Yoga in the West
Accused of appropriation — is Yoga in the West a borrowed profundity or a shallow fad?
Yoga in the modern west is a difficult phenomenon to pin down. What to say about a practice that on one hand claims inheritance to a tradition stretching back to the Vedic traditions of ancient India, and on the other hand exists in the world of Gymshark, Crossfit, Instagram and YouTube influencers? Trying to define it as one thing is almost impossible — given the banality or superficiality of so many of it’s appropriations, can we really describe yoga in it’s modern iterations as religious or spiritual? But given it’s tradition and connection to Eastern religious ideas, it’s deeper connection to many people as so much more than just dynamic movement or relaxation, can we really leave it in the category of exercise? What does this tell us about how we relate to the spiritual, the divine or the transcendent?
Yoga is a broad and popular activity. The ‘Yoga’ subreddit has a million members, ‘Yoga with Adriene’, probably the most popular mainstream yoga youtuber has 11.4 million followers at the time of writing, her most popular video 47 million views. Put ‘Yoga’ into youtube and you’ll get a plethora of videos from clearly sexually suggestive clickbait, to fitness videos, to TED talks about the health benefits of yoga. Even the NHS in England has…
