Yoga Tourism and the Trouble with Transformative Travel
This is a longer version of the article that came out last week for IDY 2019 in The Wire. It includes analysis of similar issues in Japan’s wellness tourism industry.
The 2019 International Day of Yoga is just around the corner. This year, the theme is Climate Action. The premise is that yoga can help climate change. But, even if that is true, it also helps other aspirations, too. This article stretches out in front of the reader the unmarked components that contribute to the affective desire to rally behind the idea that yoga is practicably going to help attenuate climate change.
“Yoga” means differently similar things to a variety of people. This is as true today as it has been over it’s 3000-year history, in which it has taken on over 90 different meanings in the Sanskrit language, alone. In this post-modern relativistic world where memes and identities are abstracted to static monolithic items through commodification of intangible cultural heritage, this then allows for different utopian aspirations to align in a trans-cultural sense and intersect in deeply subtle and distanced ways. As a technology of the self, yoga is commodified to facilitate both individual and global wellbeing through the perceived cosmopolitan ideal of a trans-urban, post-national, “yogic way of life.” This also includes, as Jasbir K. Puar describes, “the idea of ‘whiteness’ as a conceptual category of modernity that references yet exceeds discrete ethnic categories or markers.”
Yoga, in some ways, is reconstituted to represent an urban, cosmopolitan modernity that implies a sense of whiteness. This sense of a “white identity” is used to construct a series of competing and overlapping categories in Asia and the Third World as not white/Western or as against whiteness/Westernness. In Japan, a previously predominant brand of yoga, which still exists, today, is New York Style Yoga. As a result, there is an assumption amongst some people that yoga is actually from America and not connected to South Asia, at all. But, in some sense, this is true, no? Still, one can find examples of a marketing attempts to instrumentalize yoga for the literal purpose of whitening skin.
According to the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, this lifestyle is a powerful instrument to help tackle climate change. So too, he asserts that yoga is a “Path to wellness;” which apparently “makes us better individuals in thought, action, knowledge, and devotion.” This sentiment is the core of the Indian state’s soft power diplomacy. This sentiment is shared by India’s former Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, who explained at the World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok in 2015 that, “Sanskrit should be propagated so that it purifies the minds of the people and thus sanctifies the whole world. […] Knowledge in Sanskrit will go a long way in finding solutions to the contemporary problems like: global warming, unsustainable consumption, civilisational clash, poverty, terrorism, etc.”
One way this sentiment manifests is through the pseudo-scientific assertions made by the SSRF (spiritual science research foundation). The SSRF is linked to the Sanatan Sansthan, a known terrorist organisation, and its University Grants Commission unrecognised Maharishi University of Spirituality (located in Goa, India), as well as the HJS (Hindu people’s awakening society). Having apparently achieved “spiritual milestones that are unparalleled in the spiritual history of the world” this cult; which appropriates the institutionalised symbolic capital of a “university,” asserts that “powerful negative energies from the spiritual dimension also play a major part” in creating a “polluted environment” that “contributes to the 98% of the causes of climate change”. It’s important not to confuse the “negative energy” concept of physics with this pseudo-scientific woo.
Regardless, what the SSRF ultimately promotes is a “yogic” or “Hindu” “way of life”. Or, rather, a “lifestyle” based on “spiritual living”. This equates to a vitalistic interpretation of reality based on cultivating sattva; which is the preferred “mode of existence” that yogis are trying to cultivate. Stephen Jacobs explains that:
Sattva is a Sanskrit term that is generally translated as balance or harmony. Sattva is a concept more commonly associated with yoga. However, in the modern context sattva is frequently articulated with the ancient Indian medicinal system of āyurveda in discourses on food and diet. This paper locates AOL in the holistic milieu. The holistic milieu is characterised by discourses and practices that emphasise health and wellbeing for mind, body and spirit. Balance and harmony are significant tropes in the holistic milieu, and so the concept of sattva seems to be particularly applicable.
Finding balance and harmony by cultivating sattva surely can’t be a bad thing, right? In and of itself, probably not; however, the point being made here is metonymic. A category such as sattvik becomes an empty shell of a term that can be used by different groups to signify seemingly similar things yet ultimately have potentially quite different outcomes. Would the average online yogi looking for information know that the SSRF is basically an armageddon-inspired, millennialist death cult that yearns for a nuclear apocalypse to cleanse the earth of non-sattvik people? And, it is only there spiritual lifestyle and WW3 survival guide that will work.
