yoga trends in the world study (2004-2011) | vitalitylink.com

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“Google Trends” is a great tool to give us an insight into the world of yoga. It gives us a very good grasp of what’s going on. In most countries, Google has been serving 60-75% of the search traffic from 2004 all the way to today, so its data is an accurate representation of what is happening online. We won’t get us absolutely numbers, but only relative ones, which are perfectly sufficient for our needs. The data is normalized to the absolute number of searches at any given date, so if in total there were many fewer searches in 2004 as compared to 2011, that is taken into the account. Hence the name “trend”.

There is another tool called “Google Insight for Search”, which gives somewhat similar information, but could be more visually appealing to some. The advantage of that newer tool is that it also shows related searches. We found the data presented is not always identically between the two tools. So in this study we will be using both Google Trends and Google Insights for Search, depending on where we get a better data sample.

You will find that some of the information in this study is interesting and you might enjoy sharing it with others. Some of it is more factual, and we hope that some may even help yoga studies make decisions about what to offer / what people are looking for.

Enjoy the read.

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in the World Study (2004-2011)

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After reading this analysis of yoga trends, you’ll be able to answer some great yoga trivia questions, like:

a) What’s the yoga capital of Canada?b) What happened in the yoga world on June 5th, 2011?c) What is the top yoga related search in India?d) What is the difference between aparigraha and santosha?e) What happens when a yoga style or guru goes on Oprah?f) What are the most popular search terms for yoga gifts? Andg) How are Yoga and chocolate related?

But if you don’t have the time to read through this study here is a quick summary of the key factual details:

Countries where Yoga is most Popular in 2011:

1. Canada2. India3. United States

Cities where Yoga is most Popular in 2011:

1. Vancouver, BC, Canada2. Calgary, BC, Canada3. San Francisco, California, USA

Most Popular Yoga Styles Worldwide in 2011:

1. Bikram Yoga2. Hot Yoga3. Power Yoga

Most Popular Yoga Teacher Training in 2011:

1. Bikram Yoga Teacher Training2. Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training3. Hot Yoga Teacher Training

For the Impatient




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Most Popular Yoga Clothing Brand in 2011:

1. Lululemon Yoga Clothing2. Prana Yoga Clothing3. Shakti Yoga Clothing

Most Popular Yoga Mat Brand in 2011:

1. Manduka Yoga Mats2. Jade Yoga Mats3. Gaiam and Lululemon Yoga Mats (break even)

If you want to dramatically increase interest in your Yoga style or product - get on the Oprah Winfrey show.

And, finally, Yoga appears to be almost as popular as chocolate (the latter beats yoga by 50%).


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Let’s start by looking at the general yoga trends around the world.

Yoga versus the World

Worldwide we can see that interest in yoga was quite steady until the end of 2009. Interest then started to climb up during the year of 2010, and suddenly had a significant jump in 2011.

new-years-resolution-appleIf you wonder why there is a peak at the end of each year – it’s the New Year’s Resolutions effect, as everybody signs up for gym, yoga and diet programs, and by the end of January, the original inspiration is long forgotten. As you know, history tends to repeat itself, and, as you can see, yoga is not an exception to that rule.

You can also see from the graph that in 2008 news sources started to cover yoga more than in the previous 4 years, and that popularity has been steadily increasing since.

If you are curious about the sudden spike in the yoga-related news volume on June 5th, 2011, you can click on the flagged event at the upper part of the graph, and you will learn that the news was about Police break up Indian yoga guru’s hunger strike which happened in New Delhi. There are also con-trols to show a more refined graph for any given month or a year, so you can narrow down and get a more detailed report on any period of time.

Moving around the world, have you ever wondered about yoga trends in different countries?

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=yoga

http://mobile.newsday.com/inf/infomo?site=newsday&view=national_news_item&feed:a=newsday_1min&feed:c=nationworld&feed:i=1.2931002

http://mobile.newsday.com/inf/infomo?site=newsday&view=national_news_item&feed:a=newsday_1min&feed:c=nationworld&feed:i=1.2931002


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Since the data is normalized to the total number of searches done in each locale on each day, what we see here is the popularity of yoga in different countries as compared to popularity of anything else that netizens of the world may have searched for.

Surprisingly Canadians consider yoga more popular than any other country in the world (that uses Google), with India, the mother of yoga (shockingly!) coming second and the United States barely winning over Singapore . You can ask Google to show you the trends for any country that has a sufficient data pool from which to show useful information.

