The Problem with Yoga in the West
Most Western yoga students don’t know that yoga is the work of men, incredible men with an unquenchable thirst to understand life, death, and the cosmos.
Let’s go to the beginning. Five thousand years ago, Maharishi Patanjali compounded thousands of years of philosophy into what we now call the Yoga Sutras; However, Patanjali didn’t discover yoga. He only wrote about it. The word ‘yoga’ derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Yuj’, which translates to ‘join, unite, attach, connect, and add’ or ‘to yoke, or harness’ depending on the context. The word ‘Yuj’ appears in the Vedic text Rigveda (1500–1000 BCE), one of the oldest, Holy texts in history.
In the United States, we tend to use ‘yoga’ to encompass an extensive amount of historic-time and theology. However, yoga as a physical practice is only a small (and important) branch on a vast philosophical tree.
Sacred Yogis who earned their titles by mastering each branch on the expansive yogic tree were men. Their students were men, and in an effort not to minimize the cultural impact that the caste system had on economic accessibility in India, I will only briefly mention that the effect has echoed through centuries and is felt today. Check out this article by Yoga International to learn more about economic gatekeeping and yoga history.
So we can summarize that those who could access yoga philosophy were wealthy men with high social standings.
Yoga became wrapped up in elitism and what we know from our current society is that corruption often follows power. Those with the loudest, most influential voices were not always living Vedic philosophy. Sometimes they were. For example, we have incredible spiritual leaders like Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, B K S Iyengar, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who shaped much of what we know yoga to be today.
At the beginning of the 19th-century, yoga came to the West by yogis on an errand for their gurus in India. Swami Vivekananda translated sacred texts from Sanskrit into English and began practicing yoga throughout the United States, sparking more interest and paving the way for other Swami’s to bring the practice abroad. During this time, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya developed postural yoga into a sequenced practice. He combined pranayama and meditation with asana, created methods for safely entering and exiting postures, and warm-up sequences to prepare the body for advanced poses. He was also a champion of inversions like headstand and shoulder stand. For these reasons, Krishnamacharya is often referred to as the ‘father of modern yoga.’
In 1919, Shri Yogendra partnered with Western doctors to research the physical benefits of yoga, seeking to validate yoga as a lifestyle and increase its popularity. But it was Shri Yogendra’s wife, Shrimati Sita Devi Yogendra, who would finally open the practice up to women.
If it weren’t for the U.S. ban on immigrants in the 1920s, perhaps there would have been an increased effort to include Western women in yoga. Maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long to become a widespread practice. Still, all Indian yogis were forced to return to India, which further separated Western yoga students from their source of knowledge.
Fast forward to 1950, a decade before Richard Hittleman brought yoga to television, and we finally meet another popular female yoga teacher. Indra Devi moved to Los Angeles in 1947. Devi was very influential in the L.A. yoga sphere. She was well-connected and became a yoga teacher to celebrities.
As a teen and through her twenties, Devi studied yoga in India. Her background as a dancer made asana (postures) easily accessible to her. Her wealth of knowledge and her able body made her stand out in L.A. Actresses like Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and even Elizabeth Arden were among her star-studded students. Indian men were no longer the only face of yoga, at least not in L.A.
Yoga in the 1970s
By 1970, yoga was everywhere. BKS Iyengar established a presence in front of Western audiences on television in the U.K. and U.S.A.. He founded Iyengar yoga as a method of teaching that would make yoga accessible to everybody. He also encouraged using props for proper alignment, where pain and yoga were once hand in hand. Iyengar was one of the most influential yogis of the 21st century.
The ’70s saw a surge in female yoga teachers with the help of pop culture and a desire to return to more holistic living brought about by hippies and other big-love movements. Lilias Folan was the first televised female yoga teacher with her PBS show Lilias, Yoga, & You, which continued into the early 1990s. While the media were emphasizing the physical side of yoga (this is the Jane Fonda era of televised workouts), yoga teachers of this time often expressed their desire to better the lives of their students not just through postures but through enlightenment.
The 1970s increased the popularity of yoga in the West and made it highly accessible through television. As a result, more yoga studios were popping up, especially in California, where celebrities and the elite had more opportunities to learn from Indian yoga gurus and others who studied under notable yogis like Pattabhi Jois, founder of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Center in Mysore.
The Problem with Bikram
During this era, we begin to see a shift in Western yoga. In the ’80s and ’90s, many Western yoga students traveled to India to learn from gurus. Yoga had become a co-ed sport until this point, but this would change drastically as more women, especially with dance or gymnast backgrounds, took a particular interest in the strenuous and challenging approach to Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga yoga.
Bikram Choudhary hit the L.A. scene in the mid-1970s. An Indian-born American, Choudhary studied under B.C. Ghosh, an Indian bodybuilder, and Hatha yogi.
