Has the modern yoga establishment become a major threat to yoga?

The bastardizing impact of consumerism on yogic teaching has reached the size of a pandemic.

The all-disabling self-transplantation of a yoga teacher from a breathing person to a digitally filtered and delivered social media entity has drowned most opportunities for yogic meditation, mystical experiences, and thoughtful conversations.

The disembodiment brought about by teachers, as a consequence of the electronically induced ecstasy of their so-called “online yoga”, on unsuspecting practitioners has reached the proportions of a great flood.

How did this happen? Is a modern yogi drowning? Should he mutiny, or abandon ship?

In the later part of my soon-to-be 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 will write more about that a little later.

I paid attention to what other teachers were doing 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—I hope to write about that soon¹.

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1. I’m thinking of going to Tasmania or possibly Patagonia on the day my blog is published. From the hail of criticism that is likely to greet my writing, may the Good Lord Ishvara ईश्वर save me. Or may He at least put on my head a helmet.