Has the modern yoga establishment become a major threat to yoga?
Has the modern yoga establishment become a major threat to yoga?
[Recently re-written] Yogic practices have been bastardised. Turned into fetishised commodities next, yoga has been bent and extended and then virtualised into oblivion
Welcome. Tomasz Goetel here. This article will turn out to be a 30 min. read. Three notes to “The Flying Fish” Reader:
This text has undergone several almost complete re-writes (and then re-visions) since it was first published here in August 2021. The latest re-write so far is dated September of 2023. The text may continue to be re-written as it seems to want to be a work in progress and my typing hands seem to have a life of their own.
As anyone with a good head on their shoulders knows, and what I realised late in life on the account of being Polish, foolish and slow, is that there are two sides to everything in this world. In my reflections on yoga below, I’m choosing to describe the dark side. Would other be a bright side to yoga today? “A living dog is worth more than a dead lion”, as Ecclesiastes rightly says. But I find the bright side to be tedious for me to think and write about, and, what is more, that side has been written about in the past by better and smarter persons than me (you’ll see that in the footnote #1 there are a couple of referrals).
One might ask why I wrote this article and why I am publishing it. Well, I wrote it first for myself. I wanted to know what day for yoga today is, and the known lectures given me by others did not satisfy me.
And now, let us attend and get a glimpse of the dark side of modern yoga.
Has the modern yoga establishment become a major threat to yoga? Yes, it has. And that’s at the minimum—the worst-case could be that yoga is dead.
I should know exactly what it is and how it’s happened, because I participated in the process myself as a corruptor of yoga and an agent of change. As a professional, I was part of the yoga in its mainstream for at least fifteen years until about 2018. Therefore, in retrospect, I must include myself as an active contributor to the phenomena (that is, what emerged) within the yoga establishment of the past 20 years. I got off that train before the electronic stage—until that time, I made money (useful for spending), gained popularity (useful for happy hormones and getting casual sex), I acquired power (to command others). Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, confiteor. I will make an effort here to say what we, the yoga establishment, did and how. How we (almost?) killed yoga.
In case the Present Reader would like to get the bottom line up front, here is the gist of it.
Multiple yogas of the past are also one yoga that cannot be defined.
Yoga’s resistance to definitions allows for erasure of its past. The past of yoga is male, ascetic, secret, sacred, solemn, and highly anti-social.
The yoga with no past becomes modern yoga. Now, it can be bastardised, sexualised, commodified, bent and extended out of its traditional form, and shifted to the online-based electronic domain, allowing for the new form to be utilised, advertised, and monetised by modern yoga producers.
The yoga producers sell yoga to consumers while, perhaps, fulfilling one of the neoliberal-transhumanist goals: disembodiment.
The demise of yoga and the subsequent decline of modern yoga as well might both be seen with an unexpected and paradoxical twist in their conclusion.
Yoga
When I say yoga (and write the word in italics), I am using that abstract word which encompasses an extremely diverse range of flesh and blood practitioners and teachers, practices, methods, lineages, traditions, religious beliefs and so-called philosophies, collectively called yoga and, a little more smartly (I’d say), called yogas, originated in South Asia as far back as possibly three millenia ago.
To the best of my knowledge, the earliest textual descriptions of yogic techniques date to the last few centuries BC and show their practitioners to have been male ascetics who had turned their backs on society. Those renouncers have been considered practitioners of yoga ‘par excellence’ throughout Indian history.
Writing about yoga, among numerous different yogas, and keeping in mind Mircea Eliade’s explanation which is that “if the word ‘yoga’ means many things, it is because yoga is many things”—for the purpose of unification of numerous yogas into one yoga, one could stress here the ultimate goal of all yogas: samādhi. That would be a mistake.
As I’d like to explain below, when it comes to yoga and/ or yogas, knowing the name of the common ultimate goal doesn’t help us at all as the samādhi absolutely defies definitions. What is more, any attempts would require the attempter to make use of words (highly abstract), such as disembodiment, enlightenment, bliss, communion, divinity, and dissolution. Going further, those words would need to be accompanied by more word work in a constellation: Ātman, māyā, karma . . . The result would probably be our, my Reader’s and mine, further confusion, if not exasperation. The result would be, definitely, mumbo-jumbo (i.e., chatter, babble, gibberish).