Is this the knowledge that Modi and Swaraj assert will help with climate change?
Nitasha Kaul’s work on the rise of the political right in India in relation to its mix of Hindu supremacist ideology with development and its own blend of neoliberal policies with a type of cultural nostalgia is poignant. Kaul argues that, “The success of contemporary right-wing nationalism has relied upon a systematic projection of the mythology of a new kind of leader who acts in an emotive realm of politics, promises to take people back to “the golden past as future,” […] The ‘Modi myth’ that projects him as an ascetic, paternal, and decisive ruler. This political myth is constantly reinforced through medium, speech, and performance.”
This can be compared with Amanda Lucia’s ideas relating to the proselytizing ethic of yoga emissaries emboldened with a missionary zeal to save the world through spreading the knowledge of yoga. Lucia argues, that, “North American yogis export yoga globally through proselytization, marketing, and yoga sevā (‘selfless service’) tourism. It reveals how these modern yogis construct the practice as a universal good, and the benefits of ‘doing yoga’ are often parsed with religious language.” Lucia argues that the current hypermobility of yoga is more productively analyzed through missiological models of proselytization and conversion, as opposed to economic models of production and consumption.
Sevā tourism, or, in the example below, service adventures, demonstrates a peculiar power dynamic. This is highlighted by Mary Mostafeanezhad, who discusses the “politics of aesthetics;” in which “volunteer tourists aestheticise poverty by describing it as authentic and cultural, and in so doing perpetuate an aesthetic structure that depoliticizes poverty.” The wellness movement relies, instinctively, it seems, on reward coercion. Still, can we say more about the dynamics of yoga tourism in relation to sevā tourism and its pathological twins, poverty tourism and dark tourism? What exists beyond glossy websites and stories of helping kids in Nairobi, Delhi or Phnom Penh slums align their hips and engage their mūlabandha (perineal/pelvic floor contraction)?
Recent trends in the global wellness tourism economy explain that, “The wellness concept is transforming almost every aspect of travel and wellness tourism will only grow faster in years ahead, as it lies at the powerful intersection of two massive, booming industries: the usd2.6 trillion tourism industry and the usd4.2 trillion wellness market.”
Niche wellness tourism is purportedly going to help deal with the ill effects of mass tourism. A perceived yogic lifestyle becomes the perfect vehicle for this transformation supposedly to occur, as yoga-inflected tourism is categorised as niche tourism. This rhetoric highlights the move to capitalise on the fastest-growing sector of the tourism industry; which is currently valued at USD 680 billion, and is expected to grow to USD 808 billion by 2020.
While wellness tourism is currently 15 percent of the total tourism industry’s revenue; it is growing more than twice as fast as the overall tourism sector. And, in an effort to counter the ill effects of mass tourism, niche-speciality “wellness tourism” is now actively promoted as a “sustainable alternative.” Also, while the proposed benefits of tourism might relieve poverty in tourist-reliant economies, there are many unintended consequences, such as an increase in pollution.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), International tourist arrivals are up 6% in 2018. “The growth of tourism in recent years confirms that the sector is today one of the most powerful drivers of economic growth and development. It is our responsibility to manage it in a sustainable manner and translate this expansion into real benefits for all countries, and particularly, to all local communities, creating opportunities for jobs and entrepreneurship and leaving no one behind” said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili. “This is why UNWTO is focussing 2019 on education, skills and job creation.”, he added.
This is where the soft power approach of India appears. India’s AYUSH Ministry asserts that its ‘Common Yoga Protocol’ purportedly represents the paragon of moral-political economies that can achieve the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For an informative conference panel on Tourism and the SDGs Conference #Tourism4SDGs, click HERE. The Tourism4SDGs website is a good resource. And, more comprehensive information related to SDG#12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), is available, here.
We find ourselves standing at a curious intersection of faith-based aid, religion, soft-power politics, development, and the promotion of yoga-related lifestyles. As Chika Watanabe discusses in her new book, Becoming One: Religion, Development, and Environmentalism in a Japanese NGO in Myanmar, few scholars have looked at the connections between religion and development. Fewer have looked at faith-based aid beyond Western religious aid; and fewer, still, have looked at the ambivalent legacies of these relations. Considering this context, none have explored the soft-power politics of yoga-based aid as implemented by the United Nations, its connections to the Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030 (#Yoga4SDGs), and the faith-based development work of Indian-origin, non-state institutions working internationally, like the Art of Living Foundation; which is apparently the world’s largest volunteer-based NGO, now operating in 155 countries.
