Yoga and cultural appropriation

Yoga is an ancient spiritual practice from India, whose goal was to unite the human spirit with the divine. The branch of yoga that makes use of physical postures is Haṭha yoga, developed from the 11th century onwards. It seeks to use physical techniques to preserve and channel a vital force or energy. It had goals including the attainment of magical powers, immortality, and spiritual liberation. Modern yoga as exercise makes use of physical postures as Haṭha yoga did, but its goals are good health, reduced stress, and physical flexibility. Cultural appropriation is defined as the "inappropriate or unacknowledged" adoption of elements of a culture by people from a different culture. The concept is open to debate. == Appropriating yoga ==

The scholar of religion Andrea Jain writes in her book Selling Yoga that "advocates of the Hindu origins position" She states that such claims "cannot stand serious historical scrutiny", She proposes a programme "on how we can work together to restore yoga and preserve its roots in ways to benefit everyone." The Guardian reports that yoga teachers in India feel that western yoga has appropriated their culture, quoting Vikram Jeet Singh of Goa as saying that "his own culture [had been] wiped out and suppressed by colonisation." Yoga teachers of South Asian heritage like Nikita Desai have stated that yoga has been "colonised" The Swedish yoga teacher Rachel Brathen, author of the bestselling 2015 book Yoga Girl, responding to comments on her website, notes that whereas the British Raj banned yoga in India, it is now ubiquitous in the western world, and asks whether it is cultural appropriation to practice and to teach yoga "as a white or non-Hindu". == Analysis ==

view, held by some practitioners of modern yoga, is that it embodies a pure and universal spirituality, which cannot be corrupted. Further, yoga in India has declined in its traditional form, and has taken on aspects of its modern western form, complicating the discussion and implying that many people in India have accepted a more western view of yoga. has adopted elements of modern yoga from the western world, implying a cultural exchange rather than a one-way appropriation. The first-generation Indian American yoga researcher and teacher, Rina Deshpande, writes in Yoga Journal that people from India can feel excluded if Indian words and symbols are forbidden in an attempt to make yoga classes more inclusive. Deshpande notes that it is ironic that yoga is now "often marketed by affluent Westerners to affluent Westerners—and Indians, ironically, are marginally represented, if at all." The scholar of postcolonial studies Rumya S. Putcha states that the term "cultural appropriation" in itself "is a way of diluting the fact that we're talking about racism and European colonialism." In her view, the effect is conveniently to divert attention to how one can "show cultural appreciation appropriately", when the real issue is "the role of power and the legacies of imperialism." == Desired result ==

in bed' shirt with ill intentions", though in her view that does not make it unproblematic. Gandhi and Wolff comment that one reason for yoga's popularity was that "it reinforced European and Euro-American ideas of India. Early Indian yoga missionaries played on the orientalist construction of the 'west' as progressive and superior and the 'east' as spiritual but inferior. Yoga became — and remains — a practice which allows western practitioners to experience the idea of another culture while focusing on the self." == See also ==