Continuity with Consumer Culture -- Through Branding

The Global Popularization of Yoga



Early modern yoga was often marred by controversy for its countercultural agenda. Despite its visibility therefore, modern yoga only attracted a small following in the West made up of those who could afford to be eccentric.

FOUR (Jain's three) DEVELOPMENTS enabled the global popularization of modern yoga:

  1. Mobility: The ability to travel allowed teachers to travel to sell their wares and consumers to travel to seek new experiences.
  2. Disillusionment with Established Religious Institutions: Gurus and godmen were able to break into the spiritual marketplace with solutions to these problems.
  3. Growth of Consumer Culture: Postural Yoga Increasingly Intersected with growing global consumer culture-they appropriated popular ideas and practices of late 20th century consumer culture enabling the shift from visibility to popularization through consumption.
  4. The notion of CHOICE is central to consumer narratives. This CHOICE runs counter to the meta-narratives (like institutional religion or biomedicine) that believe they have the monopoly on truth. What global consumers expressed as an identity was this individual choice (occupation, marriage, leisure, material goods, lifestyle, diet, ideology, religion, etc.).

--PETER BERGER (sociologist) "The Heretical Imperative" -- instead of being demonized, the idea of personal choice became a necessity along with increasing globalization and the growth of consumer culture.

--These choices were a MARKER OF PERSONAL IDENTITY -- they reflected individual preferences and were conscious decisions made by each consumer.

The result was a bricolage: the synchretism (mixing) of heterogenous (unrelated) ideas and practices constructed by the individual for the individual. (Bricolage could be something as sacred as religion).

  • yoga moved from an esoteric countercultural activity to an esoteric body maintenance regimen for the masses. 
  • yoga became a system of individual self-development tied to market capitalism
Protestant ethic in the West: Yoga was touted as a system of Self-Development
    • a system of individual salvation that could be combined with other "worldviews" and practices
    • European, American and Indian Gurus "reconstruct" yoga systems
    • attributed benefits that were separate from Indian Nationalism and Mystical Contexts 
  • Changed Method of delivery
    • changed from guru-disciple relationship in an ashram as gurus began to market to mass audiences
  • American and British Countercultures valorize yoga transnationally 
  • Result of transnational developments in Consumer Culture 

Visibility Without Popularization

  • Early visibility came in Western counterculture with meditational practices
    • Paramahansa Yogananda
    • Swami Vivekananda
  • Postural Yoga in the 1930s in India was an elite enterprise
    • prescribed by Hindu reformers in opposition to British Colonialism
    • emphasized scientific aspects of yoga as one component of the superiority of Indian culture
    • not translatable to Western culture or export
  • In the 1950's, popular magazines (e.g. Life) showed pictures of postural yoga practiced in India increasing its visibility without transfer to the West
Modern Soteriological (Religion of Salvation) Yoga
  • Westerners in the 1950s were looking for solutions to the perceived stresses, excess and chaos of modern life.
  • If the face of modernity, it provided a re-mystification of the world in the form of a personal (rather than institutional) spirituality
  • 1960s Rise of Spiritual Gurus (Entrepreneurial godmen)
    • Muktananda: Siddha Yoga and the Meditation Revolution (in India)
      • sold a direct spiritual experience with the "god" within you, which he facilitated called shaktipat
        • look, touch, strike on the head with peacock feathers. Shaktipat was a necessary initiation into yoga practice and required a guru.
      • provided "choices" for the amount of commitment one would make to the practice
      • provided an attractive retreat center (rather than traditional sparse ashram) for middle and upper class Europeans, Americans and Indians
      • Like other gurus in the spiritual marketplace, he used his and others transformational narratives to entice new students who desired the experience of shaktipat.
      • 1970s he marketed Siddha Yoga to the West by traveling in search of disciples and later introduced "intensives" where hundreds of people would receive shaktipat at once.
        • only required a weekend of commitment for seekers worldwide
        • emphasized a strong sense of belonging in an organized community for those who felt disenfranchised.
          • "the blissful, perfect, ordered life of utter dependency and spiritual bliss" (Sarah Caldwell, scholar and disciple)
    • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Trascendental Meditation
      • Spread TM throughout India and then in 1959 around the world
      • Yogi to the Beatles and others who gained popularity in the 1960s
    • Bhaktivendanta Prabhupada: Krishna Consciousness (Hari Krishna)
      • Established ISKCON in 1966
    • Satya Narayan Goenka: Vipassana Meditation
      • 1969 he brought "Insight Meditation" to the world- a universal form of "Buddhist Meditation"
  • All of the successful spiritual entrepreneurs used a number of different strategies to attract disciples
    • de-emphasizing Hindu aspects of yoga
    • denying any formal associations with traditional religious institutions
    • adapting traditions to "local tastes"
    • "the inclusivist, pluralist approach made teachings accessible to suburban clientele...facilitating opportunities for disciples to transcend the constraint of their ego-defined self and move beyond the humdrum existence of consumer life." (Chris Chapple)
  • Eventually embrace a doctrine of god-realization which rejects materialism, scientific technology and consumerism, and this was not palatable to the masses
Postural Yoga Gurus Become Mass Marketers
  • The entrepreneurial spirit was most strong among yoga proponents concerned with POSTURAL yoga.
  • Success based on the proponents willingness to consistently make concessions to consumer cultural norms and drop traditional requirements of yoga study and practice.
    • provided direct access to consumers without the intermediary of the teacher or text
    • marketed forms of yoga that did not privilege religious, ethnic, or national "metanarrative"--privileged individual choice instead
      • alms, celibacy, scriptural study, and retreat from society in favor of the increasing popularity of FITNESS