I despise mumbo-jumbo and therefore cannot help thinking that all known to me definitions of yoga and the question “what is yoga?” should be destroyed. To present yoga in a proposition is impossible and to force the proposition with the question “what is —?” is to want to force the impossible. Which is stupid. The avoidance of the stupid would be keeping with the spirit of the so-called Wittgenstein’s silence, which is very, very smart (“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence”).
And so it is. But, okay, if I had a police taser to my head and had been ordered to come up with words to express how majority of people would define yoga, I’d come up with mumbo-jumbo just fine and fast. Today, I don’t mind using the (in)famous ChatGPT-4 as a fitting crutch that would enable us (my Present Reader and me) to get a good view of the “current” and “popular” modern definitions. Let us see if that is the case.
Yoga definition mumbo-jumbo
ChatGPT-4: “Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual practice that originated in ancient India over 5,000 years ago. It is based on a system of postures (asanas), breathing exercises (pranayama), and meditation techniques aimed at promoting physical health, mental clarity, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth.
“In its modern form, yoga has become a popular form of exercise and stress relief, with various styles and approaches, including Hatha yoga, Vinyasa yoga, Bikram yoga, and Yin yoga. Yoga can be practiced by people of all ages and fitness levels, and its benefits are widely recognized, including improved flexibility, strength, balance, and cardiovascular health, as well as reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.
“However, it’s important to note that yoga is a complex and multifaceted practice, and it involves more than just physical postures or exercise. At its core, yoga is a holistic system that seeks to cultivate awareness, mindfulness, and connection with oneself and the world around us. (End of quote.)
What a garbage definition and summary there, chatbot. But fair enough, ChatGPT-4 is for us holding the mirror to all mumbo-jumbo written on the internets and spoken in countless Western “yoga” rooms since, well, it’s hard to say since when.
And so it seems that I’m losing my patience. Therefore, now might be a good time for an unkind kind of speculation, which is the following: The impacts of bastardisation, commodification, fetishisation, extension, and electronically induced ecstasy on the teaching of yoga practices have reached the proportions of an epidemic. Everyone is infected. I will explain.
A speculation on bastardisation
What is the bastardisation of yoga, how has it appeared (as a phenomenon)? Bastardisation is an act that
debases (reduces from a higher to a lower state or condition),
corrupts,
modifies the whole (esp. by introducing discordant or disparate elements).
Generally speaking, the yogins (i.e., male yoga practitioners) via their teachers and having become teachers themselves, have either performed a break with the past or the break with the past has been done to them. In the past, yoga had to do with a male-oriented, religious, anti-social, ascetic, secret, esoteric, and meditative pursuit of individual immortality. The past of yoga has been the father of yoga and when the past has been discarded, yoga is fatherless. A fatherless yogin is a bastard. In the old days before the past was erased, if a yogin asked his teacher “why is this done this way?”, the teacher would hit him on the head and told him not to ask stupid questions. If the student insisted and/ or if the teacher would be in a good mood, the student would be told “because my teacher did this that way and that’s why we do it this way”. “Why?” “Because his teacher said so.” And so ad infinitum (perhaps back to the original, mythical yoga’s creator, Lord Shiva). Nothing but lineage. Tradition. Transmission. The law. The past was the father and the father kicked the bucket.
Now, keeping in mind the bastardisation of yoga (the break with the past), we can talk of the transition of the yoga under the aegis of mystics to the yoga under the modern regime. For at least two or three decades, and especially in America and Asia, modern yoga has been led by female- and consumer-oriented gymnastic service producers. I will from now on continue to write about yoga (in italics) as the un-bastardised yoga of the past as opposed to writing yoga (no italics) as I refer to the modern, bastardised yoga.
I would add that the gymnasts are united by calling themselves “yogis” (unisex, having or not having a bulge in their yoga pants isn’t relevant, they’re all yogis) and/ or “yoginis” (strictly, no bulge in the yoga pants).
The bastardisation turned out to be a means to money, fame, and power. That is the commodification. When the commodities fizzed out like a too-long open bottle of champagne with no more bubbles to go to the drinker’s head, the introduction of The Bends of yoga took place, followed by the fetishisation, then followed by the electronic shift. We will tackle those phenomena further, one at a time.
Let us begin with the commodification of yoga by yoga producers.
The commodification
Yoga practices have been turned into yoga commodities that can (and must) be traded. Transactions must take place. The yoga producers in the company of our yoga consumers—we did this. Let us ask what a commodity is.
A commodity:
Something useful that can be turned to commercial or other advantage.
A product or service that is indistinguishable from ones manufactured or provided by competing companies.
