.
While I was at work early Sunday morning, I was listening to Sporting News Radio on WKTY. It was about 6 o’clock when I heard a report of a new sport lobbying to be added to the Olympics by 2020. I thought this one might be too big of a stretch to make it, but the sport, if you will, is competitive yoga.
When I first heard the words “competitive yoga,” I pinched myself to see if I was awake. After all, it was 6 in the morning. I’m not usually awake at that hour. I was hoping I was in a sleep-deprived trance, meditating on the virtues of bringing back the Yugo — remember those little cars?
Alas, I was not dreaming. “What a crazy idea,” I thought. How can yoga be a sport that can produce quantifiable results and be popular enough for people to want to be world-class yoga participants?
Why not make dodgeball the next Olympic sport? What about golf and restrict it to amateurs? Then the rest of the world could compete for a gold medal beside Tiger Woods. How about an Olympic competition that features contestants doing the limbo on rollerskates? That would be fun to watch.
Later when I got home, I realized I heard the report correctly after Googling it. There really is a movement to bring competitive yoga to the Olympic Games. I clicked on an article that appeared in the Washington Post in January about a 31-year-old physician named Sonja Wyche. She represented the Washington, D.C., area in the Bikram yoga championships in Los Angeles.
National Public Radio also had a report air last Friday on their All Things Considered segment. April Baer of Oregon Public Radio reported on the rising trend of competitive yoga within Bikram yoga, a more intense version. However, she found that other yoga practitioners aren’t so keen on the idea of yoga as a competitive sport, saying competitive yoga misses the point that yoga is supposed to be relaxing.
But what would comprise a yoga competition? Apparently, the competitors, or practitioners, would contort themselves into seven positions — five standard positions and two freestyle positions. They would be judged in roughly the same manner as figure skaters in style, grace and beauty. Elements of strength and balance would also play large factors in a judge’s scoring decision.
I’m sure the argument will continue among non-practitioners and practitioners of yoga alike as to whether yoga is or should be a competitive sport. My mind is still trying to balance how it can be a sport, let alone one that should be included in the Olympics.
As for competitive yoga being a part of the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee will have to meditate on that.
Columnist Tim Gray, a West Salem resident, can be reached at tim.gray.matter@gmail.com.
.
Advertisement 
Advertisement 