The L.A. elite was drawn to Choudhary, especially his emphasis on yoga as a full-body exercise. By 1984, Bikram Yoga was a movement. His 90-minute classes were held at 105 degrees Fahrenheit and 40% humidity. His asana sequence was 26 poses based on B.C. Ghosh’s philosophy.
Choudhary attracted a cult-like following. His classes were expensive, star-studded, and demanding. Choudhary abused the guru-pupil relationship by leading his classes with cult-like authority. His students had to attend each class to receive special attention, recognition, and help to grow their practice.
Women primarily attended Bikram Choudhary’s classes. The arduous nature of his classes meant that most of his students were former athletes, dancers, and gymnasts. Bikram yoga was not for the faint of heart or the beginner. The way Choudhary led his classes made them entirely inaccessible for most people, both financially and physically.
But Bikram Choudhary wasn’t losing students. On the contrary, his method was growing, and by the 90s, students worldwide were lining up to learn from him.
The 2019 Netlfix documentary Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator details the experience of men and women who studied under Choudhary and reports allegations of financial, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of Bikram Choudhary. Choudhary fled to Mexico in 2017, and his enterprise has decreased in popularity. As a result, Bikram yoga studios have opted to change their name and distance themselves from Choudhary in light of recent allegations spanning over three decades.
Gatekeeping Through Excellence
The reign of Bikram changed the face of yoga in the West, and coupled with the popularity of ashtanga shalas in Mysore, yoga continued to escalate in inaccessibility.
B.C. Ghosh may not receive enough credit for his influence on modern yoga. Being a bodybuilder and guru of Hatha, Ghosh’s emphasis on physique inspired Bikram to lead yoga-fitness-based classes. Western yoga students became uninterested in unheated vinyasa with longer meditations and pranayama. Instead, they wanted to combine all the limbs of yoga into one fitness-based class to get the most out of their time in the studio.
Although Bikram was all the craze and his method remains a large part of the Western yoga repertoire, popular American yoga teachers have established practices with more balance and adherence to all eight limbs of yoga. For example, Karina Ayn Mirsky said,
“My approach to teaching is holistic and individualized. It draws from my experience as a woman; massage therapist; cancer survivor; and student of psychology, yoga, Tantra, and Ayurveda. I study the nature of minds and bodies as they fluctuate with the time of day, season, phases of life”.
Mirsky teaches at her Michigan-based studio, Sangha Yoga. Likewise, Kripalu yoga teacher Monique Schubert writes,
“I teach the basics because I want everyone to have the real tools they need to help themselves. Like all the yogic scriptures say, the external teacher awakens the inner teacher.”
Today, most yoga teachers are not trained by masters and gurus. The run-of-the-mill teacher doesn’t study in India, and even those who do are populated out of a money-making machine. A true yoga teacher is first and always a student on a never-ending quest for knowledge.
Unfortunately, Westernized yoga is still thriving off of a caste-like system. For example, yoga studios are often more expensive than other fitness centers. Teacher training costs skyrocketed after the ‘80’s when Bikram students paid upwards of $10,000 to train with Choudhary, and they continue to rise.
The Statistics:
- The global yoga market size is forecast to reach $66.2 billion by 2027 and is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 9.6% from 2021 to 2027. (AP News, 2020)
- On average, people who practice yoga in the US spend around $90 per month, which translates to $62,640 during their lifetime. (Eventbrite, 2019)
The Take-Away
Yoga in the West is based chiefly on the third limb, asana. But if we go back to the beginning of this article and reconsider the Sanskrit word ‘yuj’ (to join, unite, or connect), we understand that yoga connects with the eighth limb, samadhi. Therefore, to obtain samadhi (harmony, balance, and wholeness), we need to practice all eight limbs of yoga. Not only 3, 4, and 7. We need it all.
Yoga studios catering to fitness consumers could be why many yoga students are trading in their studio memberships for online yoga content. When the pandemic hit, people locked down and turned to yoga. The data says:
- At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, yoga was one of the most popular topics on Instagram across the globe. In March 2020, Instagram posts about yoga grew by 68%, beating out topics like news and politics (46%), cooking (33%), recipes (31%), and health (28%). (HypeAuditor, 2020)
- Demand for yoga equipment grew by 154% during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Research and Markets, 2020)
- According to a survey, 58% of students and 73% of teachers report that they have a better perception of online yoga now than they did before the pandemic. (Rawlings & Pollen, 2020)
- Post-pandemic, 60% of students indicated a preference for recorded classes while only 36% of teachers said they preferred this format. (Rawlings &Pollen, 2020)
Join me next week to discuss the rise of at-home yoga and why this is a good thing for the yoga industry and culture.
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