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…Rajashree Choudhury, the wife of the Indian yoga master Bikram Choudhury and the founder of USA Yoga, whose long-term goal is to promote asana as a sport for the Olympics, recalled her own childhood competitions in India, where she was a five-time champion and noise was commonplace.

“I’d be in standing head-to-knee,” she explained, “and someone would bang a big steel pan to test my composure.”

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