The joke goes that many Americans think yoga was invented in California. Judge John Meyer of the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, declared in 2013, “Yoga as it has developed in the last 20 years is rooted in American culture, not Indian culture… [it is] a distinctly American cultural phenomenon.” The judge was ruling in a case challenging the introduction of yoga in San Diego’s public schools. (Of course, the case was dismissed).
Meyer was not too far off the mark, considering many contemporary forms of yoga, from the more traditional Anusara and Jivamukti to the New Age power yoga, erotic yoga, nude yoga and yoga with kick-boxing, have originated in America. In 2013, yoga literally hit the top of the world, with the launch of Yoga At The Top, weekend morning sessions on the 124th floor of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, in Dubai. It’s understandable then, why Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to reclaim India’s intellectual property rights over the science. Modi, who starts his day with yoga, convinced the United Nations (UN) to declare June 21 as International Day of Yoga, describing the Indian science, believed to have developed around the fifth and sixth century BC, as “India’s gift to the world”.
Global popularity
The pro-business prime minister is clearly looking at grabbing a larger share of the global yoga space, too. Estimates peg the number of yoga practitioners at 250 million worldwide and growing. Some 20 million of them are in the US, where the yoga business is valued at close to $30 billion (Dh110 million). Americans spend more than $10 billion annually on classes, equipment and yoga gear. But in India, as with so many other industries, yoga has a large unorganised sector, and no reliable figures are available. That should hopefully change with the appointment of Shripad Yesso Naik as Minister for Yoga, heading Ayush, an acronym for the department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (all traditional Indian medicine systems).
Naik, who also practises yoga, has said he will encourage Indian schools to teach it, though not compulsorily.
“It’s good we are reclaiming our heritage,” says Zubin Zarthotimanesh, one of Mumbai’s leading yoga teachers, who trained under the legendary B.K.S. Iyengar for more than 25 years. “There are about 40 million practitioners of Iyengar Yoga in the West, while in India, the figure must be in mere thousands.”
Modi looks at the international popularity of yoga from another angle. “It is our [India’s] responsibility to ensure that the right spirit of yoga is conveyed to everyone,” he told the UN.
A perfect union
But what is the right spirit of yoga? A Sanskrit translation would be to unite, denoting the union of mind, body and soul. As the Indian sage Patanjali saw it, it was a way of life in which asanas were but a part. Most modern yoga centres, however, restrict themselves to a combination of asanas and meditation in varying ratios. Some pretenders who are no more than fitness centres, skip the meditation as well.
“Yoga is a very loose word people use for mind-body-soul practices. There are all kinds of variations, many of them just marketing gimmicks aimed at the spiritual supermarket,” says Zarthotimanesh.
Purists certainly scoff at phenomena such as Bikram Choudhury’s hot yoga, a routine of 26 hatha yoga postures and two breathing exercises done in a 40°C environment, and rocket yoga, a speedy version of ashtanga yoga. Nude yoga leaves them aghast.
But there are shades in between.
As Zarthotimanesh points out, “Purists hark back to ancient times but yoga is not rigid, it has always been an evolving science.”
He believes any form of yoga should go deeper than asanas as yogic postures are not the end goal but only the starting point for a better understanding of the self and universe. “The union is not only of mind and body but also of dualities within us — happiness and misery, pain and pleasure and so on. How can you separate the mind and body?” he says.
However, asanas and physical exercise continue to be the sole focus of most who enrol. The Surya Namaskar, which many Bollywood actresses swear by, is the current front runner. The problem, says Sumit Manav of Dubai’s Lifestyle Yoga, is that most Indians take up yoga only to lose weight.
“I notice that Europeans, who are usually fit, want to go deeper into yoga,” he says. (About 70 per cent of his clientele is Indian). Manav, whose Lifestyle Yoga advertises itself as a “fusion of ancient yoga practices”, clearly experiments, but he emphasises, “To look at yoga as mere asanas is a shallow understanding. There has to be refinement.”
Bharat Thakur, who runs an international chain of yoga centres, including four in the UAE, has created his own brand, Artistic Yoga, which combines yoga techniques with modern cardiovascular training and partner stretches. “There’s no point in following traditions that no longer apply,” he says bluntly. He is equally forthright when he says, “Many teachers who don’t know head or tail of yoga take a few classes and start teaching.” Worse, some have even been accused of sexual misdemeanours.
Cultural export
The lack of qualified teachers is a problem not only in India, but internationally too, because getting work visas is an issue, says Thakur. Nevertheless, he says, “I want to attack 20 countries in the next five years.” So what does he mean by attack? When this writer tells him he’s spoken like a businessman, he retorts, “I need to be one if I want to spread yoga everywhere. We have to treat it like an industry, build an organisational structure and make it commercially viable, or else, how will it grow?”
The government needs to help, he says, and if it does, “yoga could become India’s biggest export”. Thakur is looking at it in terms of mere numbers, but seen through another lens, yoga has been India’s biggest cultural export. Now Modi wants yoga gurus to look closer home and his government has allocated Rs50 billion (Dh2.95 billion) to Ayush. How much of it will benefit yoga? We’ll have to take a deep breath... and wait.
