Over Christmas break I attended a class at CorePower yoga. Acoustic covers of pop songs were playing softly in the background as the teacher read us inspirational quotes to ‘guide our practice.’ “We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle” - Marilyn Monroe. Her sincere belief that a Marilyn Monroe quote would aid us in meditation made me both giggle under my breath and feel extremely uncomfortable. I won’t lie, I’ve been to CorePower plenty of times. I’ve repeatedly assured people after they winced at the name, “It’s just a good workout!” But watching a bunch of people wearing one hundred dollar leggings nod along to quotes from white movie stars in plank position then bow and say ‘namaste’ at the end was just so blatantly commercialized that I could never make myself go back.
The Westernization of yoga is one example of a larger problem: the appropriation of South Asian religion in the the United States. Whether it’s Hare Krishna, mandala tattoos, tapestries of Hindu gods, or “festival fashion,” these modern trends are just the continuation of white people’s historical obsession with commercialized Indian spirituality.
This obsession had deep roots. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, when a large Bengali community was forming in New Orleans, some peddlers made money taking advantage of white Americans stereotypes about Indians to sell ‘exotic goods,’ like silks and rugs. They would play up their accents, replicate the servility of a colonial subject, and dressed in the way they knew would validate the ideas American associated with India and they became part of the local tourist industry. In the late 19th century Mardi Gras parades included floats called “Hindoo Heavens” or “The Light of Asia” that were spectacular renditions of exotic ideas about Indian people and religions, portraying Hindu and Buddhist customs with exotic dancers, brilliant colors and reenactments of Hindu legends. Throughout the 20th century Western interest in Indian religion only grew, and by the 1960s the Hare Krishna movement made actual practice of Hinduism the new fad. Despite the traditional Hindu community’s rejection of the movement, the movement still has 560 million members worldwide. Many attribute their success on their commercial appeal to Westerners by painting Indian religion as something fashionable.
The commercial explosion of yoga is the perfect example of Indian religion as a fad in the Western world. When yoga first began gaining popularity in the early 70’s it was a niche activity of devoted new-agers, but by 2013 it was a $27 billion industry. Yoga’s journey from ancient spiritual practice to premium lifestyle, complete with designer yogawear, mats, luxury retreats and $100-a-day juice cleanses, has cheapened the practice to ignore its religious context. The popularly practiced form of yoga is actually just one of the eight traditional limbs of yoga known as asana, or the physical practice. The industry’s sole emphasis on asana means that yoga studios can train teachers to methodically lead a group through physical poses without providing them with any information about yoga’s religious framework, essentially stripping the practice of its spiritual intentions and benefits. Studios like CorePower and other chain companies charge aspiring yoga teachers hundreds of dollars for accelerated yoga teacher certifications in which they spend a few weeks memorizing the script for all of their regularly offered classes, which churns out ignorant teachers, like my Marylin-Monroe-quoting lovely. I bet she's also worn a bindi to a music festival and had a tapestry of Ganesha in her dorm room.
