INDIA, October 18, 2026 (The Guardian by Anita Chaudhuri): Some yogis welcome the idea of competition – for others, it is anathema. Will those keen for yoga to become an Olympic sport win the argument? Vaishnavi Saravanakumar describes herself on Instagram as “India’s rubber band girl.” In a typical video post, dressed in a rhinestone-studded crimson catsuit and accompanied by a Bollywood-rap anthem, she demonstrates an improbable feat. From standing, she snakes into a deep back bend, curls her head and shoulders up under her tiger-striped calves, and finishes beaming to the camera with ankles crossed under her chin. This is yoga as we have seldom seen it before. Earlier this year, the Indian government announced that it will push for yogasana’s inclusion in the Olympics, ahead of the country’s bid to host the 2036 Games. The news came the week before the inaugural World Yogasana Championship, held in Ahmedabad in June, at which Saravanakumar, a gold medallist, was one of 522 yogis competing.

Olympics? World championships? How can a 5,000-year-old practice that values self-awareness and letting go of external validation be a suitable forum for judging, point-scoring and, not to put too fine a point on it, showing off? In fact, in India, yoga competitions are nothing new. The first formal asana competition took place in 1973 in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Only recently, however, has it been pitched as entertainment for a global audience. At the championships in Ahmedabad, which ran over five days, 79 countries were represented, at a stadium with 2,000 spectators. The event was broadcast live on national TV. Perusing the 269-page rulebook, there is even an anti-doping policy. For yoga. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all yogis approve. “It’s not even that I have an issue with people performing with their bodies and then calling it yoga for individual recognition and gain, or for cultural nationalism,” says longstanding UK-based yoga teacher Divya Kohli. “My problem is that the abiding foundations of yoga require that you are no longer a servant to your ego. That means you do not seek external approval. Measuring how someone does a posture on physical difficulty and awarding points for it? This is horrifying. This is madness.”

Much more at source.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/oct/18/this-is-horrifying-this-is-madness-the-row-over-competitive-yoga

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