When an activity is more than just exercise: a scoping review of facilitators and barriers for yoga participation

For Exercise, Relaxation, or Spirituality: Exploring Participation Motives and Conformity to Masculine Norms among Male and Female Yoga Participants

“…More specifically, our results indicate that compared to women, men are more likely to do yoga as a supplementary activity and for competitive and social recognition reasons, and less likely to cite motives related to mind-body integration, health/fitness, positive affect, nimbleness, and coping/stress management. Doing yoga to supplement their primary sport or physical activity, including injury recovery, was a salient motive for men, which is in line with previous studies [ 4 , 31 ]. It is, however, noteworthy that there were no gender differences in ill-health avoidance and weight management/appearance motives.…”

“…The EMI-2 includes 51 items measuring 14 participation motives. We added 28 new items to capture six additional motives (Spirituality, Mind–Body Integration, Centering/Mindfulness, Personal Growth/Transformation, supplementary activity, and general coping) that may be salient to yoga [ 4 ]. Details of the process of developing these additional items and the preliminary factor analysis are reported elsewhere [ 51 ].…”

“…Yoga is a traditional practice from India acknowledged for its potential contribution to public health [ 1 , 2 ]. It involves a holistic approach to health and well-being, promoting physical activity, healthy behaviors, mental health, and psycho-spiritual development [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. While yoga has become a prominent part of the modern-day physical activity landscape [ 7 , 8 ], studies have shown that yoga participation is still relatively low and appears confined mainly to specific population subgroups [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ], with white, well-educated females occupying a particularly prominent place.…”

“…Similar to physical activity, yoga may be taken up for varying and multiple reasons, including health, fitness, self-development, mind–body integration, and spirituality [ 4 ]. Gender differences have been observed in some studies on yoga participation motives [ 29 , 30 ].…”

Design Thinking Applications in Physical Activity and Exercise Literacy

“…At the same time, feasibility exploration of recently proposed PA and exercise literacy programs remains largely unknown [77]. Ideas like the application of virtual and augmented reality in the promotion of exercise [67], the role of mind-body interventions in prolonged exercise participation [78,79], and the potential of embodied creativity activities [80] are examples of such exploration requests. There is a clear need to explore user-friendly PA and exercise literacy solutions with an unknown capability for creating active lifestyle responses for populations in need.…”