LOS ANGELES (AP) A hush fell over the crowd as Lesli
Christiansen coiled her legs into a pretzel while balancing atop
two arms tucked to her chest, pulling off the difficult
peacock-lotus position.
``I'm very competitive about this,'' the 27-year-old San Diego
woman said after finishing her semifinals routine. ``I totally want
to win.''
Christiansen was among dozens of yoga buffs who gathered for
what organizers billed as the first international yoga championship
held in the United States, a three-day competition to see who could
best achieve inner peace or at least one the discipline's
impossibly knotted poses.
Competitors from as far away as Japan twisted and stretched
before a panel of judges scoring for posture, grace and proportion
in the First Annual International Yoga Asana Championship,
scheduled to end Sunday. First prize was $3,000 and a free trip
anywhere in the world, but many said there was much more to the
contest than beating out the competition.
``I don't like the word competition. This is more of an
exhibition,'' said Austrid Audet, 30, of Boca Raton, Fla. minutes
after rolling herself into cylinder shape known as the full camel
position. ``I'm looking to do my best and support others. Win or
lose, it's the same to me.''
Yet the contest inevitably produced winners and losers. And the
idea of introducing a spirit of competition into the ancient
meditative practice struck some as paradoxical.
``A yoga competition is an oxymoron,'' said Max Strom, director
of the Sacred Movement Center for Yoga and Healing Los Angeles.
``It's like saying 'let's have a Christian competition and see
who's the best Christian.'''
Still, competitions are nothing to new to yoga, said Nora
Isaacs, a senior editor at Yoga Journal. India, for example, has
held contests for years.
``But when you bring the competition to the West, we have such
an intensively competitive culture the contest takes on a new
meaning,'' she said.
Bikram Choudhury, the contest's organizer and flamboyant guru
behind a popular form known as ``hot yoga'', was himself a
childhood yoga champion in his native India. He now plans to use
competitions to promote the practice in the United States,
particularly among kids.
Choudhury was untroubled by yoga purists critical of turning
what they view as a search for higher consciousness into a sport.
``It doesn't bother me. They just don't know,'' Choudhury said
in an interview. ``They believe yoga means sit and eat, meditate
and look like a hippie and smell bad. No.They just don't know.''
Choudhury even hopes one day to get yoga into the Olympics, a
feat he says he's ``100 percent'' confident will happen.
Becoming an official Olympic sport would round out yoga's rise
from a 5,000-year-old ascetic pursuit to a mainstream fitness craze
practiced by more than 15 million nationwide, complete with a
booming side industry for yoga apparel, yoga how-to books and yoga
music.
The industry was on full display at a convention held
simultaneously with Choudhury's competition in the downtown Los
Angeles convention center. A fashion show featuring the latest in
yoga clothes was among the highlights at an expo that included all
things yoga and alternative for the self-realization set.
But the main action was in a hall next door, where more than 50
yoga enthusiasts took turns striking a series of seven poses five
compulsory and two optional for judges flown in from India.
Though competitive, the contest wasn't exactly cutthroat and
participants tended to root one another on.
Helena Springer, who runs a yoga studio in Melbourne, Fla. and
was coaching her little sister through the contest, went agog over
one woman who did a near-perfect full cobra, arching her back until
her toes touched her head.
``She's the bomb,'' Springer said. ``It looks so beautiful, very
balanced.''
Christiansen finished her set with a fish-in-lotus maneuver by
crossing her legs and bending her head back to the floor. She said
the pressure of competing helped her enter her most ``meditative
state'' while allowing her to share ``her soul with the judges.''
Christiansen said she hoped to make the finals Sunday but wasn't
approaching the event with the same aggression she brought to the
soccer field years ago.
``There's a lot of respect for competitors,'' Christiansen said.
``Otherwise, you're not practicing your inner peace.''
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)