The recent cancelling of a free yoga class at the University of Ottawa (U of O) started many conversations about cultural appropriation, and the validity of commercialized spiritual practices.
I’m of the opinion that just about anyone who practices yoga is guilty of cultural appropriation, and if the far left had their way, all of us oppressors would live our lives stiff, stressed, and unable to touch our own toes.
I don’t have a problem with practicing yoga. In fact, I’d say the problem isn’t yoga, but yogi. Not yogi as in associated with a religious practice, but the fact that the word is thrown around a lot on social media. It’s in hashtags such as #yogilife, and a lot of people seem to strongly self-identify as #yogis. I find myself wondering, what does it mean?
“These ‘bliss-starved goddesses’ [yoginis], attracted by offerings of mingled sexual fluids, would converge into the consciousness of the practitioner, to transform him, through their limitless libido, into a god on earth,” religious studies academic David Gordan White explained.
Who knew yogis were god complex-creating female spirits fuelling the patriarchy in exchange for semen?
White does say that, over hundreds of years, the word yogi came to mean someone who wanted to become a “Siddha,” or a type of enlightened person.
That said, I doubt #yogilife encompasses the complex historical narrative that started at drinking sex smoothies and ended at students of a Tantric practice.
So let’s stop that kind of behaviour. Instagram is not a spiritual practice. In this case, it’s an outlet for your consumer identity, which is guilty of cultural appropriation. But do we have to stop doing yoga? No.
White writes about how the original yogic sex fluid-drinking cults appropriated their Tantric methods from other minorities. This means our consumer-based yoga culture is an appropriated appropriation. Is it appropriate to appropriate an appropriated appropriation? My answer is, if it’s not hurting anyone, maybe?
If you buy LuluLemon, or pay to go to Pure Yoga, you’re not a yogi, you’re a consumer of Yoga™—the branded version of a practice. Marketing is inherently appropriative by taking elements of something else and making it into something that will attract consumers who probably had nothing to do with the original practice.
I accept that I am a consumer in an appropriative society because unless you’re drinking kale smoothies steeped in genitally infused fluid at Pure Yoga (I’ve never been, so maybe that’s a thing), you are too. Instead of asking if something is cultural appropriation (because it is), why not ask “is my consumer appropriation harmful?” If the answer is yes, then change your consumer habits.
To which I say: A free yoga class at U of O probably was not harmful.
And for the #yogis reading this: You are a consumer in a system of appropriation. Take a deep breath, acceptance is the first step.
