Decolonising Yoga and Honouring its Roots

During my Master’s studies, we were set a paper that asked us to assess the extent to which it is possible to practice, teach, or study yoga in ways that do not reinforce capitalism and neocolonialism. Here’s some of my research on the subject.

The Reformation and Enlightenment movements led to the separation of religion from state in the West, and the beginning of the rise of free markets and capitalism. The combination of these two things can be seen to have facilitated a commoditisation of spirituality. In combination with postcolonial attitudes, a neocolonial agenda has emerged where Eastern forms of religion have become a smorgasbord of possible New Age products that can be repackaged and sold to meet the needs of a religiously-uncontrolled and spiritually-starved West. In this essay I look at how the forces of capitalism and neocolonialism have acted to create what we know call ‘Modern Yoga’ (De Michelis 2007), and assess if it is possible to practice, teach, or study yoga in ways that do not reinforce these values.

Modern Western yoga as a ‘rebranded “psychologised” spirituality of the self’

Carrette and King (C&K 2005: 14 )[1] refer to modern Western yoga as a ‘rebranded “psychologised” spirituality of the self’. Firstly, what do they mean by this? To define spirituality, they recall Foucault:

‘[To define spirituality], one must consider the relations of power the word sets up rather than what it means.’ (Foucault quoted in C&K 2005: 30)

Certainly, when religion and State were allied, the spirituality of the populace was as much under the power of the state as their physical bodies. The Reformation splits between Church and State were the first steps towards free personal choice over spirituality. Foucault reminded us that Europeans abandoned religion at their peril:

The sentence preceding Marx's famous phrase about religion being the opium of the people, spoke of "the spirit of a world without spirit."’ (Foucault 1997: xxii)

Free choice was leaving a void.

Many of the later Enlightenment philosophers even claimed that science could be a substitute for religion (Sorell 1991). Certainly science tells us that nature ahbors a vacuum; Carrette and King say that this aspiritual void was filled by means of a Christian ‘body–soul–spirit’  becoming instead an interior, psychological self. The ‘spiritual meaning’ of the Holy Spirit becomes ‘the inner personal meaning’ instead. The modern ‘mind-body-spirit’ concept was created (2005:35). Sociologist Paul Heelas (1996: 2) suggests that the ‘New Age’ can best be characterised as a form of ‘Self-Spirituality’ whereby the Self is sacred:

‘New Agers make the monistic assumption that the Self itself is sacred’. - Paul Heelas

This hints towards the motives that, given that the Self alone is sacred, any means of serving and improving the Self are justified. Carrette and King argue therefore that the modern post-Enlightenment world created an aspiritual void in which spirituality has been stripped of religiosity, repackaged in digestible scientific terms, and subjected to the forces of capitalism. Spirituality thus becomes a product which can serve and improve the self.

Productising Spirituality

In a capitalist market, product designers are always looking to new ways in which to create new niche products, and one such way has been found by looking eastwards. It is in the relations of power of the forces of capitalism and neocolonialism that Carrette and King place the reasons for western rebranding of yoga: they state that that power is wielded to use ‘‘spirituality’ [as] a means of colonising and commodifying Asian wisdom traditions’ (2005: 87). Jain (2014:ix) puts it succinctly:

‘Due to industrialization and the dominant and global socioeconomic forces of market capitalism, developments in the construction and practice of cultural products such as yoga have simultaneously occurred in urban areas across the globe.’ - Andrea Jain

In saying that ‘developments… have simultaneously occurred’, Jain is (at least here) downplaying any explicit actions of the West or East in making this happen however. Carrette and King are more critical of the West, saying that when such spiritual traditions are translated into a modern western context, the wisdom of diverse ancient civilisations becomes commodified to serve the eclectic interests of spiritual consumers. Historically rich and complex traditions are exploited by a selective re-packaging of the tradition, and re-selling as the ‘real thing’ (C&K 2005: 87).

For example, Taoism can be thought of as a religious movement, with a priestly lineage performing various social and ritual activities for the community. Carrette and King are particularly damning of the Barefoot Doctor’s cavalier ‘pick and mix’  (2005: 89) approach to use of Taoist principles:

‘New Agers reduce the wisdom of ‘spiritual classics’ like the Tao Te Ching [..] to a philosophy of worldly accommodationism, tailored to reduce the stress and strain of modern urban life for relatively affluent westerners.’ (C&K 2005: 92)

They are clearly of the opinion that Taoist practices have stolen, or at least appropriated without permission, by the Barefoot Doctor and others like him.

