How yoga championships are more about respecting your limitations than overcoming them, how to choose a teacher and style that suits you, and what the point is of teaching yoga to children. Agnieszka Rostkowska talks with Kirti Gahlawat, a winner of multiple world championship medals in yoga.
Kirti Gahlawat was considered a golden child. She won seven gold medals in the Indian National Yoga Championship, and three gold medals and a silver medal at the International Yoga Championship. Yet she is so humble that I had to Google those statistics—she didn’t want to brag about it. But when it comes to yoga, she can go on for hours! These days, Kirti Gahlawat dedicates herself to promoting yoga in Europe, primarily in Poland.
Agnieszka Rostkowska: How can yoga, which is not only a physical but also spiritual practice, be judged in championships as if it were a typical sport?
Kirti Gahlawat: The judges assess mostly asanas, meaning the physical form of practice. There are categories—beginner, intermediate, and advanced—and set parameters or guidelines, which you use to prepare yourself. For example, everybody should be able to hold the basic asanas like Vrksasana, the tree pose, for one minute with ease. As written in the most classic text on yoga, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, “a yoga posture should be steady and comfortable.”
If you hold your asana with a lot of strain, discomfort, or even pain, the judges will immediately notice it and tell you that you have joined the championship too early. There is no power play here; it is not about who holds it longer, but about the technique and coordination with the breath: when and how you inhale and exhale, when and for how long you hold the breath, etc. Apart from this, some of the cleansing practices—the so-called shatkriyas—are also assessed by examining their visible aspects, for instance, nauli, the circular movement of the abdominal muscles.
Yoga is a lifelong learning process that helps us realize our greater potential. Every asana can be corrected and improved, but this should be done with an understanding of the limits and capabilities of the body. That means identifying to what extent you should put in some effort and to what extent you need to accept your limitations. The yoga championships are not about rivalry but about the mutual inspiration and motivation of participants, some of whom afterwards will say to themselves, “Until the next championship, I will practice every day.”
Was this your case on your way to becoming a champion?
I started practicing yoga at the age of nine as part of my extracurricular classes at my school in Chandigarh, in northern India. My parents were working full-time jobs—my father served in the Indian Navy and then on the police force, and my mother is a government employee. Both used to leave early in the morning and come back late in the evening, and my brother and I had nothing to do while home alone. Since we were living next to our school, we used to quickly go back home, change, and come back to school to learn and practice yoga. We could stay as long as we wanted, and our teacher was so encouraging! She was the one who enrolled me in my first yoga competitions. That’s how I started to take it really seriously.
I was very disciplined, looking up to my hard-working parents as role models. I dedicated myself to the practice, and soon I started to associate it with my personality. I asked myself the question, “Who is Kirti?” and my initial answer was, “Kirti is the one who does yoga.” My quest to find out who I was started. I did a few teacher training courses, and in 2003, I took part in my first International Yoga Championship in Portugal and won a gold medal. The next year, the championships were held in Thailand, then Singapore, and in between those, the national championships were held in India. I traveled from the north to the south, the east to the west of the country, winning all these titles. Yoga became the joy and the purpose of my life.
I got a master’s degree in yoga from Uttarakhand Sanskrit University and started teaching; I was associated with top Indian yoga centers and institutions, and accredited by the Ministry of Ayush, which was established in 2014 to provide research and education on the traditional health systems among which yoga was most promoted internationally. It was the time that our prime minister, Narendra Modi, proposed an idea to the United Nations General Assembly to declare June 21 as International Yoga Day, recognizing that “yoga provides a holistic approach to health and well-being.”
And it was a huge success! The bill was supported by 175 countries, and in 2015, the first International Yoga Day was celebrated throughout the world.
And I was granted an assignment to promote International Yoga Day abroad as a practice of mental, physical, and spiritual benefits and a way to cherish such human values as unity, brotherhood, harmony, and peace. I was appointed as yoga and cultural ambassador at the embassy of India for Poland and Lithuania. I found myself heading into the unknown: how do people perceive yoga in Poland? That’s how I started giving yoga lessons at the Embassy of India in Warsaw. I also do online classes for people in Germany, Sweden, Croatia, the Netherlands, the United States, and India, and I am a yoga teacher training course examiner accredited by the Ministry of Ayush.
A beginner who wants to start practicing yoga may feel puzzled. Hatha yoga, vinyasa, Ashtanga, Bikram, Yin . . . to name just a few styles. How do you choose the one that suits you?
Most of those styles were named after the gurus who traveled around the world to popularize them, like Pattabhi Jois, who is considered a father of Ashtanga yoga, or BKS Iyengar, a founder of Iyengar yoga. Hatha yoga is the basis of all the different forms of yoga. It consists of the four main elements of the yoga practice: asanas (postures), pranayamas (breathwork), shatkriyas (cleansing techniques), mudras (great gestures), bandhas (great locks), and nadanusandhana (meditation). If you are having some back pain or need some rehabilitation therapy, then you can try Iyengar Yoga, which focuses on alignment and adjustment, using props like chairs, yoga straps, and blocks. If you already know the basics and are into a more energetic style of the dynamic flow of asanas, go for vinyasa. If you want to enhance your strength, then try Ashtanga, which is a fixed set of asanas that you repeat every time. If you would like to increase your flexibility in conditions set specially for this purpose—that is, a temperature of 40 degrees—attend Bikram yoga. And if you are tired, stressed, or you are an elderly person, try Yin yoga, named after the Chinese yin energy—a passive yoga with bolsters and blankets that you will spend a lot of time lying on.
