The End Of Patenting Yoga

India is going all out to save yoga — a 2,000-year-old art of righteous living, from
western pirates.

Instances of self-styled yoga gurus claiming copyrights to ancient ‘asanas’, especially from the West, is now becoming rampant. This has made 200 scientists and researchers from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Union health ministry’s department of Ayush join hands to put on record all known yoga postures and techniques that originated in India.

Scientists are presently scanning through 35 ancient Sanskrit texts, including the Mahabharata, Bhagawad Gita and the Yoga Sutras
of Patanjali to identify and document all known yoga concepts, postures and terminology.

Till now, 600 ‘asanas’ (physical postures) have already been documented. The team plans to put on record at least 1,500 such yoga postures by the end of 2009.

Once completed, they will be put in the world’s first Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) created by India. They will then be recognised as India’s public property.

Read the complete article here

Read what other bloggers are saying about this yoga patenting story story

India Patenting Yoga Moves to Battle “Patent Pirates” – Neatorama – as the number of Western yoga teachers has grown, there has been a steady increase in patent applications claiming each pose in their class is not part of the ancient discipline of mind and body, but their own unique invention. …

India’s Traditional Medicinal Herbs, Yoga Postures Deemed ‘Public … – Traditional remedies, such as these neem twigs (used to clean the teeth and prevent gum problems), have been the subject of patent battles in the past. Photo: Meena Kadri via flickr India has taken a bold move to prevent.

India Actively Sharing Knowledge Base Around The World To Stop … – In fact, it appears that the only entity trying to patent yoga positions is India, though I was unable to find a single yoga position or technique patent in the United States. I ask again, who can show me a patent for a yoga position or …

Putting The ‘Om’ in ‘Shalom’ « Precious Metal: the blog – India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is now “working to identify all ancient yoga positions” in an effort to “stop patent pirates from stealing its traditional knowledge,” according to The Daily Telegraph. …

The Real Yoga « Merinews-power 2 people – If Yoga is not an exercise, what’s the point in comparing it to any or saying that I have designed this kind of yoga programme and I want to patent it for the entire human race! A real teacher would always customize a programme for an …

Article on cult copyrights & trademarks: Trouw newspaper … – The Netherlands is not impressed by Bikram’s strategy of patent and copyrights. Bikram Yoga is quite popular, so there is the danger of competitors. Sauna and Beauty Center “Zwaluwhoeve” in Veenendaal offers Bikram yoga. …

Stumble This Post

Welcome back! Keep updated - Subscribe to my RSS feed & Scroll Down to leave a Comment

Related posts:

1. Swami ‘Baba’ Ramdev Claims Homosexuality Can Be “cured” By Yoga The claims that yoga can cure homosexuality were made...