Indian yoga instructors have accused the West of devoiding Yoga of its innate spiritual elements and transforming it into a “sexy” exercise with lifestyle accessories. The ‘whitewashing’ of Yoga, has resulted in its popularisation among thin, white women where it is sold as a lifestyle with class barriers. 

Vikram Jeet Singh, a yoga instructor from Goa told The South China Morning Post that “his own culture” in the form of true yoga had been wiped out. “And now my own culture is being repackaged and sold to me under a different form,” he added.

In the West, he said, yoga has become a “workout session stripped of any kind of cultural background, where you have to show up with $100 Lululemon leggings and an equally expensive mat.”

Yoga has become ‘colonised’, ‘inaccessible’

Nikita Desai, a yoga teacher of South Asian heritage in Britain, has posted videos saying that yoga has become “colonised” and inaccessible to many, with its spiritual origins forgotten, The Times reported.

For Navtej Johar, 63, the standardisation of yoga by the West is problematic because according to him is both a private and individual practice.

However, Indian gurus are to blame, he said. “Almost all of them, barring a very few, standardised it to suit the demands of the western market for some kind of an Indian spiritual practice.” If the West has been guilty of the “vapid commercialisation” of yoga, it is not alone, says Johar. It has happened in India too.

The International Day of Yoga is celebrated across the world annually on June 21 since 2015, following its inception in the United Nations General Assembly in 2014.

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