When we zoom in on the current winner – Canada – we can see the details of how each province fares:

As expected, British Columbia leads the yoga popularity game, with Alberta residents being almost as interested in Yoga. Surprisingly, Quebec seems to have much less interest in yoga.

Then zooming in a little more we can choose the winner amongst the provinces and see even more regional information:




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We are in for another surprise here; the yoga popularity king of British Columbia is the city of Parksville (located on Vancouver Island)! If we check the same data for 2011, we have Whistler, BC as a winner. Though looking at the very top-level chart is says that Vancouver, BC is the winner of all cities in the world. Well, it probably doesn’t matter as all 3 are relatively close to one another.

Before we continue and you get dragged down by all the numbers and trends, let’s look at why you care about all that jazz.

If you’re a yoga lover and you want to be in a nice and cozy yoga bubble surrounded by Lululemon and yoga mats, you shouldn’t go to India, but to Canada, preferably British Columbia and ide-ally Vancouver, Parksville or Whistler!

If you’re a yoga teacher who is looking to make a lot of money, the most popular place is not necessarily the most profitable place because you will have very stiff competition with many other yoga teachers. A bit like a gold rush, sometimes it’s better to go to a place where yoga is less popu-lar and where you actually stand a better chance of finding more yoga students. Perhaps they will be less spoiled too J

We ran the same test in “Google Insight for Search” and the results were somewhat different – It did show Vancouver as the winner in BC, and country wise USA was #2, following by India #3, and Singapore #4. But no major differences here.

Back to geography, if we look at the USA and yoga stats per state, we see the following 10 most popular states for yoga:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga&cmpt=q


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Here the first 10 states in the list seem to have an almost equal propensity to seek out yoga. You can drill down into each of the states to see the breakdown by the city. The ten cities across the US where yoga is the most popular are:

Cambridge takes the first place, with NYC and San Francisco closely following it.

If you’re curious about stats for India: Overall 2004-2011 - Pondicherry takes the first place, followed by Tamil Nadu and then Delhi. In 2011 Tamil Nadu is the leader closely followed by Karnataka and Delhi. Since 2009 the top search for yoga in India is “ramdev” or “baba ramdev”, who took India by storm in the last few years. See Baba Ramdev.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramdev


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Yoga means ‘unity’, yet there is a lot of rivalry between various yoga schools and organizations. One of the major foun-dations of yoga is the concept of ahimsa, which means non-violence, yet yoga schools and teachers sue each other. All yoga schools preach aparigraha, which means detachment, yet yoga branches try to own and control their yoga teachers as much as they can. But let’s practice the art of contentment (santosha) and simply look at the state of the art and let the data do the talking.

So here is the full list of yoga styles we found via the Internet. We’re sure we have missed some - but they are surely not the most popular ones. So the contenders are:

My Yoga is Better than Yours

1. AcroYoga

2. Ananda Yoga

3. AntiGravity Yoga

4. Anusara Yoga

5. Ashtanga Yoga

6. Bhakti Yoga

7. Bharata Yoga

8. Bikram Yoga

9. Dahn Yoga

10. Forrest Yoga

11. Gentle Yoga

12. Hatha Yoga

13. Hot Yoga

14. ISHTA Yoga

15. Integral Yoga

16. Integrative Yoga Therapy

17. Iyengar Yoga

18. Jivamukti Yoga

19. Jnana Yoga

20. Kali Ray TriYoga

21. Karma Yoga

22. Kripalu Yoga

23. Kriya Yoga


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Most Popular Yoga Styles from 2001 to 2011

The trends between 2004 and 2011 will help us to see which yoga branches have been gaining popularity, losing it, or purely maintaining:

Since google will only show 5 candidates at a time, we will split the 8 top-runners into 2 groups, and Ashtanga is the visual anchor (Group 1 and Group 2) between the two groups.