However, the most traditional, purest forms of yoga are not associated with any names of gurus. They are specified in the Bhagavad Gita, the most widely read text of ancient India, as Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Jnana yoga, and Raja yoga.
Karma yoga is a yoga of actions. It is a way that you perform your duties throughout the day. Yoga is not an hour or two of daily practice, but the ethics and values that lead you toward certain deeds—action and inaction—as well as toward people around you and your surroundings. For example, you treat your colleagues with respect, you clean after your dog, and you don’t litter.
Bhakti yoga is about devotion, the attitude of being fully dedicated. Whatever you do, you should do it with love and steadfast faith.
Then comes Jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge. This means studying scriptures and books, as well as self-contemplation or self-inquiry into who you are, using this to improve the quality of your karma yoga (actions) and bhakti yoga (devotion).
And finally, Raja yoga. This order is not a coincidence. To experience Raja yoga, first you need to be able to do Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana yoga. Raja yoga is the highest stage of yoga; the deepest meditation of discovering the Higher Self and the path toward moksha or nirvana, that is, liberation.
Yoga was described not only in the Bhagavad Gita, but in many ancient Indian scriptures. Is this knowledge still alive in India?
The first written mention of the term yoga is found in the Rigveda, one of the four Vedas, which is a group of the oldest scriptures on Hinduism. The word yoga is derived from yuj, meaning “to unite” or “to yoke.” In the Rigveda it was initially used to mean the “yoking of horses,” which stood for the poetic implication of yoking the Self in the rays of spiritual dawn.
Yoga is a part of Indian cultural heritage, so everybody—whether they live in a village or multicultural city, in the mountains or at the shore of the ocean—have heard about it. However, it is not a household practice. In ancient times, when it was formed, it was dedicated mostly for some chosen individuals or groups of people. The gurus, or enlightened teachers, used to select those who were willing to grow in their spirituality—ready to leave everything behind and settle in the middle of the forest or in the mountains, far away from the hassles of daily life—to dedicate themselves to the rigorous practices for a number of years. Nowadays, yoga is easily accessible and available to everyone, but it is a popular misconception that if you are Indian, you know yoga. It is mostly well-educated, dedicated, and motivated people interested in personal growth and spirituality who practice it. Even among them, not everyone manages to overcome the challenges of the constant overload, hurry, and stream of duties that we face at home, in schools, at institutions, and in the offices that we work in.
But the Indian government is trying to change that, right?
Yes, we can observe the promotion of yoga at every level. Yoga is included in national sports competitions; city councils organize free yoga classes in community centers and parks; and in many companies—both in the public and private sectors—it is a common practice to hire yoga teachers and offer optional yoga classes to employees, sometimes even within working hours or as team building activities. And there are some incentives to join, for instance, additional leaves or financial bonuses. Yoga is also introduced in school curricula. In India, every state and union territory has its own regulations, including those regarding education, but there is a trend across the country to offer yoga classes at schools, especially public ones.
What benefits for kids—in India, Poland, or any other country—can yoga bring?
Yoga has always been a part of the curriculum of gurukuls, traditional Vedic schools, and ashrams where people go on spiritual or religious retreats to meditate and concentrate solely on the spiritual aspect of life. Many ashrams were also residential schools for children under the guru-shishya (seer-seeker) tradition. Yoga is a disciplinary practice that lays foundations for better adulthood. But at the same time, it is a form of movement that kids need for overall growth and vitality. It has great benefits, especially for kids who are hyperactive, have short attention spans, or are oversensitive. And it is also a joyful, entertaining activity, similar to singing or dancing, which kids love. But it has to be conducted in a playful, expressive manner. When I teach kids, I make yoga a game; e.g., when we do a mountain pose, we tell each other stories about what mountains look like. So, we can use it as a way to show kids the world and the importance of nature because a lot of asana names include references to animals or elements of nature. We sow some seeds that, in the future, may help those kids become more balanced and self-aware adults.
Can an adult start yoga at any age?
Certainly, there are no age restrictions! You just need to be a bit more cautious in your asanas practice and make sure you inform your teacher about your overall health conditions and any problems you have. Not all poses are suitable for somebody with knee pain; not all pranayamas are advisable for somebody suffering from asthma. But remember that you don’t have to start from outwards to inwards, that is, from the physical side of asanas that will eventually take you inwards. You can also start from inwards to outwards, meaning starting with meditation, which is sometimes an easier way for older people. Both ways are fine. Yoga can adapt to the needs of people of any age.
And any sex, although it seems like it’s mostly women who are interested in it.
This is because of the marketing. Have you seen a lot of pictures of men doing yoga? Probably not. However, pictures of flexible women on colorful mats are everywhere, especially on ads for fancy yoga clothes and well-being accessories. That is why people think yoga is a feminine practice. In fact, nowadays it is also a business that is oversold and overpriced. It is the duty of teachers to explain to their students that they don’t need such expensive accessories, props, mats, and designer yoga clothes. You don’t start your practice by physically rolling out your mat, but by turning inward.
So how do you find a good teacher?
First, you should be ready to become a good student. Do your homework: read about the yoga styles, Google the specialization of each and every teacher in nearby yoga schools, and choose a teacher according to your needs and priorities. Be self-aware: while attending a class, observe how you feel when guided by the teacher, but also give him or her a chance. Don’t rush to make a decision in the first twenty minutes of your class! And remember, a teacher can only show you the right direction and the way to the next level of your practice, but your main focus should be to feel it from within. It is the connection with yourself that is the real teacher.
Kirti Gahlawat: traditional yoga teacher and multi-style yoga expert based in Poland. Former yoga and Indian cultural teacher at the Embassy of India in Warsaw.
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