For the commodification to take place, a transformation of some key characteristics of yoga practices had to take place first and we saw that in their bastardisation.
Now, subsequent sales and transactions follow instantly.
The yogis and yoginis can be seen as a collective of modern yoga consumers. They are a collective that is subject to being educated by yoga producers (yoga providers).
It’s rather simple: in the recent past, there were few producers who produced yoga but due to the bastardisation and commodification going hand in hand with advertising, a demand was created which exceed the supply. Yoga places were full, people were being turned down due to the lack of space. More producers stepped in as producers created producers. Once the supply exceeded the demand, producers were forced to more actively and aggressively recruit new consumers. This is akin to, for example, air travel and can be seen in its latest, most corrupt, and inverted in comparison to its original “freedom to travel” phenomenon where airliners are, at their hangars, sitting empty and efforts must be made to “fill the seats” with asses, obviously leading to the view of the public as a human resource. Very much so with the consumption of modern yoga from the perspective of yoga producers.
If I may digress. There is a sad shadow that surrounds yoga producers and they have to live in it. The producers have no capacity for relationships with others that might be free of transactional purpose, no purpose-free friendship is possible and one may not even be able to imagine what a friendship would look like. In addition, success (in any of its many definitions) is impossible to achieve as a producer has become a master and a slave in one—she is the auto-exploiting labourer in her own enterprise. Her work must never stop. Psychic maladies such as eating or shopping compulsions, obsessive hunger for “likes” on social media in competition with other production entities, depression and burnout will need to be pharmaceutically managed. The producer is a never satisfied achiever who having perhaps originally “escaped” into modern yoga from the corporate world of the childless (and often husband-less) career in accounting, banking, marketing, finance, etc., now finds herself as a slave to her own freedom. In other words, as she becomes a producer (not only of yoga but also of digital self-presentations) and entrepreneur, and as she exploits herself without a master, she becomes an absolute slave and knows it. This is very regrettable and rarely acknowledged.
Anyways. The initial transformation of the characteristics and the subsequent commodification of practices have been organised by modern yoga regime in public view and sustained by yoga-producer exploiters, the so-called yoga entrepreneurs, behind the scenes.
Overall, the commodification was not nothing; it was not everything; we are looking here at an intermediary production. As the commodification of yoga practices flourished (made the producers and entrepreneurs money, brought if not fame then at least popularity, and made them all seem cool and sexy in the eyes of the imagined public), the producer began to take different progress directions and their consumers began to respond by signing up for (subscribe to, identify with, respond with affinity) those different directions. Let us call the varied directions by this name: The Bends. The pun in the name is intended.
The Bends are several and particular. To me, the bends are also severely peculiar.
The Bends
The Medical Bend. In instruction, the bend for the language of “health benefits”, infused with anatomical and medical vocabulary. (More about that in a moment and in footnotes.)
My Needs Bend. The bend for striving to provide quality “need-fulfilment” to individuals seen as conglomerates of the so-called emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual needs in the economic world of scarcity. (Recently, nutritional needs and even more recently, obviously keeping in spirit with what-is, immunological needs. What a cringe. And yes, I have been reading a lot of my beloved Ivan Illich.)
The Sexy Bend. The bend for propagation of narcissist (that is, auto-erotic) self-affirmation. Often called “self-love”. Which I call sexualisation. Yoga posing is used as a means to increase and/ or display for the public the sexual capital (sex appeal) of the person. The huge majority of those persons are female. The sexual capital increase is preferable mostly to adult female practitioners of all ages, among the male minority the majority are homosexuals. Sexiness and fitness represent new capital to be grown, marketed (in the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet “the needs” of others involved in the game), and exploited. “A quick search on Instagram for #yogateacher reveals over 6,735,395 results, a number that grows rapidly each day. This hashtag will show you an endless stream of photos of the hottest yoga teachers holding unbelievable poses in beautiful locations.”—See more here.
The Psychopolitical Cybernetic Transhumanist Bend. In relation to the previous three bends, this compound bend is far more complicated and important to notice. And far more sinister. This is the bend for endless self-optimisation (self-improvement, and a number of other “self-”’s) with its shadow of compulsive achievement. Bent toward becoming, but never-to-become-sufficiently, a better “entrepreneur”, “human being”, “conscious individual”, “version of yourself”, etc. Fitter, happier, more productive. Lost in perfection and exhausted by it.
Watch out for the key fetish phrases: self-optimisation, becoming, healing, personal.
