Strange

"Sorry, That Yoga Pose is Copyrighted"

by jordan | May 9, 2007 at 11:35 am

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Modern-day yoga teachers will not be able to claim ownership (and, by extension, control) over yoga poses that have developed over thousands of years.

The Indian government has set up a task force to create a database of yoga techniques in order to stop others from patenting the poses.

The US Patent Office has granted 150 yoga-related copyrights and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

The Indian government is getting old Sanskrit and Tamil texts translated and is also cataloguing ayurvedic medicines. The information will be made available in five languages so patent offices around the world can access it, according to the International Herald Tribune.

Yoga has been practised for thousands of years in India but the government is increasingly concerned that people are trying to turn a buck from part of their cultural inheritance.

US-based yoga instructor Bikram Choudhury insists that "his" sequence of 26 poses can only be taught by graduates of his training school who have paid him a fee.

I remember when Bikram Yoga burst on to the scene: it was (and remains) quite the cult of personality.

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