So did the West steal yoga?

Can we similarly say that yoga was stolen? In the case of the yoga community, this permission would appear to have been explicitly given. Moreover, It was members of the Indian yoga community who gifted it, beginning with what De Michelis (2005:3) calls Vivekananda’s ‘counter-missionary project’. Vivekananda travelled to the United States, representing India at the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions, and conducted hundreds of public and private lectures and classes, disseminating tenets of yoga and Advaita Vendanta philosophy in the United States (Nikhilananda 1953:1). He was followed by others such as Swami Sivandanda of Rishikesh, who created many modern postural yoga schools in the West (De Michelis 2005: 4), and BKS Iyengar, who visited the west regularly from 1954, creating schools teaching his system of yoga all over the world (Newcombe, 2013).

Can we therefore say that the West is free from culpability in this neocolonial religiocultural ‘land grab’? Looking back to Vivekananda’s motives: Vivekananda built upon prevailing western stereotypes about the technological and material superiority of the West to argue that, while the West was indeed superior in narrowly materialistic terms, it lacked what India had, namely an abundance of spirituality (C&K 2005: 40).

It would appear therefore that yoga was given to the West, but in a way that was deemed both appealing and digestible to that audience. Andrea Jain says that this is continuing to happen: her experience of prekshā dhyāna (practices she recognized as postural yoga, and meditation and relaxation techniques) with an Indian Jain guru, she was convinced, was part of ‘an attempt to establish continuity with a global marketing which popularized varieties of postural yoga reflecting dominant demands and needs.’ They aimed to attract people to their form of yoga by making it intersect with the global yoga market in this same transnational consumer culture (Jain, 2014: xi). Jain’s view is that India is playing the West at its own capitalist game, merely supplying the product to meet the West’s demand.

De Michelis raises another key consideration:

‘[In his seminal text ‘Raja Yoga’, 1896], Vivekananda carried out a major revisitation of yoga history, structures, beliefs and practices and then proceeded to operate a translation (often semantic as well as linguistic) of this ‘reformed’ yoga into something quite different from traditional Hindu approaches[.] Vivekananda’s ‘reshaping’ of the yoga tradition, [..] did not operate in a vacuum, but with Yoga. (De Michelis 2005: 3-4)

In the exportation of yoga to the West, it has been transformed, not only for the Western market, but also for the global yoga community.

What has Modern Yoga become?

So what exactly has Modern Yoga become? There are challenges with defining it, given that yoga is such a broad church and has developed over such a vast time period. For example, after her experience of Jain prekshā dhyāna in India, Andrea Jain (2014: ix) realised what a ‘transnational cultural product’ postural yoga is. So, I will focus on practices defined by De Michelis as ‘Modern Yoga’, emphasising postural practice, with limited amounts of religiophilosophical teachings, ‘mostly compatible with transnational trends tending towards secularisation’ (De Michelis, 2007: 6). De Michelis notes that a reaction to the word ‘yoga’ from a native, or adept, speaker of Indic languages, is likely to be different: the meaning is much wider and more layered than in English, including ethical behavior, and esoteric techniques and devotional practices (De Michelis, 2007: 3).

Has this transformation to what we call Modern Yoga brought any benefits? Despite this difference in interpretation of ‘yoga’ to Indic language speakers, Strauss is positive about the model of modern yoga for middle-class Indians: to Indians, the type of yoga re-oriented by innovators like Vivekananda and Sivananda suggests empowerment, using an imagined shared history to create a  progressive, selfpossessed and unifying identity. In this light, yoga can be understood as part of a methodology for living a good life. Because of its basis in bodily practice, the yoga tradition is easily linked with physical health maintenance at the level of the person. The physical development of the person was seen by many as the first, necessary step to be taken in the service of improving a larger community, whether local, national, or global. Yoga re-oriented is new theory with old practice. Experientially based, it offers the individual hope that through the practice of yoga, they might be 'freed from the constraints of “taking sides,” because yoga suggests the possibility of transcending such essentializing dichotomies as East/West, religion/science, mind/body or nation/world’ (Strauss 2002: 248-249).

Modern Indian views of Western yoga

This is only one side of the coin, unfortunately. One Indian interviewee about modern yoga expresses that:

I am worried the new found interest in yoga will manifest itself in the western version of yoga rather than the Indian version, which would not only be cultural domination but result in a diluted version of yoga being disseminated in the practice’s birthplace.’