This bend is performed in the service of several gains: the acquirement of personal effectiveness and efficiency, the material gain and/ or the gain of popularity and/ or the increase of self-satisfaction (euphemised as accomplishment). All gains are veiled as means toward allowing the psychopolitically-infused gymnast to make a better “contribution” to “society”, “humanity”, “planet”, “health”, and the plethora of other false idols.
Even though each of The Bends could be explored in more rewardingly sarcastic detail, and even though more bends could be defined (e.g., the Charitable Bend), for the sake of brevity (too late for that) and sanity (too late for that, too, perhaps), I must pass the exploration at this moment.
It seems to me that, with time, The Bends may have turned out to be less attractive and less satisfying. Gradually stagnating in generating money and popularity for the producers as well as gradually generating less and less fun and satisfaction for the consumers, The Bends begin to reach their limit. But not all is lost, the extension will save the day.
The extension
Now, yoga is marketed with the extension (that is, with the addition) of different, previously alien to it, modules.
Examples of the extension into modules, connected with bastardised and commodified yoga organised by producers for the public consumption, include: “cacao ceremonies”, “Reiki healing”, “Tibetan singing bowls”, “live music (aka kirtan)”, “potluck”, “women’s circles”, and, I kid you not, “yoga and wine”, “yoga for dogs” (aka doga) and “yoga with your infant child”.
The Bends of yoga, the commodification of yoga practices including their extension have been nothing but a passing stage. We are making good progress.
The fetishisation
The next stage has been instantly (or almost instantly) initiated by turning yoga-as-commodity into, metaphorically speaking, a fetish.
A fetish is
an object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially such an object associated with animistic or shamanistic or pagan religious practices,
an object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence,
something, such as a material object or nonsexual part of the body, that arouses sexual desire and may become necessary for sexual gratification.
Here are some examples of several super-natural qualities ascribed to, and reflected in the marketing of, commodified and fetishised yoga, all keeping with The Psychopolitical Bend: “yoga for mental health”, “yoga for emotional wellness”, “yoga for fertility”, “yoga for seniors”, “yoga for runners”, “yoga for menopause”, “yoga for PTSD”, “ yoga for calming the nervous system”, and there are many more unfortunate etceteras.
I hope to beg my Reader’s patience and stay with me a moment longer. Here it comes. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing. . .
The shift to electronic yoga
The electronic yoga is the electronic virtualisation of the commodified fetish of yoga practices. Here, yoga can be seen as a cult of the modern wounded self, which requires never ending healing, has been shifted, transplanted or uploaded from its physical practice dimension that used to take place in a yoga studio or at a park onto the so-called online platforms. POPC: permanently online, permanently connected.
At the early stages, the yoga producers began to be increasingly curious and keen to experiment with, and soon many of those became devoted to, the distribution of yoga by the means of the internets with electronic gadgets in-hand.
What I call the electronic yoga is the so-called online yoga.
Physical (incarnated) presence of the yoga producer has been made optional or obsolete. She shifted to an online platform (or multiple platforms simultaneously) of her choice and invited her consumers to shift with her. Previously, it was necessary for the producer and the consumer to find themselves in the same physical space at the same precise time. That necessity has been dealt with by making the physical presence optional. A choice was given: “real” yoga or “online” yoga. Next, electronic yoga was suggested as “the better option”, for example, as a time-saving convenience. (More recently, electronic yoga practices have been a “safe alternative” to the forbidden human contact, as we saw during corunka.)
The shift to the internets has not been without consequences. The self-transplantation of a yoga producer from a breathing person to an electronically captured, digitally filtered, and wirelessly delivered social media present entity has disabled most opportunities for meditation, mystical experiences, incarnated epiphanies, physical contact, and thoughtful conversations.
Going hand-in-hand with the electronically induced ecstasy of the convenient innovation of the electronic yoga, modern yoga brought about by the producers on consumers results in the total disembodiment of all yogis.
Since “to disembody” means to separate someone from his or her physical form, one could sarcastically note that the ultimate goal of all yoga has therefore been reached.
Final thoughts for now
Sarcasm aside, one could say that the disembodiment has reached the proportions of a great flood. I describe this from the perspective of the present as I hold on to the past. About the future, I know nothing. Can there be, and if yes, will there be un-drowned survivors? Will the past, will father of yoga be re-gathered, like in the myth of Horus and his father Osiris? I take leave to doubt it, but on the other hand, if you were to ask me whether there’s hope for yoga . . . Verily, verily, I’d say onto you: I believe there is. So I may find my patience again. But for today, I lower the yoga flag to half mast.
