But Strandquist did note a contradiction. “As a teacher, it’s the opposite of what I’m always telling my students: that you’re here to practice your yoga, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing,” he said.
Julie Kleinman, the vice president of programming for YogaWorks, a yoga studio chain based in Santa Monica, California, said she had mixed feelings about competitive yoga. While she said she likes the idea that Olympic-style events could spread awareness of the practice, she is wary of anything that encouraged yogis to compare themselves with one another. A tournament “seems fairly antithetical to what yoga is all about,” Kleinman said, adding, “I don’t really understand how you would compete to be the happiest, most balanced person.”
Rosen of the Piedmont Studio said that yoga contests could spread the perception that people with the most flexible limbs were the best yogis. “Unfortunately, yoga has been conflated with asana, which is a huge misapprehension,” he said. “If the people who are winning asana competitions are suddenly being seen as more yogic than others, that’s a really bad comparison to make.”
Gans of the US Yoga Federation said he understood that point of view but added that the best way to teach people about the many facets of yoga was to get them into the studio, something he thought championships could do.
“When I was a kid, I played tennis, and whenever I watched players on Wimbledon I’d want to get out there and play like them,” Gans said. “It inspired me. I’m hoping the same kind of things will happen here.”
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