Daily Times

The global consumption is being transformed as a vast number of consumers and businesses connect, via technological means, from all over the world. Consumers of yoga are increasing as a wide variety of yoga tips and programs are made for YouTube. I am often asked which is the best YouTube yoga channel. It’s hard to determine exactly how much of true yoga is presented on YouTube.

Yoga has become a product for window shopping for its international consumers. Practising yoga via YouTube can bring ease to home-based workout regime but it certainly brings many impurities with it. An unestablished mind (or layman) is not a yogi, simply because the old school has a strict adherence to rules for body & mind regulation, structured practices and form, to maximizing health benefits. Now, why would that be necessary?

Many of us turn to yoga because we need a greater challenge. Humans can face challenges in forms like disease, obesity, grief, anxiety, hair loss, memory loss, emotional traumas and many others. Desperate for answers and cures, the power of yoga appears to be a panacea for all and an opportunity for many YouTubers to corrupt the authentic practices to create an unreliable menu of programs.

Yoga is a true science that dives into the physical, physiological, emotional, behavioural, environmental and social aspects of a human being. The indigenous knowledge, to date, holds the ethos that guides us to the path of truth. Researcher Danielle Thompson-Ochoa finds out in his research paper titled “Is yoga cultural appropriation” as to how yoga has transformed into controversial, elite, and pop culture with undertones of cultural appropriation. He states that cultural appropriation is not limited to simple borrowing of a practice. “Instead, cultural appropriation commonly involves taking (borrowing) certain elements of culture before modifying them according to the demands and expectations of a specific consumer segment.” The authentic schools are now seeking intellectual property rights to protect indigenous knowledge. Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Hot Yoga, sought legal action against studios who taught his 24 posture sequence without the required license.

Yoga has become a product for window shopping for its international consumers

With globalization, yoga has been influenced by other cultural trends within the Western world, an example of which is the so-called trend of healthism, says Danielle. “Healthism is concerned with different practices and lifestyle changes that allow consumers to strengthen both their physical and psychological health. Besides, the cult of body performance and the image is another Western trend impacting the way yoga is presented and marketed”.

Women, in general, from middle-class are seen as the principal consumers of YouTube yoga. Based on the psyche of women, majority of YouTubers know how to use various marketing devices. A lot of times models and actresses are hired and collaborated to define picture-perfect female bodies. Women are lured into modifying their bodies to an ideal body type as portrayed in magazines and advertisements. A stereotype female model can sell anything from hair shampoo to chicken nuggets. Surprisingly so does yoga and yoga-related products.

The human body is the most complex machine. Just the way we have to learn to operate any other complex machine to do a task, we neglect to understand our system. With true yoga, one learns about the states of existence. We don’t have a fixed state, thus require an understanding of human systems including questions related to breathing, the moral blocks (yamas), the observances to cleanse thoughts and emotions (niyamas) and the art of withdrawal of our senses. Most YouTube teachers create dependence whereas yoga is about freedom. Self-practice is the reward of understanding your state and designing your routine. Formal yoga training is about learning the journey from physical to more subtle realms of our being.

The writer is a wellness and yoga expert