As a consequence of the wellness tourism sector growing faster than any other sector, the global carbon supply chain shows that the tourism industry is responsible for around 10 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Also, “over tourism” and “tourist pollution” have become the defining features of the global tourism market. There seems to be a palpable level of cognitive dissonance and willful misrecognition involved in projecting a sustainable mode of consuming wellness. What, then, is the right balance between sustainable tourism and economic development?
Like many countries that rely on tourism, Japan is struggling to create a sustainable environmental and social balance in order to increase tourism. Just like India, which also intends to double its own FTAs (foreign tourist arrivals) from the current 10 million per year to 20 million, within the next three years. The Indian Ministry of Tourism documents its Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India. Yet, the reality on the ground is a far cry from what is found in policy documents. Even though it is the environment that features prominently in the Incredible!ndia 2.0 campaign. As these two examples, demonstrate.
But, do these advertisements sell a lie? And, while some might bemoan the perceived evils of Western cultural appropriation. These advertisements are made and sponsored by the Indian government. Therefore, how far can the decolonization of yoga practically go when the neo-orientalist, colonially-constructed myths are reconstituted by the Indian state to sell its own rarefied culture for the sole purpose of profit and symbolic capital towards achieving its soft power ambitions.
The personal, ethical choice to invest in transforming the self through movement and consumption of various levels of wellness packages affects all religions. Take, for example, the pollution caused by the annual Hajj to Mecca; and the pollution caused in sensitive ecosystems in other parts of the world. Here is an interesting example of how wellness tourism and spiritual/secular pilgrimage plus nature combine to promote tourism in the form of a ‘spiritual retreat’ in Nara Prefecture, Japan. And, the history of Kyoto alongside all of its wonderful temples becomes an alluring backdrop for yoga-inspired wellness retreats. Throughout Japan, Zen and yoga are seamlessly blended to form an alluring and intoxicating melange of oriental othering.
Too much tourism is not good for the environment. Yet, the marketing of many wellness packages promises a deeper connection to the environment. That does not prevent the legitimation of “transformative travel” as being perceived as more “authentic.” As Diane Daniel explains, “The Global Wellness Summit’s 2018 trend report labeled ‘transformative wellness travel’ a top trend, calling it a step beyond ‘authentic’ or ‘experiential’ travel — one that reaches ‘a deeper emotional level.’”
Another example from Japan is that tourism now provides approximately USD1.85 trillion to Japan’s economy. However, Japanese citizens increasingly use the phrase “tourism pollution” (kangō かんごう , 観光; kōgai こうがい, 公害) to describe their annoyance at the amount of tourists cluttering streets and driving up prices. Also, recent reports suggest that the increase in international tourism is affecting the domestic tourism market, particularly those now choosing to avoid Kyoto due to its congestion.
Yet, just how much of Japan’s tourist pollution, or any country, for that matter, is related directly to yoga-inflected wellness tourism is somewhat difficult to judge. This is also true of quantifying the benefits of adopting a “yogic lifestyle” to help attenuate climate change.
Still, most foreign tourists to Japan only stay between 4–6 days and move between the bigger urban/tourist centres of Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara and Osaka. In order to reduce the burden on this corridor the Ministry of Agriculture, Foresty and Fisheries (MAFF) has a Rural Development and Tourism Policy that focuses on making “authentic” rural areas attractive. In conjunction with the UNWTO, this includes developing gastronomy tourism. A perfect example of this is a slow-food home cooking class that also includes a zen-pilates-yoga-meditation session on the shore of Japan’s largest lake, Biwako.
From within the usd6.8 trillion global wellness tourism industry we can identify a “transformative (self-)development” narrative. Some key words that stand out, include: self-transformation, transformative, self-development, sustainable development, and capacity building. Within the marketing of the global wellness industry there is an interesting rhetorical assemblage of evocative phrases that rely on inspiring growth, not only of the individual, but, also, the community, nation, and world. This relies on a nostalgic-romantic mood, and deep ecological ethic. And leads us to consider the concept of “inner wellness tourism,” which makes up most of the wellness tourism market, particularly to Asia. This form of tourism is what Yvette Reisinger calls “transformational tourism.”
