Is it possible to become a yogaholic?

In her latest post, Bindy writes about yoga addiction. Is it possible to become addicted to yoga, i.e. is it possible to become a yogaholic? In this post, I'm going to do a little philosophical analysis, and offer my own diagnosis of whether such an addiction is possible. I think this is going to be fun. Maybe you won't think so, but what the heck, this is my blog :-)

Let me just start by quoting Bindy:

"i’m doing ok without my bike & my asana, but i do miss the yoga. but not like other people who i have met over the years. missing just one day for some people makes them go bat-shit. and that is FAR from healthy... to me that’s fucked up. yoga isn’t supposed to take over your life. unless you give away all your belongings, tie yourself in a lungi & move to a cave in the Himalayas. yoga is supposed to assist you with your daily living. yoga in of itself is NOT supposed to be all that you care about. it’s supposed to be about balance."

Interesting. Perhaps we should start by coming up with a working definition of "addiction". How do we know if somebody is addicted to something? Let me start by proposing this definition:

Definition I

This is, admittedly, a very broad and loose definition of addiction. Definition I definitely covers the kinds of addictions that we are mostly familiar with (drug addiction, nicotine addiction, etc.). Under this definition, it would also be possible to become addicted to yoga, if there are indeed people out there who go bat-shit if they abstain from yoga for more than a certain amount of time.

But there's one problem with Definition I: It's too broad. Under this definition, food would also be an addiction, since food is something we need to ingest very regularly in order to function normally, and one definitely suffers from withdrawal symptoms (both psychological symptoms such as being cranky when hungry, and physical symptoms such as, uh, starvation and malnutrition) when one is deprived of food.

Since we don't want to say that somebody with normal eating habits (as opposed to somebody who is indulging in emotional eating) is suffering from food addiction, we need to fine-tune our definition. Perhaps what we need is something like:


This definition seems to capture better what we normally mean by addiction. One can be addicted to drugs and nicotine. But one can't properly be said to be addicted to food, since food is something our bodies need in order to survive.

But we don't need to do yoga in order to survive. So if Definition II is correct, then it is certainly possible to become addicted to yoga. Q.E.D.

Well, now that we know that it is possible to become addicted to yoga, further questions arise: Just how much must one need to do yoga in order to function normally, before one can be a certified yogaholic? How bad do the withdrawal symptoms need to be, i.e. just how "batshit" does one need to go when deprived of yoga in order to be a yogaholic? Is being a yogaholic a bad thing? After all, it can be argued, there are way worse things one can be addicted to...

Ashtangis may be the most likely yogis to be yogaholics, since the "good Ashtangi" is supposed to practice six days a week, minus moon days and Ladies' Holidays. But simply practicing six days a week doesn't make one a yogaholic (Ashtangaholic?); according to Definition II, one also needs to suffer from withdrawal symptoms if one is deprived of practice for a couple of days. This being the case, there is no way to know just how many Ashtangis out there (if any) are yogaholics, since no studies have been conducted to date to find out just how many Ashtangis go batshit when deprived of practice for a couple of days.

Verdict: It is possible to be a yogaholic. Given the sheer frequency and intensity of Ashtanga practice, Ashtangis may be especially vulnerable to yogaholism. However, because yogaholics do not typically display straightforwardly anti-social behavior (unless one counts being an Ashtanga Police as anti-social behavior), there is no straightforwardly objective method of determining just how many yogaholics are presently lurking in yoga studios and shalas around the world. So beware: You never know if the person on the mat next to you is a silently-long-suffering yogaholic.        

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

follow by email: