Yoga Sports are athletic competitions demonstrated by the beauty of demanding yoga postures and through the dedication, endurance and unyielding determination of the competitors.
Yoga is a holistic health system with Indian roots stretching back 5,000 years. IYSF seeks to generate awareness of Yoga among all nations as it relates to culture, education, and knowledge on a sporting basis.
The sport of Yoga Asana aims to further human excellence as it promotes health and well being on both the individual and universal levels.
Yoga competition is part of India’s rich history. But Yoga Competions is not Asanas Competion. It is said that the yoga asana (posture) practice originated over 5,000 years ago. Yoga Competitions have been taking place for 2,000 years now, albeit in a more philosophical and spiritual formwith anothers yoga angas. Today, it is estimated that the yoga competition in its current form began about 200 years ago. At least one yoga competition takes place daily in India and South America.
The Yoga Sport Science is a discipline that studies the application of scientific principles and techniques with the aim of improving the six Yoga Sports Disciplines: Athletic Yoga Sport, Artistic Yoga Sport, Yoga Asanas Sport, Rhythmic Yoga Sport, Acro Yoga Sport and Yoga Dance Sport performance. At Yoga Championships and Yoga competitions.
Yoga (/ˈjoʊɡə/; Sanskrit: योग; About this soundpronunciation) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India. Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophical traditions. There is a broad variety of yoga schools, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The term “yoga” in the Western world often denotes a modern form of Hatha yoga, yoga as exercise, consisting largely of the postures called asanas.
The origins of yoga have been speculated to date back to pre-Vedic Indian traditions; it is mentioned in the Rigveda, but most likely developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in ancient India’s ascetic and śramaṇa movements. The chronology of earliest texts describing yoga-practices is unclear, varyingly credited to Upanishads. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the first half of the 1st millennium CE, and gained prominence in the West in the 20th century. Hatha yoga texts emerged sometimes between the 9th and 11th century with origins in tantra.
Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the West, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century with his adaptation of yoga tradition, excluding asanas. Outside India, it has developed into a posture-based physical fitness, stress-relief and relaxation technique. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core. One of the six major orthodox schools of Hinduism is also called Yoga, which has its own epistemology and metaphysics, and is closely related to Hindu Samkhya philosophy.
The impact of postural yoga on physical and mental health has been a topic of systematic studies, with evidence that regular yoga practice yields benefits for low back pain and stress. In 2017, a Cochrane review found low‐ to moderate‐certainty evidence that yoga improved back function compared to non-exercise. On December 1, 2016, yoga was listed by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage.
The term yoga has been defined in various ways in the many different Indian philosophical and religious traditions.
| Source Text | Approx. Date | Definition of Yoga |
|---|---|---|
| Katha Upanishad | c. 5th century BCE | “When the five senses, along with the mind, remain still and the intellect is not active, that is known as the highest state. They consider yoga to be firm restraint of the senses. Then one becomes un-distracted for yoga is the arising and the passing away” (6.10-11) |
| Bhagavad Gita | c. 2nd century BCE | “Yoga is said to be equanimity” (2.48); “Yoga is skill in action” (2.50); “Know that which is called yoga to be separation from contact with suffering” (6.23). |
| Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra (Sravakabhumi), a Mahayana Buddhist Yogacara work | 4th century CE | “Yoga is fourfold: faith, aspiration, perseverance and means” (2.152) |
| Yoga Sutras of Patanjali | c. 4th century CE | “Yoga is the suppression of the activities of the mind” (1.2) |
| Vaisesika sutra | c. 4th century BCE | “Pleasure and suffering arise as a result of the drawing together of the sense organs, the mind and objects. When that does not happen because the mind is in the self, there is no pleasure or suffering for one who is embodied. That is yoga” (5.2.15-16) |
