Westernization and Cultural Appropriation in Yoga
How did a practice that didn’t originate in western countries become overwhelmingly white?
Picture this: a thin, white, able-bodied woman wearing leggings and a sports bra, hands together at the heart center, eyes closed. That’s the face of yoga in the western mainstream.
How did a practice that didn’t originate in western countries become overwhelmingly white? How does cultural appropriation show up in western yoga?
Westernization of yoga
Yoga originated in Ancient India and while its origins aren’t clear, it is known that the first text mentioning yoga dates back 5,000 years ago. And although the history of yoga dates back thousands of years, the practice was introduced in western countries in the late 19th century by Swami Vivekananda, an Indian Hindu monk, and yoga guru.
Vivekananda wasn’t the only one to introduce yoga to western countries. In 1920 Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian Hindu monk and yogi talked about yoga at a conference in Boston. In 1947, Theos Bernard, a Californian, published a book called Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience after receiving teachings in India.
Richard Hittleman, an American yoga teacher, was the first to teach yoga in a nonreligious way into the American mainstream in 1961. Indian yoga teacher BKS Iyengar introduced yoga through various appearances on TV demonstrating his flexibility. He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Times magazine in 2004.
After his dad’s passing in 1989, T.K.V. Desikachar continued his father’s legacy by continuing the teaching of hatha yoga throughout the world.
In 1965, the abolition of the American quota on Indian immigration opened the door to yoga in the western world.
In 2021, when you look up ‘yoga’ in google images, pictures of thin white women make up the majority. Yoga Journal and Yoga Magazine, two popular yoga magazines are not exceptions. Yoga teachers on YouTube are also predominantly thin and white.
Finally, while a few Indian monks originally introduced yoga in the west, it is not often we see a yogi of South Asian descent in the mainstream.
Cultural appropriation
Yoga is part of a heritage and a culture. In the west, we took the poses and some of the spiritual practices. Then, we stripped it of its heritage, and we made it our own. It’s not surprising when we consider that 77% of yoga teachers are white in the United States. How can the culture originating from yoga prevail if those who teach white people are also white people?
In the video We are not Exotic, We are Exhausted: A Film on Yoga, Race, Being Desi and Diasporic, South Asian American youth were asked to share experiences of exotification using yoga and spirituality. One of the youth said: “It’s cultural appropriation with white females, even white males, doing yoga, but they don’t even know why they are doing yoga. It’s cultural appropriation because of the fact that it can be turned into a billion-dollar industry with these clothes and mats. Yoga isn’t about buying the right things and doing poses. Yeah, they say it’s about reaching, going inside of you to find something spectacular, to find your soul or something. But I don’t think they understand that yoga and finding your soul runs deeper than that.”
And while teaching and practicing yoga as a white person is culturally appropriating, it isn’t to say that white people who practice yoga are purposely creating harm. As Ibram X. Kendi, writer and scholar said: “[ ] the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.”
From an economic lens, yoga in the west has become an industry, catering to affluent white people. An industry that in the United States alone is worth $9 billion dollars. Interestingly, when you look at the online yoga trends in the US using Google Trends, two related topics or questions come up the most: yoga with Adriene and goat yoga. The former is the biggest yoga channel on YouTube with 10.2M subscribers. It comes as no surprise that the biggest yoga YouTube channels are predominantly white. Americans aren’t googling the origins of yoga and the culture behind the practice, they’re googling (and buying) westernized versions of yoga.
What does this mean?
Does that mean that there should be no white yoga teacher? Does this mean white people shouldn’t practice yoga?
Some (white) yogis stopped teaching yoga because they didn’t want to contribute to the colonization of yoga and add to the racism that comes with appropriating a heritage and culture. In the 1700s and 1900s, the European colonizers went to India, ridiculed yoga, and even banned the Eastern practice. The reason yoga seems more palatable to Westerners in the 21st century is that it is now marketed to attract affluent Westerners. Westerners are now practicing yoga freely when their ancestors once banned the practice.
Julia Gibran, a yoga teacher of Indian descent in Toronto was asked if yoga was cultural appropriation by Vice journalist Sarah Ratchford and said, “of course it is. But Western yogis can reduce the harm of their behavior by being aware of the roots of the practice, and by giving credit where credit is due.”
Rina Deshpande, a first-generation Indian-American yoga and mindfulness researcher encourages Western yoga companies and consumers to ask themselves some questions and educate themselves on the matter.
Learn about yoga, where it comes from, its origins, its heritage, the lifelong spiritual practice. Ask questions. Who are you learning and buying yoga from? Who benefits from the westernization of yoga? Who is affected by it? What systems flourish because of it? What part do you play in that system?
Then, we (Westerners) can reduce the harm we may be indirectly causing.