24. Kundalini Yoga

25. Laughter Yoga

26. Moksha Yoga

27. Nude Yoga | Naked Yoga

28. Partner Yoga

29. Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy | PRYT

30. Power Yoga

31. Prenatal Yoga | Postnatal Yoga

32. Raja Yoga

33. Restorative Yoga

34. Sahaja Yoga

35. Siddha Yoga

36. Sivananda Yoga

37. Strala Yoga

38. Svaroopa Yoga

39. Tantra Yoga

40. Tibetan Yoga

41. Viniyoga

42. White Lotus Yoga

43. Yin Yoga

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Ashtanga+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Ashtanga%22,++%22Bikram+Yoga%22,++%22Hot+Yoga%22,++%22Power+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Ashtanga+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Ashtanga%22,+++%22Hatha+Yoga%22,++%22Iyengar+Yoga%22,++%22Kundalini+Yoga%22,++%22Nude+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Naked+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0


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To get the consistent index numbers we used “Iyengar Yoga” as the base, so all other numbers are relative to it:

1. 19.40 Bikram Yoga

2. 06.40 Hot Yoga

3. 06.00 Ashtanga Yoga

4. 03.80 Power Yoga

5. 02.80 Hatha Yoga

6. 02.20 Nude Yoga

7. 02.00 Kundalini Yoga

8. 01.00 Iyengar Yoga


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The Popularity of Nude or Naked YogaWe were surprised to see “Nude/Naked Yoga” in the top eight, knowing that there are so few studios offering Nude Yoga. Our scientific conclusion was that it’s either because there is a huge desire for it (hint, hint!) or because the desire is more to watch someone doing Naked Yoga. Interestingly (see below) the interest is greater in India than anywhere else in the world). The first professionally-made Naked Yoga training video came from Yoga Undressed, The Goddess Series.

If you’re curious about that 15-fold increase in search for “Nude Yoga” on Oct 23, 2010, a quick search on Google revealed this news article:

Sat, Oct 23, 2010LOS ANGELES: A video featuring Playboy model Sara Jean Underwood performing various yoga postures while naked, has caused outrage in the Indian community.

As we can see from the graph - everybody in India needed to see the video first, so that they could join the dissatisfaction, hencethe insane surge in searches for “Nude Yoga” on that day. The traffic dropped by half the next day, and in 4 days all was forgotten,as the search pattern went back to the normal.

Six years earlier on Sep 23 2004 there was a 30-fold spike in “nude yoga” search traffic in United States when the news story “Naked yoga OK in San Francisco” was broadcasted:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982982216/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theultimatlearna&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0982982216

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Nude+Yoga%22+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2010-10&sort=0

http://www.google.ca/search?q=playboy+%22Nude+Yoga%22+oct+23+2010&oq=playboy+%22Nude+Yoga%22+oct+23+2010

http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22Naked+yoga+OK+in+San+Francisco%22


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City prosecutors Wednesday said it was not illegal to perform naked yoga in the city -- even at the crowded tourist destination of Fisherman’s Wharf. More: http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22Naked+yoga+OK+in+San+Francisco%22

You can see the peak here.

Emerging Yoga Styles Trends from 2004-2011Now let’s look at the emerging yoga styles from the last 7 years. Some of them are not really emerging, having had a steady popularity for years, but I’ve included them here because they compete in popularity with some of the yoga styles that have been gaining popularity over the recent years – such as Sahaja Yoga, Moksha Yoga, Dahn Yoga and Anusara Yoga (Group 1 and Group 2):

http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22Naked+yoga+OK+in+San+Francisco%22

http://www.google.com/trends?q=+%22Nude+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Naked+Yoga%22,+Sep+23+2004&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2004-9&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Kriya+Yoga%22,+%22Moksha+Yoga%22,++%22Prenatal+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Postnatal+Yoga%22,++%22Sahaja+Yoga%22,++%22Tantra+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=+%22Kriya+Yoga%22,++%22Laughter+Yoga%22,+%22Anusara+Yoga%22+%7C+anusara,+%22Dahn+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0


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And the winner here is the pre/post natal yoga, which of course doesn’t affect all of us, so the next in line is Moksha Yoga:

1. 1.85 Prenatal Yoga

2. 1.60 Moksha Yoga

3. 1.00 Kriya Yoga

4. 0.80 Anusara Yoga

5. 0.75 Sahaja Yoga

6. 0.45 Dahn Yoga

7. 0.35 Tantra Yoga

8. 0.15 Laughter Yoga

If you wonder where the other 27 yoga styles that entered this study rate, they didn’t even appear on Google’s radar because the search volume for those had been too little – i.e. those are very far from being popular.

