Most yoga-practitioners and asana teachers in the west use the word Yogi, as if a yogi would be an asana (exercise) practitioner with great flexibility and contortion skills. It is the nature of the ego to acquire more and more identities — and spiritual identities are just one more kind of them, "that i am a meditator, that i am a great yogi, that i am spiritual, that i am holy. . ." probably the spiritual being the worse kind of identity to bust the ego with, because many enter the game of "holier than thou" which is nothing more than the biggest self delusion. Beyond the games of the ego that always tries to 'be' or 'become' something or another, since the times when Yoga has started spreading from India to other cultures, the word Yogi has not been understood rightly and as a consequence it is highly misused. I think part of this misunderstanding lays in the fact that many people have not yet understood that Yoga is not exercise. When we refer to a yogi, we refer to a wise one, who often may have never practiced any asana except sukhasana, but who has become stable in the inner world, who has achieved the state of non duality, beyond any chains of identifications. And this is the true yogi and the true path of yoga.
Website link: podcast | Manish Vyas