What is Yoga Tourism?
In simple words, yoga tourism is when a person goes to another country rich in wellness resources to obtain salvation and medical benefits while also touring and visiting the various attractions of the destination.
Yoga is said to have originated in India in 2700 BC. India is widely known for its spirituality and ancient healing practices such as yoga, meditation and Ayurveda. This makes India a highly popular destination for yogic awakening. Did you know the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh (Uttarakhand) to take part in a Meditation training course at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram back in 1968?
That’s right, people travel from across the world just to avail wellness benefits!
Listed below are a few of the many advantages of yoga tourism
1. Physical enhancement: This refers to making the body physically stronger.
2. Spiritual enhancement: Building habits that are associated with overall wellness such as contributing to society.
3. Mental health enhancement: Yoga tourism helps with positive characteristics.
4. Sightseeing: Yoga tourism includes travel. This allows you to visit new places!
5. Seek for enlightenment: Although rare people hope to attain enlightenment as the greats before us.
Given all these advantages lets now see the affect that yoga tourism has on travel. The number of tourists per year is approximately 1.4 billion per year. However, the number of yoga tourists out of this is significantly low. Increasing the number of yoga tourists opens up a whole new section of travel and has tremendous growth. This can create several new job opportunities and increase GDP. The top yoga destination as of now is Spain, France, Portugal, USA and Greece.
Here are a few suggestions to help enhance the yoga tourism industry
1. Building yoga hotels in popular spiritual destinations such as Rishikesh in India.
2. Along with yoga retreats, we can also include organic food and spa treatments to make it overall health and well-being experience.
3. We could encourage people to take up a yoga retreat by making it a couple’s/friends package!
“Being strong in yoga is just not about a powerful handstand or a deep backbend, nor is yoga a game of extreme ableism where yogis compete with one another. Instead, yoga is a daily ritual where people tune deeply into their spiritual centre and experience the peace of the Eternal Divine.”
-Kino MacGregor, founder of Omstar
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Yoga tourism surely has humongous potential in India. This article surely serves as a tip of the ice-berg of the huge ice-berg lying deep below.
very informative and well put out. looking forward to more!