Interesting Traffic Peaks in Emerging Yoga Styles TrafficHere are some interesting peaks and valleys in one emerging yoga style from a sudden surge in traffic:

Dahn Yoga is a Korean “yoga” system and business founded in 1985 by Ilchi Lee. It started gaining popularity in 2007. On January 5, 2010 the traffic jumped 10 times in the USA.

Wikipedia says:

On January 5, 2010, CNN broadcasted a critical report about the organization with interviews of former Dahn Yoga members alleging severe physical, mental and financial abuse by Dahn Yoga personnel and staff, including one former member stating she was coerced into donating funds to the organization by taking out student loans totalling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_abuse#Financial_abuse


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over $40,000 USD.”, which was all out of their choice.

One week later, all was forgotten.

Laughter Yoga is the most popular in New Zealand, the Philippines and Canada:

You can see a 5-fold surge in laughter yoga searches on April 11th 2007, when it appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. A second peak on August 8th 2007 – again due to Oprah. There was another spike July 18th 2011, thanks to Laughter-

fest 2011 in Bay Area, California. So if you want your yoga style to have world’s attention for a day, go on Oprah show!

Most Popular Yoga Styles in 2011The current yoga style trends (for 2011 alone) are important to us if we are trying to make decisions that are relevant for

present time.(Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 and Group 4) and show:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Ashtanga+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Ashtanga%22,++%22Bikram+Yoga%22,++%22Hot+Yoga%22,++%22Power+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Ashtanga+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Ashtanga%22,++%22Hatha+Yoga%22,++%22Iyengar+Yoga%22,++%22Kundalini+Yoga%22,++%22Nude+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Naked+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Iyengar+Yoga%22,+%22Kriya+Yoga%22,+%22Moksha+Yoga%22,++%22Prenatal+Yoga%22+%7C+%22Postnatal+Yoga%22,++%22Sahaja+Yoga%22,++%22Tantra+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=+%22Iyengar+Yoga%22,+%22Kriya+Yoga%22,++%22Laughter+Yoga%22,+%22Anusara+Yoga%22+%7C+anusara,+%22Dahn+Yoga%22,+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0


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So if we put all those charts together (which requires some extra math work) here is the relative search index showing the relative search position of each yoga style in 2011:


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As you can see in 2011 Bikram Yoga is the most popular yoga style and far ahead of any other contender, Hot Yoga is following it at about half of Bikram Yoga’s popularity and the third most popular Power Yoga is 3.3 times less popular than Bikram Yoga. Often people will search for Hot Yoga when they actually are looking for Bikram Yoga, even though there are a few other Hot Yoga “brands”, which gives Bikram Yoga even more weight. But if we combine Bikram Yoga and Hot Yoga together, as both are Hot Yoga – we end up with a whooping 19.3 index value, which is more than half of all the search between those top 15 yoga styles.


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If we compare these numbers to the absolute number of any ‘yoga’ searches (index 180), Hot+Bikram Yoga represent

about 10-11% of world’s “search for yoga” market.

Let’s remove a few entries that are below 1 to simplify the graph

http://www.google.com/trends?q=+%22Iyengar+Yoga%22,+yoga,+%22hot+yoga%22+%7C+%22bikram+yoga%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0


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1. AcroYoga

2. Agama Yoga

3. Amazing Yoga

4. Ananda Yoga

5. AntiGravity Yoga

6. Anusara Yoga

7. Anuttara Yoga Shala Yoga

8. Asha Yoga

9. Ashtanga Yoga

10. Bharata Yoga

11. Bikram Yoga

12. Dahn Yoga

13. Divine Light Yoga

14. Etowah Valley Yoga

15. FlorYoga

16. Forrest Yoga

17. Frog Lotus Yoga International

18. Hot Yoga

19. ISHTA Yoga

20. Integral Yoga

21. Integrative Yoga Therapy

22. Its Yoga Thailand Yoga

23. Iyengar Yoga

24. Jivamukti Yoga

25. Jnana Yoga

26. Kali Ray TriYoga

27. Kripalu Yoga

28. Kriya Yoga

29. Kundalini Yoga

30. Laughter Yoga

Yoga Teacher Training Trends

31. Leela Mata Yoga

32. Moksha Yoga

33. Namaste Yoga

34. North Shore Yoga

35. ParaYoga

36. Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (PRYT)