To be continued.
In the later part of my 20-year-long yoga practice and teaching career, having taught more than 14,200 hours of big and small yoga classes, workshops, retreats, yoga teacher training and cont-ed programs, I’ve always regarded my own work with a critical eye. I paid attention to what other teachers were doing, too, as I initially believed there would have been much good to be found in their work (I intended to steal that for myself, as one obviously should). Instead, what I found came to me as a surprise. To give a voice to my surprise, I wrote the article above. It is not an accusation, it is reflection that includes self-reflection. After all, I made a living, or perhaps even a small fortune, from teaching yoga (2004-2019). I quit teaching and, soon after, I completely stopped practicing. I asserted that ‘yoga is dead’ and I realised that some blood is on my hands and that the ‘onus probandi’ is on me.
Thanks for reading my stuff. I kiss you on the mouth.
Tomasz Goetel
Ibiza, Spain
22 August, AD 2021
In other words, “what yoga is”, in my somewhat humble and completely serious view, is impossible to say. However, not to be too much of an a**hole and not to leave an inquisitive reader hanging, I’d say that some good writing of persons smarter and more knowledgable and less disagreeable than me has been done. I’d recommend the work of James Mallinson, here. Mallinson’s magnificent contributions to scholarly presentation and interpretation show what an absolute mess results from the belief that definitions regarding yoga are possible. Alright, in addition, the one book that I hold in high esteem and would recommend to the inquisitive reader is Mircea Eliade’s Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958), here. Or here.
A good look at more detail may be useful here. Let’s once again return to the past and make a list of the now-dead (or if not dead, then only exceptional and, perhaps, surprising) characteristics of the “old” yoga:
Done strictly by men only (rarely, including adolescent boys).
Formal initiation is necessary.
Practiced in solitude (rarely, under the eye of the teacher).
Practiced in secrecy.
A solemn mood (not cheerful or smiling, but deadly serious), ascetic, and sexually abstinent with an insistence on breath control as means of achievement of semen control.
Ritualistic and religious, almost always devotional.
Grounded in anti-social mentality. (This also means strictly anti-materialist.)
Now mainstream, probably since the 1980s, if not earlier, the characteristics of the “new” way of practicing yoga under the regime of the bulge-less yoga producers and The Bends:
For both sexes (including children), but mostly females.
“Anyone can do it” (no initiation, open to the public, where one is reminded of the AirAsia corporate slogan: “Now Everyone Can Fly!”).
Practiced in groups (thus enabling competition in physical proficiency and competence among all yogis as well as competition in sex appeal among female yogis).
Done out in the open, as advertised. Within the culture of transparency, in the world where everything must be exposed, where privacy is dying, and where digital platforms push individuals to curate and exhibit the most intimate details of their lives, the mystery that once shrouded and fuelled the ascetic and secretly esoteric pursuits of yoga is dwindling.
Even better if stamped with a “celebrity endorsement” and/ or taken to photoshoots in a romantic and eye-catching location as a backdrop. Photos of female yoga posing have been utilised by bank conglomerates, insurance corpos, fast food chains, politicians, and other fun business enterprises.
Nothing but a dance. “Fun” and “hot” and “sexy”. This “fast yoga”, akin to “fast food”, offers instant gratification but lacks depth, commitment, and genuine understanding of the practice. To avoid confronting the public with the inability to go slow, yoga producers speeded up the practices taught while, consequently, being able to offer two classes within two hours, not one. The latter part is akin to a faster “turn around” of covers in restaurants. With time (no un intended), as majority of providers turned out to be female and as the providers realised that the modern majority of yoga practitioners are also female, a shift took place: the dance. The previous canons of yogic practices )esp. those where stillness was obligatory) were abandoned in order to give birth to slow flowing “graceful” yoga that never stops, “danced” to bluetooth speaker and iPhone spotify playlists.
The rise of narcissism in contemporary culture serves as another blow to yoga. A narcissistic individual seeks a reflection to generate auto-erotic bliss. The mirror of the digital age, be it through selfies or social media profiles where yoga-selfie photos and videos get dumped, promotes a culture where one is “in love” with their image. The hyper-sexualization of culture, where sexual imagery is omnipresent, has not helped one iota.Strictly non-ritualistic and non-religious. On occasion allowing or encouraging for the sake of promotion and sales of merchandise related to, and performance of mini-rituals at the feet of, Gaṇeśa or Naṭarāja statues, mala beads, books on mudrā or mantra, etc. Atheist, secularised, devoid of religious language.