This transformative lifestyle rhetoric exists in the marketing of yoga teacher-training courses. Like the one that Shantarasa Yoga offers: “When you train with Shantarasa Yoga Darshana you access a superlative training system that has successfully prepared hundreds of teachers who are now enjoying the thrill of contributing to the health and upliftment of people all over the world. Our mentoring and trainings are annually conducted on four continents and continue to support and educate yoga practitioners in over 10 countries. Sadhana and Keval are highly gifted yoga educators who have spent their whole adult lives dedicated to living and imparting an authentic yogic way of life. We invite you to participate in this exciting and truly transformative conscious life journey.”
However, what actually constitutes an “authentic yogic way of life” is open to debate. This binary of X is yoga: Y is not yoga is a fundamental question related to citizens of Yogaland and the politics of representation. This leads into finding very subtle intersections and implicated subjectivities through fuzzy social-political-economic boundaries that are easy to bypass, spiritually speaking, which unite different “worlds” in unanticipated and often distanced ways.
However, if yoga truly is emancipatory and can be used to create net positive efforts, why does it seem somewhat hollow, no matter how authentic it appears? In the process of developing an emancipatory paradigm that aims to critically examine the complex networks of desire and consumption related to transformational “(self-)development;” not only of the individual, but also the community, nation, and world, a bigger picture emerges of previously unimaginable connections.
This includes the subtle ways in which the banal interest in spirituality and yoga by “global consumers of yoga” can lead towards enculturation and tacit support of Hindu supremacist ideology; which takes a generic version of neoliberalism and reconstitutes it through a development model narrative to facilitate cultural renewal and geopolitical imperialism to, one day, perhaps, create a pan-global Hindu theocracy. While this is a very lofty goal, indeed, nevertheless, in this age of popularist politics this is an under-appreciated topic worthy of discussion.
It needs to be stated explicitly that the argument presented here is not: anyone who does yoga is automatically supporting Hindu supremacism. That is an absurd proposition and a logical fallacy equivalent to Argumentum ad Hitlerum. As in, “Hitler drank water, so do you, therefore, you are like Hitler and support Nazi Socialism.”
The proposition is much more nuanced than this. Regardless of how similar the state-led mass exercises, above, appear. Or the similar logic behind them; which relates to the ways in which the global consumer of wellness is coerced into attempting to achieve (self-)development and capacity building goals that fall quite neatly into the schema involved with internalising desire; which includes constructing an identity that enables conformity to the normative expressions of a group; say, a “yoga tribe;” and, which also can be appreciated as part of the bodily fascist, neo-liberal, bio-moral regime of power that Khalikova discusses, in relation to nationalism and consumerism.
Through the othering of yoga and India and Japan via a Romantic and Orientalist lens, which the Indian and Japanese governments are equally complicit in performing though its marketing and branding in attempts to value add and create demand to increase foreign tourist arrivals, the overlapping entanglement of wellness interests with the theo-political aspirations occurs through the sharing in generic symbols, textual references, and different appeals to mystery, authority, tradition and purity. These often elide deeper socio-political currents, obligations, and consequences related to, amongst other things, abstract statist, nation-building objectives. The benefits of soft nationalism in relation to tourism and developing the economy are found in both Japan and India. Health-conscious persons can choose Japan as their one-stop-shop for “variety of activities like Zen meditation, Yoga,
Spa, Thalassotherapy, Walking, Gastronomy, Cultural Experiences, Cool Japan, Beauty treatment, Medical Check-ups/treatment etc. so that you can make yourself relaxed and comfortable both physically and mentally.” This can include guided hiking tours “on the spiritual Kunisaki Peninsula with the emphasis on health of mind and body. Yoga, meditation and gentle walks through rural scenery; accommodation in family-run inns, mouth watering cuisine, onsen hot spring baths.” In contrast, Japanese yoga tourists to Japan are attracted to India, in part, to connect to a pan-Asian sentiment. Puri, Odisha, is a popular destination for yoga tourists. Also, India is pitching Buddhism as a way to increase Japanese tourist numbers.
Still, tourism and development are blended into a nationalist aspiration in India. Often, the ‘hard Hindutva’ is essentialised and softened for banal consumption through, as Aramuvadan explains, the transcoding of Romanticism via appeals to identity, community and history; which operate through reconstituted cultural memory, as opposed to documentable influence. Neoliberalism is an indelible partner of the Indian state’s Hindu supremacist agenda. Which, similar to the rhetoric of global yoga, obfuscates the harder end of ideology through romantic appeals to holism and deep ecology.
