*Breathes out*
I actually am pretty terrible at yoga.
But I grew up watching my not-blood uncle Ranjit practicing yoga in his home every day.
And let me tell you, it didn’t look like this.
“The goats love this more than the people do.
The goats are having a lot more fun, between you and I.”
Yoga today is a massive industry in the United States– and it’s a major part of leading a
healthy lifestyle for millions of Americans. And a fashion style for lots of others.
And while we may all know that “Om” and “Namaste” and maybe even “Chakra” are words somehow related
to yoga, the actual history of how yoga came to the United States, spread across the world
and gave birth to millions wearing Lululemon isn’t as well known.
Hey guys, I’m Sana. And today I’m gonna explore the history of yoga in the United States and ask your favorite question:
Are our yoga classes cultural appropriation, appreciation...
or just late-stage capitalism?
Yoga is a massive industry in the United States.
One study found that Americans spend $16 billion a year on clothing, equipment, classes and accessories.
It's also reported that over 36 million, or 15%, of Americans had done their downward dog
at some point in the last six months. Over the course of their lives, that number increases to 28% of Americans.
And it’s also everywhere in pop culture.
“Unless you’re planning to move those hands down, get them off me.”
“Baby bend over, baby bend over - lemme see you do that yoga.”
“I’m so good at yogaaaa”
So how did a South Asian spiritual practice dating back thousands of years even get to America?
Well, say hello to Swami Vivekananda—the man credited for introducing yoga to Americans.
Vivekananda came to Chicago in 1893 to speak at the first-ever Parliament of Religions conference,
a meeting of faith leaders from around the world that was part of the Chicago World’s Fair.
He’s credited for having introduced Hindu spirituality to Americans through a series of speeches he gave at the conference.
Dr. Andrea Jain, who focuses on the popularization of yoga around the world, says that
while Vivekananda made yoga better known in the United States, there were others who were already dabbling in it before him.
Many Americans appropriated yoga and practiced it as a part of their spiritual traditions long before that.
They appropriated, of course, modern versions of yoga, yoga that they thought were non-dogmatic
and oftentimes removed from religious institutions.
And Vivekananda wasn’t even the guy who popularized the kind of yoga we do today in classes.
B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois and T.K.V. Desikachar are credited for being the founding fathers of modern yoga.
All three were students of perhaps the most influential yoga teacher, Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.
Among Krishnamacharya’s most influential students was Indra Devi.
Indra Devi was key in really teaching yoga in a way that distanced it from those stereotypes of Hinduism that many Americans deemed threatening,
especially specific Hindu beliefs that might be perceived as a threat to the American religious identities.
Indra Devi – whose real name was Eugenie Peterson – was a Russian actress who
brought yoga with her to Los Angeles in 1947, where it attracted the attention of actors interested in fitness and breathing techniques.
I want to mention here that from the 1880s into the early 1900s, in response to fear of incoming immigrants,
the U.S. government enacted a series of immigration laws that barred or limited immigration from Asia.
And yoga, in particular, was treated as a “strange cult” that was “stealing” young white women.
And it’s following this period that we see Indra Devi, a white woman, teach yoga.
Now, while there were many Westerners traveling to India for access to knowledge of yoga and Hindu spirituality,
it’s only after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that we see yoga become a part of the American counterculture of the 1960s.
Hindu spirituality, or “spirituality from the East,” was big.
And there were many swamis who were able to immigrate to the United States and open up centers and develop the practice.
And many young Americans in search of spiritual fulfillment continued to travel to India.
Jain notes, in our conversation, that Hindu spirituality was seen as an outright rejection of the rigidity of the church.
Most of them were Protestant Christians, and they were rejecting the Church and instead turning to what they considered to be radically alternative.
In the ’70s and ’80s, the growth of yoga slowed down a bit–
and that lack of growth coincided with a national conservative movement and its backlash against counterculture.
But then the ’90s came and there was also a boom in corporatized everything.
Including yoga.
The 90s is when you start to see yoga represented in the mainstream as just another consumer product
that one could buy. Just like an aerobics class, one could choose to go attend a yoga class.
