Things I like about yoga: Increased flexibility. Stress reduction. My newly discovered biceps muscles.
Things I do not like about yoga: Teachers who issue flaky commands to “tighten your inner ankles” or rotate a joint until it feels “yummy” or “juicy.” Musical accompaniment involving John Mayer songs.
And the showoffs … ugh, the showoffs. Like the bald guy at the beginning of some classes who loudly practices his handstand when everyone else is trying to relax. Or the Mila Kunis-look-alike who smirks at everyone else in the room after successfully standing head-to-knee.
Somewhere on the path to enlightenment — or, at the very least, lowered blood pressure — the famously nonjudgmental and inward-looking practice of yoga became a public performance. This past weekend, a few hundred people converged on Midtown Manhattan’s Hudson Theater for USA Yoga’s national Yoga Asana Championship. (“Asana” refers to any one of the numerous postures that make up a physical yoga practice.)
Competitors, some outfitted in the tracksuits and complicated hair plaits often found on gymnasts, milled around. In the lobby, an assortment of vendors at folding tables hawked apparel in strangely ugly, rococo fabrics. Inside the 600-seat theater, yogis took turns twisting their bodies into a series of crazy contortions. (Extreme Makeover: Pretzel Edition.) One fan favorite: a nasty and aptly named little maneuver called the “broken leg.”
Organizers say the aim is to bring awareness to yoga, since eventually, they want to make it an Olympic sport. These ambitions prompted a fair amount of chuckling over the past week — “just in case it becomes too relaxing, why not turn it into a competition we can stress about?” asked a writer for Time — but yoga competitions have apparently been around for decades. Rajashree Choudury, 46, the founder and president of USA Yoga, is herself a five-time winner of the All-India Yoga Championship. (Choudury is married to Bikram Choudury, the creator of the famously challenging and controversial Bikram yoga method, which incorporates a wall of mirrors and a room heated to 105 degrees.)
As for what a “yoga champion” is, it’s difficult to say. As in gymnastics or figure skating, ability and skill in yoga asana is measured subjectively, by a group of judges. (A USA Yoga news release explains that competitors are judged on technical execution, difficulty and poise.) Part of the problem with this is that it seems anathema to what the practice is supposed to be about, which has as much to do with inner stillness as exterior movement.
“The more you separate yoga from its real intention, the more you center it on the physical, you might was well go to the gym,” says Linda Sparrowe, a yoga instructor based in Rhode Island. “That’s not really what yoga is about. And it’s certainly nothing that I’m interested in.”
In USA Yoga’s defense, the yogis last weekend seemed more concerned with controlling their bodies and minds than communicating an air of superiority. There was none of the preening or peacocking so often seen elsewhere.
Maybe I’m just projecting. Ideally, Choudury explains, I should be able to lie down and go into savasana — the pose of deep relaxation most often practiced at the end of any yoga class — next to the loud guy doing headstand or the middle-aged brunette with a thing for sighing loudly. “Start ignoring them. Start ignoring them,” she says. Translation: Do more yoga.