Attached to left-turning social-activist mentality. Dedicating part of monies collected at practice sessions, or through membership fees, to “Black Lives Matter” (as the Yoga Alliance did, when was that in 2020?), orphanages, street dogs, planting trees, barking frogs in Guatemala, what have you).
Whether we, the yoga producers, emerged first and bastardised and commodified yoga for the use and pleasure of the consumers, or it’s the limitless consumption drive of the modern, urban dwelling man and woman that created a void then filled by the producers—that is a chicken and egg question. Isn’t it? Perhaps it is not. Perhaps, I should better refrain here from putting any blame onto either of the parties involved. I think that the yoga establishment has ultimately been nothing but a pawn in a bigger game. There are other driving forces and other parties crucial to the understanding of the bastardisation and commodification of yoga, and not only yoga but meditation as well! In spite of the importance of those forces and parties, I for now hesitate to draw more detail in my thinking and may return to this at a later date. Until then, for what it’s worth, it may be useful to scrutinise mega-personae who were involved in “the bringing of yoga and meditation to the West”, such as Mme Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her later theosophist and Indian Nationalist buddies, Swami Vivekanada, Annie Besant and Eleanor Marx and the entire Fabian Society, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagavan Das, The Beatles, the Dalai Lama, among others—and their links to the Bank of England, East India Trading Company, British Monarchy, Freemasonry, United States Intelligence Community, and the entire “octopus” driving global trends.
Ironically, the etymology of the word ‘produce’ is found in the early 15c., producen, “develop, proceed, extend, lengthen out”, from Latin producere “lead or bring forth, draw out”, figuratively “to promote, empower; stretch out, extend”.
And for ‘consume’, dating back to the late 14c., it is the following: “to destroy by separating into parts which cannot be reunited, as by burning or eating,” hence “to destroy, to annihilate”, from Old French consumer "to consume" (12c.) and directly from Latin consumere “to use up, eat, waste”.
In some cases, a peculiar figure emerged: a yoga teacher and yoga entrepreneur in one. For example: Osho, Deepak Chopra, Bikram Choudhury, Amrit Desai, or the sad guru named Sadhguru. Or, to a much smaller degree of fame and personal gain, Kino MacGregor, John Friend, Baron Baptiste, Kathryn Budig, or, for a more visual example, Jessamyn. And me. I call them, or us, “the Fallen Angels”. In passing, one may want to make the following observation: Where the majority of male fallen angels ended their wealth-and-fame-oriented careers by fucking a scandalously large number of women (some of who claimed having been “abused” or even raped), female fallen angels succumbed to burn out, which I see as an unexpected and never talked about projection-induced trauma inherent to having had become champions, or is it championesses, of monetisation of sex appeal, neo-feminism, environmentalism, anti-racism, veganism, communitarism, and other socio-political causes.
As for psychopolitics and yogis (and, surely, transhumanism and yogis) I intend to write about this in the near future. For the term “psychopolitics” and how in the era of Neoliberalism I may relate psychopolitics to yogis, I am indebted to the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han (1959-). As for the explanation of the cybernetic and transhumanist influence—likewise. His 2017 book Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (transl. by Erik Butler) has been an influence on my writing here and small traces of Mr. Han’s text are scattered throughout this article.
One may notice the examples biopolitical and then psychopolitical influences in yoga’s instructional and advertising vocabulary. Words (those used to verbalise key actions and the commentary in āsana practice, as well as the words used in call-to-action sign-up-oriented marketing) hijacked from physics (esp. mechanics and automobile engineering) as well as electronics (computer, and then smartphone, both hardware and software) and cybernetics: system, version, information, update, recharge, reboot, restart, defragment, flow.
The body as “flesh and bones”, corporeal, incarnated. Perhaps the electronic yoga producers have been relieved and pleased to do away with bodies in physical space? Perhaps they have been frustrated by bodily complications of incarnated teaching? Or the limits imposed by the physical space and its financial cost (rent) and its size (usually, too small)? Get rid of the body! One is reminded of the words of a philosopher: “ . . . And away above all with the body, that pitiable idée fixe of the senses! Infected with every error of logic there is, refuted, impossible even, notwithstanding it is impudent enough to behave as if it actually existed . . . ”—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols.