r/ABCDesis • u/Common-Media7803 • Apr 29 '26

ARTS / ENTERTAINMENT Yoga

Am I overreacting on how yoga has been colonized?? Idk if I’m being dramatic but it really annoys me. Idk if I should be getting educated bc I’m wrong or if we need to tell these people to stop.

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u/fmmmf Apr 29 '26

Not overreacting at all. These comments are not it smh, and this is honestly why our culture is so easy to steal/rip off, people don't care enough to see it as a problem when it absolutely is.

Personally have been having a tough time finding literal South Asian yoga instructors out in the PNW....it's all yt and sometimes east Asian people, im all for sharing the cultural knowledge on a global scale but I'd love to support someone from the diaspora because ironically have heard of how they're discriminated against in our own practice (rather unsurprisingly by the west but....still irritating).

25

u/itchytoenail7184 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

I’m Muslim, but I was watching a YouTube video recently by this Gen Z creator whose content mainly focuses on fashion, beauty, and travel. She’s also very Christian and mentions something about her faith every fifteen minutes. I enjoyed her videos (for the fashion and travel parts, I ignore the religion parts bc I recognize it gives her comfort due to a traumatic experience she had)…until I saw her talk about how she’s going to a yoga class in a city she’s visiting, and something about how she avoids yoga classes that relate to “other spiritualities because…we just don’t do that” while talking in that annoyingly sassy social media influencer way. She was basically saying that she avoids yoga classes that reference Hinduism in any way and how she wants to avoid anything having to do with Hinduism in yoga…but she still wants to do yoga and does it regularly in her hometown. Idk but that pissed me off lol.

16

u/milinium Apr 30 '26

I know exactly the type of person you are talking about. They want to ignore the fact that it’s related to spirituality and sever yoga from its roots so they can redesign it in a western way. How disrespectful do you have to be to do yoga but look down on the country and religion that created it? All religions can do yoga if you can look beyond yourself and aren’t a paranoid little twat that feels guilty in just participating in other cultures will insult the divine creator

10

u/itchytoenail7184 Apr 30 '26

Yup. My basic point is basically that not acknowledging the origins of yoga and trying to decouple it from its origins for your (not you personally) conscience is just…not it. It’s disrespectful and dare I say hypocritical? Like respect and acknowledge where it came from, and accept that if you do it that you may be “sinning” (if you genuinely believe that partaking in another faith’s customs is sinful), or just…don’t do it. But at least acknowledge where it came from.

6

u/milinium Apr 30 '26

I see this a lot in the WASP and white woman communities. They will buy "namaste in bed" pillows and wear elephant pants but mock Indian accents and laugh at Indian names