37. Power Yoga

38. Prana Yoga

39. Rainbow Kids Yoga

40. Rolf Gates Yoga

41. Sahaja Yoga

42. Semperviva Yoga

43. Shakti Spirit Yoga

44. Shiva Rea Yoga

45. Siddha Yoga

46. Sivananda Yoga

47. Strala Yoga

48. Svaroopa Yoga

49. Tribe Yoga

50. Trinity Yoga

51. Viniyoga

52. White Lotus Yoga

53. Yandara Yoga Institute

54. Yin Yoga

55. Yoga Blend

56. Yoga Den and Yoga Village Yoga.

Hundreds, if not thousands, different yoga teacher training programs are being offered nowadays around the world. The following is therefore a very incomplete list of yoga teacher trainings offerings, however all the major schools have been included here. The contenders were:


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1. Bikram Yoga Teacher Training

2. Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training

3. Iyengar Yoga Teacher Training

4. Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training

5. Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training

6. Hot Yoga Teacher Training

7. Anusara Yoga Teacher Training

8. Sivananda Yoga Teacher Training

9. Power Yoga Teacher Training

10. Moksha Yoga Teacher Training

11. Jivamukti Yoga Teacher Training

12. Yin Yoga Teacher Training

The trends for the top five can be seen in the following graph:

According to Google, over the period of the last 7 years, the following yoga teacher training programs have been the most popular (sorted by popularity):

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Bikram%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Ashtanga%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Iyengar%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Kundalini%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Kripalu%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,&cmpt=q


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And in the last 12 months (sorted by popularity):

1. Bikram Yoga Teacher Training

2. Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training

3. Hot Yoga Teacher Training

4. Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training

5. Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training

6. Power Yoga Teacher Training

7. Iyengar Yoga Teacher Training

8. Anusara Yoga Teacher Training

9. Sivananda Yoga Teacher Training

10. Moksha Yoga Teacher Training

11. Yin Yoga Teacher Training

12. Jivamukti Yoga Teacher Training

The relative positioning of the first few can be seen from the graphs (Group 1 and Group 2):

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Bikram%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,Ashtanga%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,Hot%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,Kundalini%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,Kripalu%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training&date=11/2010%2013m&cmpt=q

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Hot%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Kundalini%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Kripalu%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Power%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,%20Iyengar%20Yoga%20Teacher%20Training,&date=11/2010%2013m&cmpt=q


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The two snapshots had to be taken separately as Bikram and Ashtanga Yoga teacher training search volume was signifi-

cantly higher and therefore Google won’t show anything but those two contenders on that one graph.


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In terms of yoga gifts, people search for:

• yoga gift certificate• yoga gift cards• yoga gift baskets• yoga gift ideas• yoga gifts• gift of yoga

So if you’re in a yoga-related business make sure your website includes those keywords, especially “yoga gift ideas”. Number-wise the popularity of the above keywords is as following:

Yoga Gift Popularity Trends

In general the interest in yoga gifts hasn’t grown over the years, with just a slight increase in the last 2 years.


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Of course as you can see from the graph that the interest in yoga gifts is seasonal and its peak coincides with Christmas/December of each year. Otherwise the interest has been pretty steady through the rest of the year.

Talking about the Christmas peaks in search traffic for yoga gifts, let’s check the more specific trends of Yoga and Christmas:

We can see from the graph that the search for ‘yoga C trends of Yoga and Christmas hristmas’ and ‘yoga gift’ coincide, it’s just that people don’t necessarily include the word Christmas in their search.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20gift&cmpt=q

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20christmas,%20yoga%20gift&cmpt=q




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Here besides the obvious searches such as:

• yoga gifts• yoga christmas gifts

We can see that people also search for more specific items such as:

• yoga christmas cards• yoga christmas ornaments

Also also an interesting trend to notice is that some people desire to spend their vacation time doing yoga:

• christmas yoga retreats• christmas yoga holidays• yoga holidays• yoga holiday christmas

However that trends is pretty steady and hasn’t been becoming more popular over the years:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20holiday&cmpt=q


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in fact you can see that it has been slowly declining.


