Yoga Tourism: Creating Balance and Wellbeing in a Post-COVID-19 World

Dear Colleagues,

As destinations begin to emerge from the events of the last year, recovery and rejuvenation are priorities for individuals, organisations and destinations. Available evidence in the UK alone indicates that self-reported mental health and wellbeing worsened during the first national lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, with psychological distress, anxiety and depressive symptoms peaking in April 2020. There is evidence of some recovery by July, perhaps returning to pre-pandemic levels, which was sustained until September, followed by worsening again between October 2020 and March 2021. Women and young people also appear to be more vulnerable according to the COVID-19: Mental Health and Wellbeing Surveillance Report, 2021. Studies carried out at Johns Hopkins University have suggested that holistic activities, such as yoga and meditation, can relax the brain and reduce stress, anxiety and depression. These activities have translated well to a virtual environment, and numbers of participants engaging have increased dramatically, with three in ten (30%) people introducing them into their lockdown regimes. As we enter a “new normal”, wellbeing will continue to take centre stage, but mindsets must shift in order to examine how to incorporate this not only into daily life but also as part of our travel preferences.

Yoga tourism is a relatively new topic in the academic literature, and there are scarce studies that are specifically dedicated to exploring this contemporary phenomenon (Ali-Knight and Ensor, 2017). This Special Issue aims to explore the relative importance and benefits of yoga, health and wellness tourism as a key driver for destinations and its role in creating tourism demand in a post-COVID-19 world in regard to tighter restrictions on travel mobility and a reluctance to travel to certain destinations for traditional sun, sand and hedonistic motivations.

We invite papers dealing with yoga tourism, including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Importance and benefits of yoga, health and wellness tourism;
• Yoga tourist motivations, behaviours and propensity to travel;
• Development of yoga, health and wellness tourism destinations, attractions and products;
• Enhanced demand for yoga and wellbeing practices and travel;
• Limitations/barriers to engaging in yoga, health and wellness tourism;
• Access, inclusion and diversity of yoga, health and wellness tourism;
• Yoga and wellbeing as a driver for spiritual/religious tourism;
• Emerging yoga, health and wellness destinations;
• Government involvement in the promotion of yoga and wellbeing practices and travel.

Prof. Dr. Jane Ali-Knight
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• yoga
• health and wellness tourism
• community recovery and rejuvenation
• life–work balance
• spiritual/religious tourism