Who’s Who: Nouf Marwaai, president of the Saudi Yoga Committee

Nouf Marwaai. (Supplied)

Nouf Marwaai has been the president of the Saudi Yoga Committee — a body under the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee at the Ministry of Sport — since last year.
She took up yoga in 1998 because of health issues and has been practicing for more than 20 years, becoming the first certified yoga teacher in Saudi Arabia.
In recognition of her efforts in popularizing the exercise discipline in the Arab region, she was awarded India’s fourth-highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, by the Indian president.
She has held a number of prominent positions including as an adviser to the Asian Yoga Federation (2012), and advisory board member of the World Yoga Council Europe (2015).
The chief minister of India’s Kerala state presented Marwaai with the Asian Yoga Federation’s Yoga Ratna Award in September 2018 during the Asian Yoga Championship in recognition of her efforts to promote yoga sports in Asia since 2005.
She was the founder and president of the Arab Yoga Foundation which started out in 2004 as the Saudi Yoga School. In 2010, it changed its name to the Arab Yoga Foundation and thousands of yoga teachers in Arab countries graduated under the foundation, many trained by Marwaai.
She has been a member of the International Yoga Federation’s president’s committee since 2015 and became the vice president of the Asian Yoga Federation, India, in June last year.
In 2019, she founded the Nouf Sports Academy in Saudi Arabia and registered a trademark for wellness education in the Kingdom. The first wellness and yoga educational academy in the region has already trained hundreds of trainers and yoga practitioners.
She has also been a member of the international affairs committee of the Saudi Universities Sports Federation at the Ministry of Education since 2019 and last year joined the federation’s women’s sports planning and development committee.