Ritik Gupta
The Central administration has assigned authorized distinction to yoga as a recreational sport, readying the floor for facilitating the historical domain’s inclusion in national, state and university category championships organised in the nation.
The Ministries of Sports and Ayush have operated in alliance towards propelling it happen to circulate knowledge about yoga, the advantages it gives and the domain’s religious environment among the young.
“Yoga has already been popular enough so the next step was to recognize it as a competitive sport. The ultimate goal is to make it a part of the Olympic Games. To begin with, a pilot national-level traditional yogasana championship has been proposed in February next year, and later in the year, there is a plan to conduct a World Yogasana championship that India will host,” sports minister Kiren Rijiju put in.
The ministries are also functioning jointly to assure yogasana is recognized as a competitive athletics globally.
“We are hopeful that yoga asana (not yoga) will be accepted as a sport and maybe by the time we have the Olympics in 2036 or 2040, this will be an item there,” asserted P N Ranjit Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH months before this official mention.
India has also lately founded the National Yogasana Sports Federation of India (NYSFI) for the conservation and advancement of yoga as a recreational sport.
“Now that Yogasana has been formally declared a sport, its federation, like other national sports federations, will also get financial assistance from the sports ministry for preparing their annual training and calendar that will have an idea on what all they plan to organize during the coming calendar year. We want to produce quality athletes performing yogasanas,” he said.
About 51 medals are being formulated in four occasions and seven classifications for the events to be executed at the sub-junior, junior, and senior category for both men and women. The tournaments encompass time-honoured yoga asana, artistic yogasana, rhythmic yogasana, free flow (group) yogasana, and individual all-around championship and team championship.
