Characteristics of yoga practitioners: A pilot survey

Nowadays, yoga has been widely accepted as a means to enhance one's physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. According to the surveys conducted in Australia (Penman, Cohen, Stevens, and Jackson, 2012) and U.S.A. (Quilty, Saper, Goldstein, and Khalsa, 2013), yoga has been practiced by majority of the population for general well-being, physical exercise and stress management. With a view to explore the practice patterns, practice habits and the reasons for practicing yoga in Indian yoga practitioners, a pilot survey was conducted online at Patanjali Research Foundation in 2014.

For this purpose, 100 regular yoga practitioners from four schools of yoga for yoga teacher training were recruited. Using cross-sectional design, it was found that the most popular practice sessions were 60 minute (35% respondents) followed by 120 minute (31%), only 17% practices yoga less than an hour and 15% practices more than 120 minutes. Long term yoga practice was found more common as the mean months of regular practice with 66% respondents practicing yoga from the past 5 years, 17% practicing yoga from more than 5 years and 15% respondents were practicing from less than 1 year.

In one session, about 55% respondent practices 10 number of asanas, 42% practice less than 10 asanas and only 2% respondents do not practice any asanas. Similarly, 64% respondents practice less than 5 and 35% practice more than 5 number of pranayamas. In terms of the techniques used in meditation, 46% uses only one technique as part of their daily meditation practice (breath awareness/ repetition of a mantra/focusing on an object or thought); 37% uses more than one technique, 2% practice other techniques (swadhyaye) and 13% do not practice meditation at all.

When it comes to the reasons for practicing yoga, physical fitness, stress management, and spiritual evolution were the most common reasons for continuing yoga conference & practice (15 %, 11%, and 8 % respectively with 11% practices for all three reasons).About 26% respondents practice yoga for other reasons like hobby, part of their singing practice and 4% respondents for treatment of disease. It is really encouraging to note that yoga is gradually getting popularity among the masses as a holistic tool to improve one's wellbeing. However, there is a great need to document the experiences of people by carrying out these types of surveys on a large scale.