Is American Yoga Racist?

[Second Summer]

It was late summer, and the young white middle-class women that run the Power of Om Yoga Studio in idyllic Santa Barbara, CA were bored. Suddenly, they struck upon a novel idea. Let’s invite our friends and neighbors to dress up like “Black people.” And not just any Black people, but Black people from the “ghetto,” a place, more imagined than real, perhaps, given the town’s – and their own — demographics. So, up went a giant poster inviting local resident to attend the studio’s first-ever “Ghetto-Fabulous” yoga session. They thought it would be good simple fun.

[...]

And that’s just it: yoga, over time, seems to be fostering a climate of official tolerance toward the world it inhabits that easily shades into political apathy — and moral relativism. Take almost any controversial topic, and raise it among yogis, and you will find a healthy core of opinion suggesting that the best opinion is to not have any opinion at all. For some yogis, social and political obliviousness is a deeply-held spiritual principle; for others, it’s simply an existential one: they come to yoga, they say, to “forget about the world” for an hour, or an entire day. They would rather not have to deal with the kinds of divisive political controversies that so often distract and agitate them outside the hermetically sealed bliss of their yoga studios.

[...]

Full article: Is American Yoga Racist? (By Stewart J. Lawrence on AlterNet, October 30, 2013)

An interesting read. As a yoga practicioner in the past, I think it's sad if yoga has become a "white middle-class woman" activity.

 

[Amy SF]

It's one thing to go to a yoga class and put your mind on hold for an hour to achieve a measure of peace and relaxation. It's another to indulge in the kind of racist activity mentioned at the start of the article, or to ignore or dismiss it.

It's also ironic that, as yoga has become so mainstream in American society that it can become completely secularized, or even Christianized (I've read about Christian yoga classes held in churches where instructors tell participants to seek peace with Jesus), attempts to introduce yoga in public schools (mainly elementary and middle schools) have been protested and shot down because yoga supposedly promotes religion (i.e. any religion that's not Christianity).

Since I'm not a yoga practitioner myself, I can't really comment on the validity of the article, but I do think it's sad that something like yoga has been so co-opted by American capitalism.

 

[Freesia]

I think that something becomes racist or appropriated when it is performed in the spirit in which it was not intended, ie exploited via capitalism, and has the original traditions and intentions stripped away and becomes a big factory churning out stretchy yoga clothes and yoga franchises and throwaway mission statements.

But if this is not the case and things are traditionally done, I dont see anything wrong with Westerners participating in Eastern religious practises, in fact I think the West needs more, and not less of the real beneficial philosophy that comes from Indian religion, and Buddhism.

If people in a yoga class are thinking about the race of people in their community (and dressing up in creepy ways), it is a sign that the tenets of Buddhism have not been taught to them in the classes, as there is no real tolerance for racism in Eastern religions because a racist opinion is seen as an "attachment" or an expression of ego.

 

[Second Summer]

I don't mind if yoga in the West is modified to better fit with the times. I think that's only a healthy development. There are elements in traditional yoga which sound quite far out to educated people in the modern era.

But I do think it's a problem if yoga becomes an activity associated with the values of white middle-class women who only want to be "slim, calm and sexy". And I do think it's a problem if the development of yoga in the West is shaped by "yoga corporations" only interested in profit.