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Another surprising fact, the general yoga clothing trend shows a decrease in the interest in yoga clothing:

Yoga Clothing Popularity Trends

As far as specific yoga-wear brands go it was difficult to find all the contenders, since there are so many. Here’s a very incomplete, yet very impressive list:

4-rth, Alo Activewear, Anatomie, Avani Clothing, BEYOND Yoga, Balance Fitwear, Be Love Tees, Be Present Yoga Clothing, Bia Brazil Activewear, Bluefish Activewear, Body Angel Activewear, Body Language Activewear, Body Up Activewear, Born Fit, CW-X Compression Gear, Couture Active Wear, Doce Vida Fitness, Element V, Equilibrium Activewear, Fit2Bmom Maternity Activewear, Fitness Fit, GGO Clothing, Gaiam, Green Apple Active, Handful Bra, Hyde Yoga, ION Actif, Jala Clothing, KOS USA, LIJA, LP Studio Line, Lotuswear, Lululemon, MPG Sport, Margarita Activewear, Me2Roo Maternity, NUX USA, Nina Bucci Activewear, O’Neill 365, Omgirl Yoga Clothes, Our Love Yoga, Prana Yoga Clothing, RESE Activewear, Shakti Yoga, Shock Absorber Bras, Skirt Sports, Sparta Sport, Splits59, Squeezed Yoga Clothing, Stella Athletics, Tiempo Libre Activewear, Tonic Yoga, UpVibe, VATA Brasil, YMX by YellowMan, Yogi Clothing, Zobha, Zumba Clothing and azIam.

When comparing the brands by search query trends we included four commonly searched phrases - yoga clothing, yoga clothes, yoga wear, yoga pants - as a single search. So, for example, for the Prana Brand we used:

Prana Yoga Clothing + Prana Yoga Clothes + Prana Yoga Wear + Prana Yoga Pants

Please note that here “+” indicates “OR”, i.e. either of the four queries is considered and therefore we get the combined result. This is the syntax used by Google Insights – in the case of normal Google search you’d use “|” instead of “+”.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20clothing,yoga%20clothes,yoga%20wear&cmpt=q


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And the most popular yoga clothing brands are:

Lululemon appears to be a winner with a huge advantage since about mid-2009. Prana Yoga Clothing has been in asteady decline for the last 7 years, but still appears to be second in popularity as of today.Sakti Yoga Clothing takes thebronze, and appears to be steady in popularity over the last 4 years. Tonic Yoga Clothing and Gaiam Yoga Clothing arebreakeven and are in the forth place. Most other contenders are much less popular.

If we sample just the last 12 months we get the same results.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Prana%20Yoga%20Clothing%20%2B%20Prana%20Yoga%20Clothes%20%2B%20Prana%20Yoga%20Wear%20%2B%20Prana%20Yoga%20Pants,%20Lululemon%20Yoga%20Clothing%20%2B%20Lululemon%20Yoga%20Clothes%20%2B%20Lululemon%20Yoga%20Wear%20%2B%20Lululemon%20Yoga%20Pants,%20Shakti%20Yoga%20Clothing%20%2B%20Shakti%20Yoga%20Clothes%20%2B%20Shakti%20Yoga%20Wear%20%2B%20Shakti%20Yoga%20Pants,%20Gaiam%20Yoga%20Clothing%20%2B%20Gaiam%20Yoga%20Clothes%20%2B%20Gaiam%20Yoga%20Wear%20%2B%20Gaiam%20Yoga%20Pants,%20Tonic%20Yoga%20Clothing%20%2B%20Tonic%20Yoga%20Clothes%20%2B%20Tonic%20Yoga%20Wear%20%2B%20Tonic%20Yoga%20Pants&cmpt=q


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Yoga Products and Gear Popularity TrendsOnce you have your Yoga clothing, the only remaining things before you can buy your tickets to enlightenment is getting yourself one or more yoga products and accessories.

Yoga Mats

One item that you absolutely have to have is a good looking and yet practical Yoga mat. And since there are dozens of Yoga mat brands available, let’s have a look at who leads the space. It’s difficult to find a complete list of yoga mat brands. Here are the contenders that entered the competition and which certainly include the most popular Brands and a few less known ones:Barefoot, Bolder, Breathe, Gaiam, Hugger Mugger, Jade, Kulae, Lululemon, Mandala, Man-duka, MindBodyBliss, Prana, Purearth, YogaAccessories, Yogitoes.

Here we search for four different combinations of keywords that are most likely to be used, e.g.: Manduka Yoga Mat + Manduka Yoga Mats + Manduka Mat + Manduka Mats

(see the section on yoga clothing for the explanation on how this search works)

And the results are as follows:

1. Manduka Yoga mats take the first place as the most popular yoga mat brand over the last 2 years, and their popularity just

continues to grow.