Another is even more pessimistic:

‘We are careless and we are unaware about ourselves. We have become like robots, we have become like programmed robots. So what has happened now is that when the Westerners – the superior people, the great people, who made slaves of us for two hundred years, who ripped our backs apart, who ravaged our country – the superior people, when they accepted yoga as a means of physical fitness, we are accepting yoga as a means of physical fitness. Because they are doing it, they are superior people. THAT inferiority complex is again taking us back to our thing [yoga] ... which is OURS! This is the state of mind of people. I’m very sad, I’m very sad.’ (A&E 2012: 53-54)[2]

Similarly, Varman and Belk (2009) found that Coca Cola was superceding local Indian drinks. Some Indian nationals see the globalization and appropriation of yoga by the West (and its repositioning from traditional practice to contemporary use in such contexts as health and fitness, and even business efficiency) as another sad, sinister submission to western domination.

‘[Yoga] becomes another sign of western hegemony and, even worse, of Indian subordination. Colonial power, in a very Foucauldian way, is internalized and exercised by the dominated subjects themselves, in a format that bears the seductive mark of consumer culture’ (A&E 2012: 53-54)[2].

This is further, depressingly borne out by Jackson’s (2002:13) description of  the ‘Asian chic’, ‘urban-turban’ Western fashion zeitgeist of the end of the last millennium: for example, British Indian musician and composer Nitin Sawhney lamented the “colonial arrogance” of contemporary western attitudes to Asia, the superficial level of understanding, and the perception that Asian culture needs to be represented by white people before it becomes accessible to the rest of the world.

Who owns yoga now?

The globalization of yoga has also resulted in questions of who now owns it and can transmit it. Yoga was traditionally transmitted through a guru–śiṣya, or teacher-disciple, relationship. Newcombe (2013) describes the need in the latter half of the twentieth century to ‘institutionalise’ the teaching and qualification of yoga teachers (resulting in the creation of accreditation organizations such as the British Wheel of Yoga and Yoga Alliance Professionals). She says that while this institutionalization of contemporary yoga might ‘promote the greater good in terms of safety and the benefits of health and relaxation [,] and the lack of explicit religiosity offends neither contemporary humanistic ideology nor the ideal of a human right to individual religious freedom while learning a skill’, tensions have arisen ‘between keeping a tradition viable through institutionalization and maintaining the possibility of a transformational experience through contact with an inspirational teacher’ (Newcombe 2013: 22). These tensions were further illustrated by two recent U.S. federal district court cases involving the Bikram organisation, which drew international attention to the debate on whether yogic knowledge and practice reside in the public or private domain. The Indian government has subsequently embarked on codification of cultural traditions, including documentation of yogic knowledge, which may have repercussions for the expression of yoga in the future (Fish, 2006:1).

How should we in the West practice, teach, or study yoga?

Given all this, to what extent is it possible to practice, teach, or study yoga in ways that do not reinforce the rebranding of which Carrette and King speak? We cannot turn back the clock, or undo colonial history or the way in which yoga has changed through its interractions with the West from Vivekananda’s time onwards. We surely cannot ban yoga and turn practitioners into modern day recusants, forced to practice in yogic ‘priest-hole’ equivalents. What could be generally concluded is that modern yoga is a bad thing, but what are its positive points? According to the UN, an estimated two billion people practice yoga worldwide ‘because it works’.[3] Modern yoga practices are of benefit to the modern lifestyle: they meet physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. Some Indians love and value modern yoga (A&E 2012). India has embraced the positive points of democracy and capitalism, as did Vivekananda. Speaking as an insider (I am both a long-time practitioner and teacher of yoga), most of us in the community have a level of discomfort with the cynical packaging and marketing of yoga to be sold to consumers at a price; to an Indian audience it could be thought of like Christian church services being sold by the hour, or like Luther’s Reformation objections to the selling of absolutions by the Catholic church. It is impossible to market a product without a demand though, and I would argue that that, rather than being a part of a cynical capitalist exercise, modern yoga sells because it works and meets genuine needs.

Nonetheless, it is not possible to please everyone, and some are offended by what they see as appropriation and stealing:

‘I don’t think the West can add value to it [yoga]. Their objective is to only get the benefit, reap the benefit, but not to add value to it. Indians should be very careful and try to learn from the genuine source. Some Gurujis are coming from America to teach yoga in India. We must resist it.’ (A&E 2012:53)

This is an ‘easy win’: we must make efforts to ensure our own development and education, and act responsibly and sensitively to be sure to not presume to become an expert and talk down to or teach local Indian devotees.

