This sexy yet focused gymnast/model look is combined with a glossy print catalog representation of spirituality: just choose a soft pastel or earth-tone background, then a candle, deity statue, mala beads, or other accouterment for accent, and you’re ready to go. Now, package the image with key buzzwords from this list: intention, grace, power, heart, now, present, devotion, or freedom – and your retreat, workshop, or DVD ad/print article is a wrap.

Julian Walker, Enlightenment 2.0: The American Yoga Experiment (4)

The mainstream way yoga is practiced, as a series of postures in a group class format with adjustments, has no pre-modern heritage. And it also has no basis in the Yoga Sutras and in Bhagavad Gita (5). Asana-based yoga with the emphasis on health benefits arose as an expression of national pride and physical culture from Indian anticolonial activists who, in the 1920s and 1930s, wanted to indigenize the physical culture influences from Europe (6). (7)

The modern wellness industry, born in the late Eighties, has exploded with and because of the depoliticization of youth culture, the deregulation of the labor market, the relentless domination of consumer culture, and globalization. Its product is the aspirational self (8), and its places have been designed to allow consumers to reimagine who they could be. Besides, increasing dependence on technology, radical changes to the workplace, and decades of policies that neglect the collective good have damaged communities and have made people feel isolated to the point that loneliness has become a defining condition of the twenty-first century (9). Facing loneliness and insecurity, consumers need reassurance of self-worth and tools to manage anxiety. And wellness marketing, where “you” are both the product and the consumer, can easily tap into the primal fear of insecurity and sell on the idea that “you” is the best possible thing to invest in (10).

In this context, it’s no surprise if a yoga class can be offered – and demanded - as an aspirational service masked with “we are one” messages and based on the charisma of the provider.

Today teaching yoga is not a profession, it’s a contract job. Yoga teachers are, in fact, gig workers. The "employer" has the power to choose between respecting and dignifying the freelance yoga teachers (11), or maximizing his power over them and his bottom line, all of which makes the life of a yoga teacher economically challenging. As a popular yoga teacher underlined in a recent interview (12), survival in the yoga industry might also be difficult for teachers who have reached visibility and accountability through the trend-setting (and trend-catching) press, online magazines, and yoga platforms. These media, which are obviously interested in content that maximizes sales, for the sake of visibility might also adopt an exploitative attitude towards contributors.

Again, it is no surprise if, in this confusing and isolating profit-driven industry, a teacher would assess the social and financial reward coming her way as validation of her job (and, often, as a sign of grace too). This could lead to overconfidence or egotism. And it is no surprise if an over-confident person who comes to believe that her yoga classes could change a stranger’s life makes hyperbolic claims, especially if she feels that her intentions are good. But what about the impact? Are those classes in the long haul really changing lives for good?

Are yoga teachers trained to evaluate the impact of what they offer? Maybe not. In yoga culture, we don't typically consider the impact of teacher trainings, nor the way they are advertised. Marketing teacher trainings for “deepening the personal practice” and “personal growth” is a custom, despite teaching requires dedication to interpersonal skills that people entitled to teach don’t develop by practicing for self-care scopes. Marketing a teacher training as life-changing experience, even if the gig economy this job belongs to will likely prohibit any radical lifestyle change, is a common practice too. Teacher trainings are often conceived for the survival or the prosperity in the yoga industry but marketed as caring for the individuals and the community. A 2019 New York Times article (13) documented how false promises and other mechanisms around trainees’ recruitment might also function like a pyramid scheme.

Unfortunately, schedule, agenda, and management might also be erratic. Trainees often learn through experience-based classes (presented as content-based lessons) and don’t get used to reflecting on methodology or on the philosophy expressed in educational choices. In addition, since the teacher trainings are, in actual fact, unregulated, the quality of the instruction and the consistency between what's promised and what's delivered are not guaranteed.

The lack of reflection on educational choices might be potentially harmful. “Harming” is not just the result of a deliberate choice to harm, but it is also the failure in taking responsibility for one’s own actions. This happens when there is the assumption that considering intentions is enough. It’s not. To take responsibility for their actions in the classroom, teachers need to reflect on how they create meaning and on the impact of their educational choices.

And there’s something else. The “good vibes only culture” of the yoga world might inhibit any questioning. As Religious Studies professor Andrea Jain explains (14), the ways in which modern yoga - embedded in neoliberalism - has been commodified and packaged encourage complacency and normalize taking full personal responsibility in dynamics that the individual cannot control, looking away from the social structures creating inequalities. Individuals are expected to govern themselves and reach success, wellness, health, and healing despite having been born in an inequitable system of systems which limits their options. In addition, the same social structures (15) largely determine not just the course of our lives and possibilities but also the sense of safety and self-agency.

Ultimately, it’s a profit-driven industry. To impact its functioning (16), maybe its actors need to make conscious ethical choices. An important starting point would be acknowledging that there are power differentials involved between studio owners and studio managers; studio managers and collaborators; popular yoga media and platforms and contributors; heads of teacher training and trainees; teachers and students; spiritual leaders and their followers.

Once I assumed that all yoga spaces were safe spaces, but it’s not true. Institutional safeguards are too weak and, as in any place where there are hierarchies of power, people aren’t safe unless the “leader” chooses to be accountable and interested in sharing power.

(4) Walker, J. (2012). Enlightenment 2.0: The American Yoga Experiment. In C. Horton & R. Harvey (Eds.), 21st Century Yoga: Culture, Politics, and Practice. Kleio Books

(5) Every yoga teacher training includes the Yoga Philosophy module, and generally this module offers at least an overview of the Bhagavad Gita and of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

(6) Harmonium gymnastics, weightlifting, bodybuilding

(7) Singleton, M. (2010). Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford University press

(8) Remski, M. (2020). Photography — Globalization — Gentrification — Aspirational Self: Conspirituality Patreon Exclusive, Conspirituality Podcast

(9) Hertz, N. (2020). The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That's Pulling Apart. Sceptre

(10) Beres, D. (2021). The Merchants of Discontent - An excerpt from the notes for Derek's book-in-progress, Trickle- Down Wellness. Retrieved from Conspirituality Podcast resources

(11) For example, a yoga studio can choose to pay the collaborators consistently with work capacity, commuting time, and insurances costs and to respect the agreements, despite not doing it has almost no consequences.

(12) (2022) The reality of the yoga industry with Alexandria Crow. Let’s talk Yoga Podcast, Episode 73

(13) Heines, A. (2019 April 06), New York Times

(14) Jain, A. (2020), Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spiritualization. Oxford University Press

(15) As class, gender norms, racialized norms

(16) Not to be confused with charity practices as reducing CO2 impact or fundraising for social projects, which don’t impact the functioning of the industry itself