And part of that mainstreaming was yoga’s popularity among celebrities
like Sting, Raquel Welch, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and actress slash fitness "guru" Jane Fonda.
Be conscious of how relaxed you feel.
Carry this feeling with you.
One of the most popular yoga books of the early 2000s, by the way, was by supermodel Christy Turlington,
who was also featured on Time magazine’s cover for a story on the “Science of Yoga.”
Soon, the instructors to the stars, like Baron Baptiste and Rodney Yee, became more mainstream celebrities themselves.
So, back to that pesky question:
Is practicing yoga, if you’re not a part of Hindu or even South Asian culture, actually a form of cultural appropriation? Or is it appreciation?
I actually got to sit down with badass Bay Area artist Chiraag Bhakta, who in 2014 put
together an exhibit at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum called #WhitePeopleDoingYoga.
Bhakta’s exhibit looked at who got the face time in marketing and teaching yoga in the United States and
—spoiler—it wasn’t Indians.
My practice revolves around, focuses on, identity politics. I started coming across grassroots-level meditation and yoga ephemera from like books,
records, advertisements from the 50s to the 80s, and I was kind of curious on how yoga was being branded and marketed to the Western audience.
I don't have the answers, and I think that's why I created the piece, to like really just explore that
and to see what conversations come out of it.
Jain is also quick to point out that the appropriation conversation shouldn’t be so simplified—
that yoga’s own history in South Asia isn’t linear.
We don't want to perpetuate some kind of very simple narrative that suggests that
there is this authentic, original tradition
called 'Yoga' that existed in South Asia that was then appropriated.
Yoga is really culturally South Asian. It doesn't belong to this religion or that.
A lot of the problem also, for Jain, comes down to how yoga is sold.
There are many countless cases in which entrepreneurs and corporations sell yoga products and services and do so in a way that is driven towards making a profit without
benefiting the conduits of yoga in South Asia.
That said, to just reduce the yoga industry to mere commercialization or commodification is just too
simple, because among many yoga practitioners, you have an interest in learning about that history.
But despite how some practitioners may have the knowledge about yoga’s history and the power dynamics at play,
the commercialization has nevertheless whitewashed the practice.
In a two-year archival study of Yoga Journal magazine, there was never a South Asian person
on the cover and less than 1% of content contributors were South Asian.
And it’s not really surprising when yoga, for the most part of its history, has been marketed to white, wealthy Americans.
I think it's an extension of colonialism in a lot of ways;
of mining the lands and the cultures and then using those materials for your own financial benefit.
Chiraag also pointed out how the founder of Lululemon, the leading name in Yoga apparel, actually made a comment in 2004,
in an interview, about how he chose the name for the company because it was “funny” to hear the Japanese try to pronounce it.
White male, like, making fun of one Asian culture, mining the sh*t out of another culture,
and just sitting on billions of money. And you start seeing this pattern of like, oh yeah, that sounds familiar.
And Jain notes that while many yoga consumers may actually be searching for something spiritual,
the yoga industry functions on, well, a sort of exoticization of that spirituality.
Even though we oftentimes think of commercial yoga as non-spiritual or non-religious or simply
fitness or simply commodities, it's a lot more complicated, because many of the reasons behind why consumers choose yoga
are tied to Orientalist stereotypes.
So when entrepreneurs then sell these products, they are capitalizing off of those stereotypes.
This whole conversation on appropriation and authenticity takes an uncomfortable turn when we look at how yoga has
been weaponized in India under the leadership of Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist BJP party.
They’ve been trying to reclaim yoga as a Hindu tradition as a way to assert Hindu identity
in a multi-religious country, where Muslims have come under violent threat.
So, how should we approach our yoga classes?
Is it time to drop the sun salutations and incredibly comfortable pants? Well, I’ll leave that to Bhakta.
I guess what I want people to take away is to just really stop and think about
what they're stepping on, and, you know, what they're participating in,
when going to a yoga class or buying those yoga pants.