Over the past few years, I have opened my yoga teacher training programs with a lengthy discussion about cultural appropriation and yoga. The Brittanica website defines cultural appropriation in the following way: Cultural appropriation takes place when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way (https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-cultural-appropriation). In the context of yoga, cultural appropriation might include engaging with the practices of yoga in ways that are not aligned with its intended purpose, and/or not recognizing and respecting yoga’s cultural roots.

It isn’t a very comfortable topic for conversation. It is easy to equate yoga with a feel-good situation, or as a form of entertainment that makes us forget about all our troubles. But in truth, that isn’t the true purpose of the work we do in yoga. Feeling good is certainly a nice side benefit of yoga, and there is great value in feeling good and comfortable in our bodies and experiencing ease in our minds. 

But these are not the true or original intentions of yoga. 

And don’t you agree that the situations in your life that offer the most growth, insight, and opportunity are often the uncomfortable ones?

It is important to remember that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution when addressing cultural appropriation. This narrow thinking gets drilled into our minds from an early age. What feels appropriate to one group of yoga practitioners, especially those in direct yogic and Vedic lineages from India, isn't the same across all groups and practitioners. What offends one person won't offend another. I try to remember that the opinion and thoughts of people from India, especially those who are in the fields of yoga, offer valuable insights around yoga and cultural integration. Yoga comes from their culture. 

When trying to take a more ethical course of action, we need to remember that there isn’t one exact right way to teach or practice yoga. 

In many ways, as a white western woman teaching yoga, I will always express a degree of appropriation in how I offer yoga. I am not an Indian from India teaching yoga. But I accept this. I sit in the discomfort of it. When I first realized I was appropriating yoga, I wanted to run away. It was easier to drop the whole thing and find something else to do as my life work. Eventually I realized this was a default response from a person with a white body who wants to avoid discomfort, people-please, and do the “right thing.” I have had teachers from India express to me that offering these teachings is important, but the teachings should always share the perspective that yoga is a sacred practice. Otherwise, the practice  is not “yoga” — it is “bhoga,” simply a form of entertainment. If you have been practicing with me for any length of time, I do hope the spiritual roots come across in my teaching. But intention doesn’t always equal impact.

Some might think that charging money for classes and teaching is an action of appropriation. I don’t believe this to be true, but I also accept that my beliefs and opinions are not the only true and valid ones in the world. I have a lot more I would like to say about money, but I will save that for a future post…

The biggest concern I hear from Indian practitioners is that westerners often strip yoga of its sacred roots, forget and neglect yoga’s cultural origins, and make yoga only about a feel good, look good, stretchy exercise class. Yoga classes are often taught by removing all indications of Indian culture because of xenophobia: no Sanskrit language because it’s too hard for people to understand or say, no chanting OM because that feels like religion and it makes people uncomfortable, no philosophy talk because people just want a “good work out” and they don’t want to think too hard. Then sometimes people will offer a “movement based class” that uses actual yoga postures and other yogic techniques with all new names, and they won’t label it a yoga class. To me, that is the very definition of appropriation. 

Yoga isn’t about the pretty clothes, the fancy mats, looking good, and getting your “Zen on” (there is a LOT to unpack in that popular statement). Yes, you can buy a new yoga mat and comfy yoga pants, that isn’t specifically the problem. But it isn’t yoga if you are not actively engaging with the process of self-inquiry. It isn’t yoga if you are not learning more about yourself, questioning your reactions to discomfort, and investigating your thoughts. 

Yoga is not a religion, so one does not need to practice a specific creed or become a Hindu, Jain, Sikh, or any other denomination. But one should realize that yoga is a deep spiritually-based philosophical system. A yoga practitioner or student should recognize that yoga is more than mere exercise or entertainment. A yoga teacher should have at least a basic understanding of the history of yoga within Indian culture, and be familiar with Sanskrit terms and yoga philosophy. Reading the Yoga Sutras and actively practicing self-reflection or Svadyaya are essential aspects of yoga. Thus, Yoga and Beer, Goat Yoga, Yoga and Wine, Yoga and...  can all be tricky territory if those classes are offered as mere entertainment and do not include an opportunity for inquiry or self-reflection.

But there is something even more important to remember in this process.

I have begun to realize that an essential aspect of not appropriating a spiritual practice like yoga involves looking at the spiritual history, lineage, and issues of one’s own culture. Many Westerners (Europeans and Americans specifically, but not exclusively) often find a remembering of the spirit and soul in Eastern and Indigenous traditions. I certainly have. I believe this is because our own mystical and spiritual traditions were literally ripped out of our culture slowly and methodically for over two thousand years. We have organized religions, but they often feel incomplete. The traditions of other cultures preserved something that was violently taken away from us by our ancestors. The reductionist lens of western science and reason has only added to this growing sense of emptiness.

But if we only ever look to other countries and cultures to mend our spiritual wounds, we will never fully heal what was broken. The wounds will stay open, and we will never feel complete. 

There is a deep soul connection to your ancestors and to the land of your ancestors. You absolutely must dig into the past, sometimes literally into the ground, to find what you are missing. What happened to the mystical practices of old Europe? What are the missing pieces in our own culture that send us looking somewhere else? This inquiry will look different for each of us. For me, this has meant looking into the mystical practices of ancient Greece (as my Sicily was a Greek State), into the Neolithic reverence for Mother Earth, and investigating when and how my ancestors were violently forced to abandon these practices. These wounds carry forward in my body. My mother often shares how the Sicilians kept La Vecchia Religione, the old religion, alive but in secret. I must put those secret puzzle pieces back together and create a renewed practice in reverence of spirit and soul, informed by both the past and the present.

The great psychologist, Carl Jung, stated: “Westerners cannot slap Eastern spirituality on top of a western ego and expect enlightenment”. As a yoga teacher, I recognize that I need to meet people where they are. I believe that if people come to a yoga class, then something inside is calling them to these specific practices, even if they are not cognizant of all the sacred origins. I do not want to ignore the roots of yoga, and I recognize the need to proceed slowly when two very different cultures come together in one space.

Cultural appropriation carries forward the western wounds of forgetting of our deep interrelated sacred source. In India, the sacred is acknowledged everywhere in the outer culture, and it isn’t necessarily dependent on faith or religion. In the West, the sacred is sequestered and the expression of the dominant culture is focused on materialism. Westerners desperately need to face cultural appropriation from this two-fold lens: we must first investigate what was lost in our own culture and why we feel the need to look for that healing in other places, and we must also honor the spiritual roots of yoga within the context of traditional Indian culture. If we do not do this work, then despite our best intentions, we will only bring our cultural wounds and injuries into the very practices we hope will bring us healing.

For more on this topic, read the previous post on Decolonizing Yoga.