The Indian state and other non-state actors want to promote yoga and oṁ chanting, etc., as a universal cultural product that is open to everyone. The proposition is that it is the bedrock of a universal cultural heritage and not necessarily or specifically, Indian. That yoga is as ancient as time itself. One can see this in the annual report for the AYUSH ministry, which ahistorically links yoga to the Indus Valley Culture through the clay seals, like the Pashupati seal, (see 2.6.4); which, apparently, is proof of yoga’s deeper antiquity.However, Asko Parpola considers this Phase 3 Harappan seal to be a type of insignia that was worn via a string connected to the back of the seal which represented the wearer’s social rank as a priest.
However, that is another issue of cultural appropriation, since we do not know with certainty what these seals actually have to tell us. Yet, this factoid is constantly recycled by many to deepen yoga’s antiquity and assert a moral authority. Yet, it conveniently avoids the textual evidence that points to haṭha yoga developing from the 11th-century onwards, and not 4000–5000 years ago; which Jason Birch clearly articulates.
This new industry report on the economics of wellness tourism, female consumption and soft power is intriguing. In part, it urges us to try and answer the following question: Just how problematic is yoga-focused niche wellness tourism for tourism-reliant economies?
It makes us wonder even more: Can yoga and Sanskrit really make the individual and world a better place? Can yoga and Sanskrit really save the world? If so, how? My guess is, probably not. But, the perennial nature of this assertion is quite intriguing. While these questions might sound ludicrous to the outsider, to the “true believer,” they are central to the utopian aspiration that binds different social worlds together through a neo-Romantic ethic, a neo-Pagan mood and a utopian, post-national, cosmopolitanism that is steeped in a deep eco-theology predicating sustainable lifestyles. It is assumed that a “yogic lifestyle” equates with a “sustainable lifestyle,” and, if everyone just did yoga the world would be a better place. This includes the perception that the supposed spiritual power of the Sanskrit language can literally purify people and places. For instance, Katy Jane, explains through an appeal to mystery, that:
Sonic Healing Through Vedic Chanting
There’s a secret behind Vedic chanting as vibrational medicine. […] As a vibrational language, Sanskrit is not only about translating texts. It’s meant to be heard and repeated. Just hearing the sounds — perfectly intoned — is a powerful therapy for both the individual and society. […] Varṇa is the proper pronunciation of the Sanskrit syllables. To make each sound correctly requires a precise positioning of the organs of speech in order to direct the prāṇa (life-force) back to the central core of the body. When we speak our ordinary language, we expel our lifeforce and deplete our energy. But when pronounced precisely, chanting the Sanskrit syllables re-directs the prana back into the body, awakening vigor and higher intelligence.
This next example, from a recent NY Times article, demonstrates how the humanitarian ethic is embedded in the marketing-recruitment strategy of global yoga.
‘You Are Changing Life on the Planet!’
In a companywide email from 2014 obtained by The Times, Heather Peterson, the company’s chief yoga officer, seemingly framed CorePower’s recruitment model as humanitarian. “The impact that yoga practice makes in each person’s life is profound!” the email reads, lauding a teacher who had recruited six people in a single week. “When you multiply that by the impact of being immersed in yoga for 8 weeks in Teacher Training, you are changing life on the planet!”
There are some potential unintended consequences that might arise through consuming various types of “yoga” that are attenuated by arbitrary, pseudoscientific and ethno-nationalist claims. And, being gullible, consumers imbibe this anti-intellectual soft nationalism that results. As well as the ethical nature of relying on neo-romantic pseudoscientific appeals to mystery and authority, what does this do for the perceived credibility of yoga producers and consumers? Should we care? Why are many yoga-related topics considered by some “true-believing” yoga people to be taboo? There is a particular strain of global yogi which presents a rather fundamentalist attitude.
Should we dare risk causing offense in the process of working out delicate and difficult issues? Or, are we forever bound by political correctness and perceived levels of authority and legitimacy thrust upon us by self-proclaimed protectors of ‘authentic yoga traditions’ and their authoritarian identity politics? How to practicably bridge the gap in a meaningful and substantive way between the often anti-intellectual disposition of the yoga ‘practitioner’ and the objective, distanced gaze of the ‘scholar’?
