Yoga is by origin an ancient spiritual practice from India. In the form of yoga as exercise, using postures (asanas) derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, it has become a widespread fitness practice across the western world. Yoga as exercise, along with the use that some make of symbols such as Om ॐ, has been described as cultural appropriation.
Scholars, noting that yoga has continually developed in form and changed its contexts and goals since it originated, both in India and in the western world, and that practitioners in India have adopted western yoga practices, have debated whether the charge can be substantiated. Scholars and authors from India have suggested that the desired result is not that white people should stop practicing yoga, but that they should learn something of its history and seek to practice it responsibly in a genuine and healing cultural exchange.
Yoga is an ancient spiritual practice from India, whose goal was to unite the human spirit with the divine. [2] The branch of yoga that makes use of physical postures is Haṭha yoga, developed from the 11th century onwards. It seeks to use physical techniques to preserve and channel a vital force or energy. [3] [4] It had goals including the attainment of magical powers, immortality, and spiritual liberation. [3] Modern yoga as exercise makes use of physical postures as Haṭha yoga did, but its goals are good health, reduced stress, and physical flexibility. [5]
Cultural appropriation is defined as the "inappropriate or unacknowledged" adoption of elements of a culture by people from a different culture. [6] The concept is open to debate. [7] [8]
The scholar of religion Andrea Jain writes in her book Selling Yoga that "advocates of the Hindu origins position" [9] assert that practitioners of postural yoga have not observed what they consider to be the Hindu roots of yoga, and therefore "denounce what they consider yoga marketers' illegitimate cooptation and commodification of yoga." [9] She states that such claims "cannot stand serious historical scrutiny", [9] quoting the Indologist David Gordon White's comment that "Every group in every age has created its own version and vision of yoga." [9] White states that this has been possible because the concept of yoga is extremely malleable. [9] Jain writes that Hindu objectors have two primary concerns. Firstly, they feel that "popularized systems of postural yoga are corruptions of what they consider authentic yoga." [9] Secondly, they feel that "Hinduism does not get due credit" [9] when yoga is appropriated in this way. Jain states that modern yoga had two major narratives. Vivekananda promoted what he called raja yoga, a spiritual movement, and he criticised "body-centered yoga practices". [9] Later, other leaders (such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda) looked to Hinduism in a different way, so that postural yoga was "reconstructed and medicalized" [9] to turn its practices into "modern fitness techniques deemed original to Hinduism". [9] Jain states that some objectors claim that yoga is Hinduism's intellectual property, so that commercial yoga is effectively theft. She writes that the Hindu origins position, however, "ignore[s] the dynamic history of yoga", [9] and that protest "emerges from a distorted view of history that serves a fierce will to power". [9]
The British yoga teacher Nadia Gilani, author of the 2022 book The Yoga Manifesto, [10] writes that modern yoga as exercise has lost its way. She proposes a programme "on how we can work together to restore yoga and preserve its roots in ways to benefit everyone." [11] The Guardian reports that yoga teachers in India feel that western yoga has appropriated their culture, quoting Vikram Jeet Singh of Goa as saying that "his own culture [had been] wiped out and suppressed by colonisation." [12] Yoga teachers of South Asian heritage like Nikita Desai have stated that yoga has been "colonised" [12] by wealthy white society, putting it out of reach of many people. [12] The same article, however, quotes Gilani as saying that "I don’t think claiming yoga back as an Indian practice for only Indians is the way", [12] since the situation is not in her view a matter of the west having "colonised" yoga. [12] Gilani comments that while she is a "person of colour", [12] she was born and teaches yoga in the west, and that her yoga practice must fit her modern life. [12]
The yoga teacher and studio owner Arundhati Baitmangalkar, writing in Yoga International, describes some aspects of yoga marketing as cultural appropriation. [1] She identifies yoga studios, yoga teachers and yoga-related businesses as among those misusing yoga, stating that sacred symbols like idols of Buddha, Ganesha, Patanjali, and Shiva need to be treated with reverence, just as the Om ॐ symbol, yoga sutras, and mandalas are not "décor" [1] and that they should not be added casually to beautify a yoga space. [1]
The Swedish yoga teacher Rachel Brathen, author of the bestselling [14] 2015 book Yoga Girl, responding to comments on her website, notes that whereas the British Raj banned yoga in India, it is now ubiquitous in the western world, and asks whether it is cultural appropriation to practice and to teach yoga "as a white or non-Hindu". [13] Brathen answers that she does not know whether she should stop using incense, or Tibetan bells, or having a Buddha statue on her altar, and so on. She notes that her website does not have an "About yoga..." page on the origins of modern yoga, but agrees that it would be a worthy addition. [13] She states that when she was young she wore a bindi on her forehead, stopping when someone objected. She comments that she has an Om symbol tattooed on her foot, and would have undone it were that possible, not least because the foot is considered an impure part of the body by Hindus. [13]