2. Jade Yoga mats come very closely behind Manduka.

3+4. Gaiam and Lululemon Yoga mats share the third and fourth places, with a relatively steadily growing popularity over

the last few years.

5. And finally Prana Yoga mats take the fifth place with a slight steady decline in popularity in the recent years.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Manduka%20Yoga%20Mat%20%2B%20Manduka%20Yoga%20Mats%20%2B%20Manduka%20Mat%20%2B%20Manduka%20Mats,%20Jade%20Yoga%20Mat%20%2B%20Jade%20Yoga%20Mats%20%2B%20Jade%20Mat%20%2B%20Jade%20Mats,%20%20Gaiam%20Yoga%20Mat%20%2B%20Gaiam%20Yoga%20Mats%20%2B%20Gaiam%20Mat%20%2B%20Gaiam%20Mats,%20Lululemon%20Yoga%20Mat%20%2B%20Lululemon%20Yoga%20Mats%20%2B%20Lululemon%20Mat%20%2B%20Lululemon%20Mats,%20%20Prana%20Yoga%20Mat%20%2B%20Prana%20Yoga%20Mats%20%2B%20Prana%20Mat%20%2B%20Prana%20Mats,&cmpt=q


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Other Yoga Products and GearNow that you have your mat, you might want to make yourself even more comfortable with a range of various products and gear, some of which can be prohibitively expensive.Let’s have a look at resistance bands, straps, ropes, belts and slings:

Resistance bands and various straps have been growing in popularity, whereas ropes, belts and slings hold a steady interest.Next come the varied Yoga cushions, blankets, pillows, benches, zafus, zabutons and sandbags:

Yoga blankets and yoga pillows go hand-in-hand, though both are in decline. Yoga cushions, benches and zafus are slightly less popular but the interest is quite steady.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20band%20%2B%20yoga%20bands,%20yoga%20strap%20%2B%20yoga%20straps,%20yoga%20rope%20%2B%20yoga%20ropes,%20yoga%20belt%20%2B%20yoga%20belts,%20yoga%20sling%20%2B%20yoga%20slings,&cmpt=q

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20blanket%20%2B%20yoga%20blankets,%20yoga%20pillow%20%2B%20yoga%20pillows,%20yoga%20cushion%20%2B%20yoga%20cushions,%20yoga%20bench%20%2B%20yoga%20benches,%20yoga%20zafu%20%2B%20yoga%20zafus,&cmpt=q


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Next we look at Yoga balls, blocks, bolsters, Yoga eggs and wedges:

Yoga balls have been very popular over the last 7 years, even though we have a hard time of thinking what Yoga styleactually uses yoga balls. Yoga blocks come next, followed by various Yoga bolsters and Yoga eggs (egg-shaped bol-sters), and closing with wedges. Other than the recently emerging eye candy Yoga eggs and wedges which are slightlyon the raise, the other types of supporting props sport a steady interest.

Next is Yoga bags and totes, Yoga towels and Yoga kits:

As it can be seen from the graph, Yoga bags are in a steady decline in popularity and yoga towels are on the rise. Yoga kits and totes keep steady.

Finally let’s look at the accessories that didn’t fit into any other group, such as: Yoga swings, clocks and timers and toe spreaders:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20ball%20%2B%20yoga%20balls,%20yoga%20block%20%2B%20yoga%20blocks,%20yoga%20bolster%20%2B%20yoga%20bolsters,%20yoga%20egg%20%2B%20yoga%20eggs,%20yoga%20wedge%20%2B%20yoga%20wedges,&cmpt=q

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20bag%20%2B%20yoga%20bags,%20yoga%20towel%20%2B%20yoga%20towels,%20yoga%20kit%20%2B%20yoga%20kits,%20yoga%20tote%20%2B%20yoga%20totes,&cmpt=q

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20swing%20%2B%20yoga%20swings,%20yoga%20clock%20%2B%20yoga%20clocks,%20yoga%20timer%20%2B%20yoga%20timers,%20toe%20spreader%20%2B%20toe%20spreaders&cmpt=q

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=yoga%20swing%20%2B%20yoga%20swings,%20yoga%20clock%20%2B%20yoga%20clocks,%20yoga%20timer%20%2B%20yoga%20timers,%20toe%20spreader%20%2B%20toe%20spreaders&cmpt=q


