The Growing Global Interest In Yoga
Monday 16th April 2012
It’s bigger that touch rugby or Australian Rules; bigger than cricket, tennis, cycling, dancing or fishing – yoga is a growing global fitness trend.
According to an article in US’s News & World Report if
yoga businesses were consolidated, the resulting corporation would be “slightly larger that Dow Chemical and slightly smaller than Microsoft”.
An estimated 18 million Americans practice yoga and spend around $US27 billion annually doing it. Yoga experienced an annual growth rate of 9.5% from 2006 – 2011 in the US and now employs 103,000 people across 24,000 businesses.
In the United Kingdom up to half a million people regularly practice yoga, taught by 10,000 yoga teachers – with teacher numbers increasing 10% annually.
In New Zealand, yoga (along with Pilates) is the 12th most popular sport with 9% of the population or just under 300,000 people participating; in Australia it is ranked 13th in sporting popularity.
“Yoga is about living life well,” says Jenny Cottingham, director of New Zealand’s largest yoga conference and festival to take place April 27 – 29 at
Kawai Purapura, Albany Auckland
“It’s an antidote to modern consumer values, it’s tapping into authentic traditions ... and it can offer spiritual transformation. And it’s not just women who are into yoga; we are seeing more and more men taking up the practice.”
Medical professionals seem largely onboard with the thinking: an Australian survey found one in seven yoga fans are healthcare professionals, most likely to be working in nursing, massage and psychology.
Another survey discovered that yoga and meditation were seen by Australian GPs as being similar in safety and effectiveness to massage, acupuncture and hypnosis and worthy of referral.
According to a Yoga in Australia survey of 3832 respondents, Australia’s typical yoga practitioner was a 41-year-old female, who had practised regularly once or twice a week for about five years. She was likely to be tertiary educated (81%) and have a household income over $A50,000 (76%).
However younger people and more men are joining up globally driven by the uptake of stronger, more dynamic forms of yoga such as Bikram, Power Yoga, Yoga Synergy and Ashtanga.
Many people are using yoga to address a specific health concerns: 24% for issues like
stress, anxiety, depression and insomnia; 21% seeking help for musculoskeletal problems.
Many believe that yoga has strong regenerative powers – not the least one the headliners for Auckland’s April yoga event (the Kawai Purapura International Yoga Conference and Festival),
Elandra Kirsten Meredith.
Now aged 68, Elandra featured in movies like The Vampire Lovers and TV programs like Doctor in the House in the 1970s. Today the Danish-born former actress lives in a beachside Auckland suburb and strongly attributes her youthful looks and vitality to years of yoga practice.
The Auckland yoga conference and festival will cover a wide variety of yoga traditions and teachers and include outdoor music events, poetry readings, a yoga fire ceremony and different forms of dance.