The scholar of religion Neil Dalal writes that a mainstream view of cultural appropriation assumes that modern yoga has its roots in South Asia, and that there exists some ancient, pure, and authentic South Asian yoga which is at risk of being corrupted in the modern world. [15] An alternative spiritual but not religious view, held by some practitioners of modern yoga, is that it embodies a pure and universal spirituality, which cannot be corrupted. [15] Dalal states that both views consider yoga to have a "timeless ahistorical essence". [15] Yoga scholarship, investigating the history of yoga, holds instead that yoga does not have an essence as it changed continually over the centuries, and that talk of purity or authenticity does not make sense; indeed, talk of cultural appropriation may not make sense in the case of yoga either. [15] [16] Further, yoga in India has declined in its traditional form, and has taken on aspects of its modern western form, complicating the discussion and implying that many people in India have accepted a more western view of yoga. [17] [18]
The scholar of globalisation, Shameem Black, writes that while the goal of decolonising yoga may be justified, yoga also offers scope for invigorating decolonisation projects in India. The colonial history of yoga, she writes, shows that it was "both shaped by imperial norms and capable of generating anti-colonial critical force." [19]
The first-generation Indian American yoga researcher and teacher, Rina Deshpande, writes in Yoga Journal that people from India can feel excluded if Indian words and symbols are forbidden in an attempt to make yoga classes more inclusive. Deshpande notes that it is ironic that yoga is now "often marketed by affluent Westerners to affluent Westerners—and Indians, ironically, are marginally represented, if at all." [20]
The scholar of postcolonial studies Rumya S. Putcha states that the term "cultural appropriation" in itself "is a way of diluting the fact that we're talking about racism and European colonialism." [20] In her view, the effect is conveniently to divert attention to how one can "show cultural appreciation appropriately", when the real issue is "the role of power and the legacies of imperialism." [20]
The scholar of religious studies Shreena Gandhi and the antiracist campaigner Lillie Wolff write that the desired result is not that white people should stop doing yoga, but for them to see how the history of yoga in the west is linked to oppression and colonialism, and that a freely-shared practice of devotion is being advertised and sold for profit. [20] [22] Gandhi and Wolff comment that one reason for yoga's popularity was that "it reinforced European and Euro-American ideas of India. Early Indian yoga missionaries played on the orientalist construction of the 'west' as progressive and superior and the 'east' as spiritual but inferior. Yoga became — and remains — a practice which allows western practitioners to experience the idea of another culture while focusing on the self." [22] They acknowledge the "far too few practitioners" who take the trouble to study the history and philosophy of yoga, and invite everyone to join in an "authentic, respectful, and accountable cultural exchange", where "the practices [can] have a profound healing effect on the practitioner." [22]
The Indian-born journalist Neha Tandon, writing in Women's Health , recalls that after many years of learning yoga in South Asia and with her family, she visited a "fancy studio" and was shocked when the mantra "Om Namah Shivaya" was chanted over the pop song "God Is a Woman." [21] She comments that nobody "buys a 'Namaste in bed' shirt with ill intentions", but that alienating South Asian people remains problematic. [21] Tandon suggests that practitioners might visit a Hindu temple or read some of the classic texts on yoga to become "more socially conscious" in their practice. [21]
Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciousness untouched by the mind (Chitta) and mundane suffering (Duḥkha). There is a wide variety of schools of yoga, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and traditional and modern yoga is practiced worldwide.
An āsana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose, and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define "asana" as "[a position that] is steady and comfortable". Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of his system. Asanas are also called yoga poses or yoga postures in English.
Pranayama is the yogic practice of focusing on breath. In yoga, breath is associated with prana, thus, pranayama is a means to elevate the prana-shakti, or life energies. Pranayama is described in Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Later in Hatha yoga texts, it meant the complete suspension of breathing. The pranayama practices in modern yoga as exercise are unlike those of the Hatha yoga tradition.
The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga is a bestselling 1960 book by Swami Vishnudevananda, the founder of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres. It is an introduction to Hatha yoga, describing the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. It contributed to the incorporation of Surya Namaskar into yoga as exercise. While some of its subject matter is the traditional philosophy of yoga, its detailed photographs of Vishnudevananda performing the asanas is modern, helping to market the Sivananda yoga brand to a global audience.
Light on Yoga: Yoga Dipika is a 1966 book on the Iyengar Yoga style of modern yoga as exercise by B. K. S. Iyengar, first published in English. It describes more than 200 yoga postures or asanas, and is illustrated with some 600 monochrome photographs of Iyengar demonstrating these.
Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.
