Yoga in the Fast Lane

On Friday I sat at the Prime Minister’s lunch for Prime Minister Modi in Melbourne, with leaders from sport, business, and the Indian-Australian community. The occasion was warm, the closing engagement of a visit with big announcements already made, and Prime Minister Modi flew on to New Zealand straight afterwards.

Cricket led the day, with the Big Bash League opening its season in Chennai this December, the first foreign cricket league to play a match in India. Government took the opportunity to announce the India-Australia Roadmap for Sports Collaboration, and G’Day Namaste, a week-long festival of Australian culture, business, and sport across India. The plan covers the decade ahead to the Ahmedabad Commonwealth Games in 2030, the Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032, and India’s ambition to host a future Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Inside the roadmap’s capacity-building section is a clause that reads almost like our founding purpose. Both governments commit to recognising the physical and mental health benefits of yoga, sharing knowledge with World Yogasana, the Indian federation for yogasana sport, and to encouraging participation in yoga in Australia. Yoga is the only contemplative practice named in the document, rightly so, as the preeminent discipline promulgated for millennia from the Indian subcontinent.

Over here, Yoga Australia has spent 27 years building the yoga teaching profession in this country. We maintain the national curriculum, levels of registration, and professional standards recognised by private health insurers. With nearly 3,000 Registered Teachers under our umbrella, all eager for greater Indian collaboration, our engagement has been building. Last year I attended International Day of Yoga celebrations in New Delhi and Chennai as a guest of the Indian PM. And a few weeks ago I taught for the Indian High Commission at Old Parliament House, on International Day of Yoga. We also partner with the International Yoga Association and United Consciousness, and in January I return to Ujjain to speak at their global gathering.

Yoga teaching is a practice and profession older than any roadmap, predating commerce with a vastness that must breathe and be available to all. But with this in mind, when two governments write yoga into their plans for the decade, the profession here is greatly affirmed. For a long time we have enjoyed a strong and open curriculum, rich CPD and cross-modality opportunity, and now a place in the bilateral relationship.

On Friday two Prime Ministers wrote yoga into the decade ahead. Likewise, Yoga Australia will be there, in India this December, when G’Day Namaste runs and an Australia-funded Sports Industry Summit convenes in Mumbai, and in Ujjain in January, and at any table where strength by passionate coordination is discussed.