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Yoga swings have been gradually becoming more and more popular – perhaps yogis get bored to be on the floor all the time and need to some suspension every so often... That huge peak in search traffic for “Yoga Swing” in March 2007 was due to Rosie O’Donnell appearing on “The View” TV show where she demonstrated “inversion therapy.” (Lesson: if you want to promote your yoga prop – get some celebrity to demonstrate it on a popular show). The momentary hype subsided within a few days and everybody has forgotten about the yoga swings and Rosie.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=yoga+swing+%22march*2007%22+Rosie+O'Donnell


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Yoga Kriya-s Accessory TrendsKriya-s are cleansing techniques (Shatkarma or Shatkriya) used in many traditional Yoga styles. They are designed to help keep one’s body clean internally and help remove toxins. These techniques are not exclusive to Yoga, as their source lies in Ayurveda practices, but pretty much any Yoga tradition that goes beyond just gymnastics will teach Yogic cleansing and purification (kriya-s) techniques.

Jala neti, sutra neti and tongue scraping are the most commonly used techniques.

In Sutra neti - a length of wet string or thin surgical tubing is carefully and gently inserted through the nose and into the mouth. The end is then pulled out of the mouth and while holding both ends at once the string is alternately pulled in and out of the nose and sinuses. It is used to clear the nose and also to remove nasal polyps.

In Jala neti - lukewarm salt water is poured into one nostril, so that it leaves through the other. Most of the time neti post is used to perform that. The procedure is then repeated on the other side. Other liquids like milk, urine and various special mixtures can be used as well.

A tongue scraper (also known as a tongue cleaner or a tongue brush) is used first thing in the morning to clean the bacterial build-up, food debris, fungi, and dead cells from the surface of the tongue. It also prevents the bad breath issues.

Here is the graph charting the popularity of tongue scrapers, jala neti and sutra neti:

That peak in interest about Jala neti and SutrThe popularity of neti in October 2009 was due to the viral message that spread like fire on the net, pasted over and over on various forums and blogs, in a similar to chain mails fashion, which suggested that it was writ-ten by Dr. Vinay Goyal and which included advice on how to deal with H1N1/Swine Flu using Ayurvedic Treatment. Nobody seems to know where this message originated from. But it did suggest using jala neti and sutra neti as one of the advices.


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As you can see it has been getting much more popular in the last 3-4 years. In May 2007 Neti Pot made it to Oprah Winfrey show where it was presented by Dr. Mehmet Oz – and that corresponds to the first 9-fold increase in interest in searches for neti pot. And then the same segment was re-run at the end of December 2007, which spiked the search interest 10-fold. Some businesses reported an increase in neti-pot sales 25-fold in May 2007 and 50-fold in January 2008 following each airing of the show.

Neti pot mentioned earlier is used to wash the nasal cavity to flush out excess mucus and debris from the nose and sinuses. And let’s see how popular it is:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=may+2007+neti+pot+Oprah+Dr.+Oz


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Yoga and Chocolate

Finally let’s compare yoga and chocolate:

As you can see, yoga is almost as good as chocolate. The most interesting thing you can see from this graph is that when the interest in chocolate rises sharply (every year around Christmas) the interest in yoga drops, and when in the last week of December the interest in chocolate sharply drops the inter-est in yoga peaks. You can see how closely related yoga and chocolate are. During winter time the two trends go in opposite directions, whereas during the summer time both are synchronized.

If you’re curious about the countries, some countries prefer a lot more choc-olate than yoga (red – chocolate, blue – yoga):


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LicenseYoga Trends in the World Study (2004-2011) by VitalityLink.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at VitalityLink.com.

We have released this for free to the community. If you know anybody who would find value or entertainment in this content, feel free to re-post or share via email.

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For Posterity

If you are reading this study somewhere around 2020 (which means that the doom’s day didn’t come after all), make sure to follow the links in this article to the more up-to-date data – who knows, maybe yoga will dominate the world by then or maybe it will have been abandoned in favour of biofeedback computer simulations where you can experience nirvana anytime for small change.

If you want to understand more about how Google Trends works you can read about it here.As of this writing Google Insights for Search is not documented.

And if you have other ideas for great yoga trend information – trivia or otherwise, send it to us at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to include it in version 2!


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