Yoga : Spirituality or business ?

                                                            

What have these people done to yoga?

Thousands of years ago, Patanjali described hatha yoga; Krishna described the entire yoga system. Both these teachers advised practitioners and yoga teachers to embrace among other things like Austerity, Simplicity and celibacy and renunciation of worldliness.Yogis lived in forest or mountains; they ate what grew wild, shunned the world and abandoned worldly tapping’s for a higher cause .i.e for enlightenment.

Fast forward 2018 and Yoga is now market worth 80 billion USD, Student pay for each session, teachers’ pay highly for developing the expertise. Yoga retreat are through the roof, added to that are requisite Yoga equipment’s : Yoga Mats , Yoga pants , yoga shirt , yoga incense and variety of yoga style are as numerous as they are embarrassing : Naked yoga , Hot yoga , beer yoga , sex yoga , dream yoga and even laughing yoga. But it is no longer a laughing matter now. Yoga marketing has now got the upper hand over the purpose of yoga. And that purpose was not combating stress, keeping healthy or feeling good. What to speak of money or livelihood. Purpose of yoga was self-realization, connecting with the supreme.

So let’s be honest and stop calling this commercialized farce as “yoga”. Call it whatever you want but don’t piggyback on the dignity of great yogis, teachers, and avatars of the past. If you want to make business or become a part of business, then just know that you have sold your soul to the very thing, from which yoga is meant to free you from i.e. Worldliness and bodily identification.

But if you want to really practice yoga then you should do it the authorized way: The way of yoga sutras. The ascetic way!