What to make of the marketing spin embedded in the rhetoric of not only the global wellness tourism/yoga industry, but also that of the Indian state? There is a continuum of tacit to explicit endorsement that unifies through an utopian aspiration to transform not only the self, but also the world, through yoga. Take, for example, the pledge from the 2018 International Day of Yoga (IDY), which invited people to “pledge to make yoga an integral part of my daily life.” This seems quite banal, yet there is a huge amount of meaning encoded in this pledge, particularly in the adjective, integral.
As a soft-power exercise, in 2014, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, asserted in the lead up to the first IDY, that, “Yoga is an invaluable gift of ancient Indian tradition. It embodied unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfilment; harmony between man and nature and a holistic approach to health and well-being. Yoga is not about exercise but to discover the sense of oneness with ourselves, the world and Nature. By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us to deal with climate change.”
Yet, as Jaggi Vasudev, a somewhat controversial self-styled “godman” explains in this promotional video from IDY 2016, there is very little in the way of any policy beyond the idea that yoga…simply…works…to raise consciousness; and, this, by itself, will seemingly lead to a more sustainable world. Or, that it will enable the raising of a collective consciousness to an unspecified frequency that will then create the environment for sustainable ideas to be created, promoted and embodied.
Both the Indian state (through its Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry for Tourism and AYUSH) and the global wellness industry endorse neoliberal values that coerce us into the consensus-building process of finding a yogic ‘way of life’ or ‘tribe’ through consuming yoga-inflected lifestyles so that we can experience the ‘transformational’ ‘power’ to one day become very much the Nietzschean ideal of the super-men and women (übermenschen)and assert our position on some arbitrary moral index through “finding our True North.”
While in the intangible cultural product of yoga might be marketed as having an emancipatory end game, it is firmly embedded as a neoliberal accoutrement to continually keep us self-improving and transforming into the best version of ourselves that we can be. The global economy is heavily invested in the consumption of identity and continuously offers us ways to do this.
Even still, if the aim is to increase inbound tourists to countries like India and Japan; which ordinarily requires an increase in the global carbon supply chain, what will become of the various types of pollution that an increase in tourism would necessitate? As Dong et al explain, “According to AirVisual, the top 10 polluted cities were dominated by India, Pakistan and China in 2018.” However, while it is a hard sell, the Incredible!ndia marketing program has done little to assuage the incredible amount of pollution. Which leads to the $108-million dollar questions: How will the Indian state’s desire to double the foreign tourist arrivals help reduce pollution? How will performing the Common Yoga Protocol improve the quality of the air? Perhaps, the answers lay in white papers, such as this one, Yoga, Personal Transformation, and Global Sustainability?
Yoga Can Contribute To A Slowing Of The Earth’s Warming: We need to extract the essence of yoga, distilling the practice down to a few minutes that can be done regularly by anyone, anytime, anywhere. Imagine the possibilities if most of the one billion people in the developed world, where consumption is most rampant, were acting through emotional regulation and self-mastery most of the time, with each striving to be mindful of future generations. Humanity would make great strides toward leaving the smallest possible carbon footprint. And imagine the possibilities if every child in the world could learn these transformative life skills from childhood.
It is worth rolling up the sleeves and digging deeper into the various and subtle ways in which consuming yoga might lead to helping with climate change. It seems far-fetched, in my own mind, at least. Still, whether you participate in a day of stretching or make stretching and some yoga-related lifestyle a big or small part of your life, it is worth considering that there are many ways in which yoga and related identities are operationalized and politicized for aims that are beyond the knowledge or interest of many. Whether all of this is a clarion call to quit yoga is up to the reader to decide. It is worth considering how far the claims actually go to cultivate the idea that yoga can help. But, as explained above, this is complicated and exceptionally difficult to measure. Still, is there much need to try and measure if rolling the mat out and stretching is good for the environment, or not? I guess it depends on what the mat is made from and how far one goes to roll it out.
Patrick McCartney, PhD, is a JSPS Post-Doctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies at Kyoto University in Japan. Patrick explores the communication strategies involved in the politics of imagination, the sociology of spirituality, the anthropology of religion, and the economics of desire in relation to the imaginative consumption of global yoga. His current project focuses on the Japanese yoga industry in relation to global wellness tourism and can be followed at yogascapesinjapan.com.
© 2019 Patrick McCartney
Yogascapes in Japan by Patrick McCartney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