| Yogaśataka a Jain work by Haribhadra Suri | 6th century CE | “With conviction, the lords of Yogins have in our doctrine defined yoga as the concurrence (sambandhah) of the three [correct knowledge (sajjñana), correct doctrine (saddarsana) and correct conduct (saccaritra)] beginning with correct knowledge, since [thereby arises] conjunction with liberation….In common usage this [term] yoga also [denotes the soul’s] contact with the causes of these [three], due to the common usage of the cause for the effect. (2, 4). |
| Kaundinya’s Pancarthabhasya on the Pasupatasutra | 4th century CE | “In this system, yoga is the union of the self and the Lord” (I.I.43) |
| Linga Purana | 7th-10th century CE | “By the word ‘yoga’ is meant nirvana, the condition of Shiva.” (I.8.5a) |
| Brahmasutra-bhasya of Adi Shankara | c. 3rd century BCE | “It is said in the treatises on yoga: ‘Yoga is the means of perceiving reality’ (atha tattvadarsanabhyupāyo yogah)” (2.1.3) |
| Mālinīvijayottara Tantra, one of the primary authorities in non-dual Kashmir Shaivism | 6th-10th century CE | “Yoga is said to be the oneness of one entity with another.” (MVUT 4.4–8) |
| Mrgendratantravrtti, of the Shaiva Siddhanta scholar Narayanakantha | 6th-10th century CE | “To have self-mastery is to be a Yogin. The term Yogin means “one who is necessarily “conjoined with” the manifestation of his nature…the Siva-state (sivatvam)” (MrTaVr yp 2a) |
| Yogabija, a Hatha yoga work | 14th century CE | “The union of apana and prana, one’s own rajas and semen, the sun and moon, the individual soul and the supreme soul, and in the same way the union of all dualities, is called yoga. ” (89) |
| Śaradatilaka of Lakshmanadesikendra, a Shakta Tantra work | 11th century CE | “Yogic experts state that yoga is the oneness of the individual soul (jiva) with the atman. Others understand it to be the ascertainment of Siva and the soul as non-different. The scholars of the Agamas say that it is a Knowledge which is of the nature of Siva’s Power. Other scholars say it is the knowledge of the primordial soul.” (SaTil 25.1–3b) |
The ultimate goal of Yoga is moksha (liberation), although the exact form this takes depends on the philosophical or theological system with which it is conjugated.
According to Jacobsen, Yoga has five principal traditional meanings:
- a disciplined method for attaining a goal;
- techniques of controlling the body and the mind;
- a name of a school or system of philosophy (darśana);
- with prefixes such as “hatha-, mantra-, and laya-, traditions specialising in particular techniques of yoga;
- the goal of Yoga practice.
According to David Gordon White, from the 5th century CE onward, the core principles of “yoga” were more or less in place, and variations of these principles developed in various forms over time:
- a meditative means of discovering dysfunctional perception and cognition, as well as overcoming it for release from suffering, inner peace and salvation; illustration of this principle is found in Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and Yogasutras, in a number of Buddhist Mahāyāna works, as well as Jain texts;
- the raising and expansion of consciousness from oneself to being coextensive with everyone and everything; these are discussed in sources such as in Hinduism Vedic literature and its Epic Mahābhārata, Jainism Praśamaratiprakarana, and Buddhist Nikaya texts;
- a path to omniscience and enlightened consciousness enabling one to comprehend the impermanent (illusive, delusive) and permanent (true, transcendent) reality; examples are found in Hinduism Nyaya and Vaisesika school texts as well as Buddhism Mādhyamaka texts, but in different ways;
- a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments; these are, states White, described in Tantric literature of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as the Buddhist Sāmaññaphalasutta; James Mallinson, however, disagrees and suggests that such fringe practices are far removed from the mainstream Yoga’s goal as meditation-driven means to liberation in Indian religions.
White clarifies that the last principle relates to legendary goals of “yogi practice”, different from practical goals of “yoga practice,” as they are viewed in South Asian thought and practice since the beginning of the Common Era, in the various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical schools.