Yoga in Italy

A pioneer of modern yoga as exercise in Italy was Vanda Scaravelli (1908-1999),[4] author of the "classic"[5] 1991 book Awakening the spine.

[10] The 2018 Coop report (compiled by Nielsen in 2017) stated that 11% of the women of Italy and 3% of the men practiced yoga or Pilates; 32% of those consulted said they intended to practice in future.

[16][17] By 2019, yoga teacher training was still not regulated in Italy despite the country's 3 million yoga practitioners, resulting, according to Bianca Carati writing in La Stampa, in excessively "accelerated" courses, some taking as little as 2 months to deliver 150 hours of training at a cost between €1500 and €3000.

Carati reported that the Associazione Italiana Iyengar yoga[a] considered this inadequate; it required at least 3 years of training.

It, along with the Associazione Italiana Insegnanti Yoga[b] and the Associazione Yoga Satyananda,[c] has created a set of proposed standards for yoga teacher training in Italy, requiring at least 500 hours of training over a period of at least four years, and to have taught for at least four years.

The mountaineer and yoga teacher Heinz Grill [ 1 ] [ 2 ] demonstrating Padangushtasana in 1992
An international Ananda Marga group singing a Kirtan on the occasion of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti 's liberation. Italy, 1978. The organisation uses asanas alongside mudras , pranayama , and other practices of Patanjali's ashtanga yoga . [ 3 ]