, but not yoga. However, if we consider the options that the Olympic Committee would recognize yoga as an Olympic sport, then there should also recognize the sports Wendy Leung listed in the article and these are Pole dancing, Kite flying and Disc golf.
First that I would think of the idea is that it is clearly disgraceful. I believe that yoga, apart from being physical and psychical relax, also conveys a certain philosophy of the meaning of life and harmony with the universe. I would expect that a true yogi concentrates on his/her inner life rather than on any physical skills. The goal of practising yoga is gaining inner peace, which necessarily leads to better concentration and thus higher balance in postures. Nevertheless, I think that any competition in the asana, i.e. postures, is a nuisance. As yoga is of great part meditation, it shouldn’t be considered a sport in the first place. However, as long as it can be proved that chess is a mental exercise, indeed, it certainly would not take long for neuropsychology to connect meditation with some exhausting mental process.
ReplyDeleteWell, what astounded me most was the fact that the first to call for adding yoga to the Olympic games where yogis from India. Thus, I cannot assume the idea to be “another American (nonsense) invention”. Still I find it rather a money and fame hunting of those who don’t value the true gain from exercising yoga. Moreover, as the yoga instructor pointed out, yoga is not about pushing past your edge. Thus it is truly unsettling when someone tries to combine yoga with the competitive spirit of the Olympic sports. And I strongly reproach Rajashree Choudhury’s defensive proposal of the yogic tenet: "Yoga teaches people to be non-judgmental." In fact it is, but I don’t accept such argument from a person, who at the same time extracts some athletics out of yoga stripping it off of its spiritual values.
Last of all, I would concede that watching the fascinating yoga asana could be quite inspiring for many people, including myself. Moreover, for those exercising yoga {which is not my case}, it might seem important to compare against others; but I still insist on excluding yoga from any world-wide competition. It simply isn’t the point and, in my opinion, it would only spoil the spirit of the deep meditative, introspective and self-harmonizing relaxation.
I don't think that yoga should be an Olympic sport. Yeah, you may argue that many strange sports are already on Olympics (water jumping for example), but yoga would be too much. You may argue that gymnastics, which may be similar to yoga, is already considered Olympic sport, and you are right. However I don't think that this event would need another similar discipline. As previous comments suggested, Yoga is of non-competitive nature and it is not meant to be a sport, and they may be partially right. Only partially, because if the judges can rank competitors, it can be a sport. So why shouldn't it be on Olympics?
ReplyDeleteTo answer that, we have to decide what kind of sports do we want on Olympics. We definitely want many countries to be equally good at it, so they would have some competition. This is why female hockey was cancelled from winter ones - great skill gap between countries (China crushing everyone, Slovakia at hopeless bottom...). I personally think that India (and nearby states) would totally crush everyone (if their Yogis would want to participate), USA second (Yoga is popular there and they have competitive spirit) and everyone else would be behind. Secondly, as discussed in previous comments, it is not the idea of Yoga to be better. While you CAN be better (it wouldn't have competitions otherwise), the idea of Yoga is to be good. To be good, not better. This is the main reason why I wouldn't like it being an Olympic sport.
I can see Yoga is fairly similar to Frisbee ultimate in this case. I certainly would like to see this sport also as an Olympic sport, but it would destroy its main idea. If you are not familiar with it, let me explain: it is the "spirit of the game". This means that there are no judges, just players who want to play a good game. It may be strange, but it works (mostly), also on competitive scene. Adding this sport to Olympics would change the target from playing a good game to winning no matter what and thus destroying the beautiful idea of this sport. This is similar to Yoga - you may compete in it, but then you do not do the "true" Yoga, which you would do for the sake of doing it, not for the sake of winning. While it might be interesting to watch, I don't want it on Olympic games.
This comment on comment is a response to Kika’s comment.
ReplyDeleteI basically agree with everything Kristina said. Yoga does not belong in the Olympics firstly because it belongs in a completely diverse category of activities than e.g. tennis, hockey and basketball do. Just as both the article and Kika stated, sports that are part of the Olympic Games require enormous amounts of competitive spirit to be exerted by the players. On the other hand, I believe that yoga is the opposite of this. You aren’t competing with other players, but it could be said that you’re trying to overcome yourself, and by doing this you gain the ‘spiritual self-awareness and relaxation’ that was mentioned in the article. Of course, all sports require the athlete to be able to ‘overcome themselves’ and strive for success, but in yoga the individual does not strive for success but for balance (at least that is how I have understood this discipline).
Furthermore, it is not only the issue of the contrast between yoga and other sports, but also the meaning of exercising yoga itself. The meaning of yoga is supposed to be to attain balance and self-realization, and so I cannot help but feel that it is impossible for the judges to be able to determine which individual has managed to do this the best. The article states that “The judges would rate the contestants on their strength, flexibility, timing, and breathing” and yet that is not at all the goal of this activity. It’s as if (now this is not such a good analogy, but it does somewhat express what I’m trying to say) someone was playing football, but instead of judging by the score I would determine the winner based upon how the individuals were breathing, the style of their running, and other aspects of the game.
Similarly to Kika I have never tried yoga so I might be completely wrong in this, but I still believe that it should most definitely not become one of the disciplines at the Olympic Games.
As I’ve already mentioned, I do not consider Yoga as suitable sport for Olympic Games. According to me, the main aim of Yoga is to better know your body, have better self-control and have better control over your physical and mental side. It’s true that Yoga is not a typical competitive sport and I think Yoga shouldn’t be about willing to win. However, I do not completely agree with Jana’s opinion about not being able to judge who is better in Yoga and who is worse. I think that referees are able to decide whether you’re good or bad on the base of your balance and breath. More skilled Yogis will be calm, will not shake and will be able to control their balance. On the other hand, less skilled Yogis will have more trouble with figures, since they will not reach their stability’s equilibrium. Due to this, I think that it can be quite “easily” determined who should win a competition and who should not.
DeleteI pretty like Jana’s comment. She perfectly showed the essence of Yoga. I only do not follow her ideas about the ability of referees to decide upon several facts who is better and who is worse Yogis.