In the recent "yoga in America" study report published in Yoga Journal, the top five reasons why people take to yoga are:
Flexibility (78.3 percent), general conditioning (62.2 percent), stress relief (59.6 percent), improve overall health (58.5 percent) and physical fitness (55.1 percent).
This is quite in line with what I hear from most of my students when they join my classes. Of course, if we go back to the roots of yoga and look at the reason why yoga was introduced in ancient times, we notice that the main reason for practicing yoga is "to calm the mind" (yogash-chitta-vritti-nirodhah – sutra 1.2 by Patanjali). Patanjali goes on to add that only when the mind is clam can we know "what our true identity/nature is" (tada drashTuH swarupe avasthanam – sutra 1.3). This knowledge of our true identity is also termed "self-realization".
It would be interesting to see what percentage of the poll participants gave "to attain self-realization" as one of the reasons.
Below is the full article (cut-n-paste) from Yoga Journal for your reference.
The latest Yoga in America study shows that 20.4 million Americans practice yoga, compared to 15.8 million from the previous 2008 study, an increase of 29 percent. In addition, practitioners spend $10.3 billion a year on yoga classes and products, including equipment, clothing, vacations and media. The previous estimate from the 2008 study was $5.7 billion.
Data for this survey, the most comprehensive study of the consumer yoga market available, were collected by Sports Marketing Surveys USA on behalf of Yoga Journal.
The 2012 study indicates that 8.7 percent of U.S. adults, or 20.4 million people, practice yoga. Of current non-practitioners, 44.4 percent of Americans call themselves “aspirational yogis”—people who are interested in trying yoga.
The study also collected data on age, gender, and other demographic and lifestyle factors. Of the yoga practitioners surveyed:
•82.2 percent are women; 17.8 percent are men.
•The majority of today’s yoga practitioners (62.8 percent) fall within the age range of 18-44.
•38.4 percent have practiced yoga for one year or less; 28.9 percent have practiced for one to three years; 32.7 percent have practiced for three years or longer.
•44.8 percent consider themselves beginners (22.9 percent are new to yoga; 21.9 percent are beginning to practice yoga after taking some time off); 39.6 percent consider themselves intermediate; 15.6 percent consider themselves expert/advanced.
•The top five reasons for starting yoga were: flexibility (78.3 percent), general conditioning (62.2 percent), stress relief (59.6 percent), improve overall health (58.5 percent) and physical fitness (55.1 percent)
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