Yoga as exercise is a physical activity consisting mainly of postures, often connected by flowing sequences, sometimes accompanied by breathing exercises, and frequently ending with relaxation lying down or meditation. Yoga in this form has become familiar across the world, especially in the US and Europe. It is derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, which made use of similar postures, but it is generally simply called "yoga". Academics have given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including modern postural yoga and transnational anglophone yoga.
Vajroli mudra, the Vajroli Seal, is a practice in Hatha yoga which requires the yogin to preserve his semen, either by learning not to release it, or if released by drawing it up through his urethra from the vagina of "a woman devoted to the practice of yoga".
Mark Singleton is a scholar and practitioner of yoga. He studied yoga intensively in India, and became a qualified yoga teacher, until returning to England to study divinity and research the origins of modern postural yoga. His doctoral dissertation, which argued that posture-based forms of yoga represent a radical break from haṭha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on āsanas, was later published in book form as the widely-read Yoga Body.
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice is a 2010 book on yoga as exercise by the yoga scholar Mark Singleton. It is based on his PhD thesis, and argues that the yoga known worldwide is, in large part, a radical break from hatha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on asanas, many of them acquired in the 20th century. By the 19th century, the book explains, asanas and their ascetic practitioners were despised, and the yoga that Vivekananda brought to the West in the 1890s was asana-free. Yet, from the 1920s, an asana-based yoga emerged, with an emphasis on its health benefits, and flowing sequences (vinyasas) adapted from the gymnastics of the physical culture movement. This was encouraged by Indian nationalism, with the desire to present an image of health and strength.
Selling Yoga : from Counterculture to Pop culture is a 2015 book on the modern practice of yoga as exercise by the scholar of religion, Andrea R. Jain.
The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice is a 2016 history of the modern practice of postural yoga by the yoga scholar Elliott Goldberg. It focuses in detail on eleven pioneering figures of the transformation of yoga in the 20th century, including Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, Pant Pratinidhi, Krishnamacharya, B. K. S. Iyengar and Indra Devi.
Sexual abuse by yoga gurus is the exploitation of the position of trust occupied by a master of any branch of yoga for personal sexual pleasure. Allegations of such abuse have been made against modern yoga gurus such as Bikram Choudhury, Kausthub Desikachar, Yogi Bhajan, Amrit Desai, and K. Pattabhi Jois. There have been some criminal convictions and lawsuits for civil damages.
Early modern yoga was the form of yoga created and presented to the Western world by Madame Blavatsky, Swami Vivekananda and others in the late 19th century. It embodied the period's distaste for yoga postures (asanas) as practised by Nath yogins by not mentioning them. As such it differed markedly from the prevailing yoga as exercise developed in the 20th century by Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya, which was predominantly physical, consisting mainly or entirely of asanas.
The history of yoga in the United States begins in the 19th century, with the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; Emerson's poem "Brahma" states the Hindu philosophy behind yoga. More widespread interest in yoga can be dated to the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.
Postural yoga began in India as a variant of traditional yoga, which was a mainly meditational practice; it has spread across the world and returned to the Indian subcontinent in different forms. The ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention yoga postures, asanas, only briefly, as meditation seats. Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas alongside other techniques such as pranayama, shatkarmas, and mudras, but it was despised and almost extinct by the start of the 20th century. At that time, the revival of postural yoga was at first driven by Indian nationalism. Advocates such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda made yoga acceptable in the 1920s, treating it as a medical subject. From the 1930s, the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya developed a vigorous postural yoga, influenced by gymnastics, with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next.
The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West is a cultural history of yoga by Alistair Shearer, published by Hurst in 2020. It narrates how an ancient spiritual practice in India became a global method of exercise, often with no spiritual content, by way of diverse movements including Indian nationalism, the Theosophical Society, Swami Vivekananda's coming to the west, self-publicising western yogis, Indian muscle builders, Krishnamacharya's practice in Mysore, and pioneering teachers like B. K. S. Iyengar.
Yoga in Britain: stretching spirituality and educating Yogis is a 2019 book by Suzanne Newcombe on the history of modern yoga as exercise in Britain in the second half of the 20th century, especially in the period between 1945 and 1980. The book has been warmly received by scholars for its depth of study of the history and sociology of yoga in Britain, and its careful placing of its descriptions in specific contexts of time and place.
Modern yoga gurus are people widely acknowledged to be gurus of modern yoga in any of its forms, whether religious or not. The role implies being well-known and having a large following; in contrast to the old guru-shishya tradition, the modern guru-follower relationship is not secretive, not exclusive, and does not necessarily involve a tradition. Many such gurus, but not all, teach a form of yoga as exercise; others teach forms which are more devotional or meditational; many teach a combination. Some have been affected by scandals of various kinds.
Yoga in advertising is the use of images of modern yoga as exercise to market products of any kind, whether related to yoga or not. Goods sold in this way have included canned beer, fast food and computers.