Is there a ‘distinct lack of compassion’ (C&K 2005:114) in modern yoga? I do not think so. There is a large movement now within the teaching community towards integrating the yama and the niyama (ethical guidelines) into our teaching and life (for example Farhi 2006). There are a wide number of yoga activism organisations that are also living the ethical guidelines and applying them in charitable works: for example Off The Mat Into The World (‘Training leaders worldwide in social change’’), Yoga Gives Back (‘To mobilise the global yoga community’), and Our Mala (‘Socially conscious yoga for asylum-seekers and refugees’).

Conclusions

What of the future? Is it possible for us in the West to navigate the continuing practice and transmission of yoga in a way that does not look crass, trivialising and fetishizing (like Madonna’s unknowing appropriation of a priest’s insignia at MTV awards)? Is it possible to steer a path in teaching and practicing yoga which is both relevant to the society in which we live, while staying true to the core beliefs of yoga? Jackson suggests that our modern, multicultural society is full of ambiguity, that ‘ethnic authenticity’ is no longer a useful guide to the complexities of cultural borrowing; for example, Indian food is eaten widely in the UK, but has changed from that eaten in India. Rather, we need to pursue a course of multiculturalism. (Jackson, 2002:13-14)

Camus said that looking at the world though a master-slave relationship has held back humankind’s progress; there is a definite need to move away from these dichotomies. Strauss positively suggests that the practice of yoga in modern India offers the individual hope through the possibility of transcending East/West, religion/science, mind/body and nation/world polarities, by simultaneously expressing the East’s westernization and the West’s easternization.

Askegaard and Eckhard end on a pleasingly positive note, saying that:

‘[We should] fundamentally [..] question any classification of the re-appropriation of yoga in India as being either an expression of (post-)colonial domination or an anti-colonialist resistance. If anything, it seems to work as a transformative compromise between various cultural forms.’

One good thing about yoga in the West is that it introduces potentially closed-minded Westerners to aspects of other cultures that may be considered superior to their own, breaking down cultural barriers and building bridges across the world; as Jon Donne said, ‘No man is an island’. And that has to be a good thing.

[1] Carrette and King

[2] Askegaard and Eckhardt

[3] UN News 21 June 2016 https://news.un.org/en/audio/2016/06/614172

References

Askegaard, S and GM Eckhardt (2012) ‘Glocal yoga: Re-appropriation in the Indian consumptionscape’, Marketing Theory 12; 1; pp. 45-60.

Carrette, Jeremy and Richard King (2005) ‘A Brief History of Spirituality’ and ‘Spirituality and the Privatisation of Asian Wisdom Traditions’ in Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. New York and London: Routledge.

De Michelis, Elizabeth (2005) A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism. London: Continuum.

De Michelis, Elizabeth (2007) ‘A Preliminary Survey of Modern Yoga Studies’, Asian Medicine, 3(1), 1–19.

Farhi, Donna (2006) Teaching Yoga: Ethics and the Teacher-student Relationship, Rodmell Press.

Fish, Allison (2006) ‘The commodification and exchange of knowledge in the case of transnational commercial yoga’, International Journal of Cultural Property, 13: 2, pp.189-206.

Foucault, Michel (1997, trs.). “The Ethics of the Concern of Self as Practice of Freedom.” In: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. by Paul Rabinow. Allen Lane, Penguin Press. 

Heelas, Paul (1996) The New Age Movement. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Jain, Andrea (2014) Selling Yoga: From Counterculture To Pop Culture, Oxford University Press.

Jackson, P. (2002) ‘Commercial cultures: Transcending the cultural and the economic’, Progress in Human Geography, 26(1), pp. 3–18. doi: 10.1191/0309132502ph254xx.

Newcombe, Suzanne. (2013) ‘The Institutionalization of the Yoga Tradition: “Gurus” B. K. S. Iyengar and Yogini Sunita in Britain’, Gurus of Modern Yoga, 147–66. doi:10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780199938704.003.0008.

Nikhilananda, Swami (1953), Vivekananda: A Biography, New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center.

Strauss, Sarah (2002) ‘"Adapt, adjust, accommodate": The production of yoga in a transnational World’, History and Anthropology, 13:3, 231-251, doi: 10.1080/0275720022000025556

Sorell, Tom (1991) Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science, New York: Routledge.

Varman Rohit, & Belk, Russell W (2009) ‘Nationalism and Ideology in an Anticonsumption Movement’, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 36, Issue 4, 686-700. doi:10.1086/600486

Donna GerrardComment