Marilyn Monroe: One of many celebrities to promote postural yoga as "body beautiful"
  • Gurus
    • Selvarajan Yesudian: Yoga and Health (1941/1953)
      • written with Elizabeth Haich became a best seller showed Yesudian in physical postures and emphasized his physical perfection 
      • Physical Culture was popular and at the root of Nazi eugenics: the health of the nation depends on the perfection of individual physical bodies. And physique is inherited.
      • His yoga schools in Europe which remained open until 1989
    • Swami Sivananda: Healthy Lifestyle Through Healthy Living
      • Enhancing mind through healthy living based on biomedical science: "good for anyone interested in enhancing the MIND through a healthy BODY" through his ashram in Rishikesh in north India
      • 1959 publication: Yogic Home Exercises: easy Course of Physical Culture for Modern Men and Women
      • Students traveled to the West to spread the system
        • Vishnudevananda: Spread the Sivananda system to the West
    • Krishnamacharya: Godfather of Modern Postural Yoga
      • Mysore School: trained teachers who created many popular postural "lineages" which principally made their way to the West. Gathering the patronage of celebrities beginning in the 1950s
        • Indira Devi
        • BKS Iyengar (Iyengar Yoga)
        • Pathabi Jois (Ashtanga Yoga)
        • DKV Deskichar (Viniyoga)
  • By the 1960s, many people across the world were choosing yoga a a daily physical regimen- chosen as a body-enhancing practice as part of an individual regimen packaged for self-development to consumers.
Branding Yoga
By the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s the postural yoga market became increasingly diversified and featured an endless variety of yoga brands constructed and marketed for immediate consumption.
  • 1997 Anusura Yoga (John Friend)--offered a better quality of yoga for consumption based on Iyengar yoga, but with "heart"
    • friend conveniently linked his brand to the lineage of Siddha Yoga (and the guru Nitayanda). As the finale at Wunderlust in 2011
    • Branding is all important in MPY--there is authority in branding yoga
  • Babtiste Yoga (Baron Baptiste)
  • Prana Vinyasa Yoga (Shiva Rea)
Packaging Yoga: The marketing of new age and metaphysical products
  • adopts disparate elements from different worldviews based on the needs and concerns of the individual 
  • "spiritual technologies" -- marketed postural yoga is a UNIVERSAL and SCIENTIFIC system that anyone can adopt as part of his or her larger worldview and practice.
  • SIVANANDA and KRISHNAMACHARYA were some of the first to market brands that touted:
    •  physical fitness, 
    • stress reduction, 
    • beauty and 
    • overall well-being.
  • Economic shifts went from one based on mass production to a personalized one based on "customized products for individualistic consumers."-goods and services
    • consumers construct their SELF-IDENTITY by consuming what they think signifies that self identity
    • marketers uniquely package their products by mythologizing them, a process which serves to position them in consumer's minds
    • BRANDS signify those meanings and yoga in general signifies self-development (become better people through physical and psychological transformation)
  • successful popular yoga entrepreneurs exploit pop-cultural trends:
    • body enhancement means self-development
    • establish yoga in the sports and fitness market
    • consumers today shop for classes that are convenient, open to the general public, and other yoga products (clothing, mats, jewelry) that are immediately available in shopping malls.
  • REJECTIONS? "Yoga to the People"-donation classes
First Generation Yoga Brands: Iyengar Yoga and Siddha Yoga (branded nonbranded yoga systems of Krishnamacharya and Nityananda, respectively)
  • Iyengar Yoga: capitalized on the value of fitness in branding
    • yoga conquers the body and makes it a fit vehicle for the soul
    • to the yogi, his body is a prime instrument of attainment
    • 1966 Light on Yoga
    • biomedical dialect-made postural yoga appealing to a wide variety of urbanites
    • did not have to give up their modern lifestyle commitments
    • established authority by claiming connections at the same time to modern traditions
      • Ramanuga-direct descendent
      • Invocation to Patanjali formerly only in ashtanga
      • Healing stories and $$$ stories
    • Rmamani Institute in Pune as official training site (only)-- stick with it (like Bikram) because of the incredible investment that you are required to make in terms of $$$ and time
  • Muktananda--different branding and trajectory
    • Siddha Yoda based on carefully selected scriptures (get out the weird stuff)
    • World tours and "retreats" established and "intensives" where devotees get "shakti pot" (divine light from the master)
      • commodification of shakti pot for $$$$$$
      • established siddha yoga centers where "community" could be established for those who could not be in direct contact with the master.
    • brand diminished when he was accused of indiscretions after his death (sex with young disciples).
  • All the practices we do are FIRST GENERATION BRANDS this semester
Second Generation Brands
  • Anusura Yoga (John Friend) 1997
    • goodness is present in everyone and the "heart" is at the center of practice
    • light heartedness and positive affirmation as a hallmark of the brand
    • 2009 teacher training manual solidified perspectives and control of brand
    • collaboration with fitness giants Addidas and Manduka
    • created consumer goods with Anusura branding
    • Locked in students with expensive and extensive training requirements
    • Yoga was accessible to a large audience, which could be integrated into any worldview or lifestyle.
"give feedback by first looking for what is right-- the beauty, the light and the positive in people and things-- instead of the ugliness, the darkness, or what is wrong. In this way you will always give the student the benefit of the doubt."
    • 2012 scandal and collapse (ethical and financial indescretion)
      • fled to Denver and touts a new brand: Svidaiva Yoga (Roots practice)
      • LINK
    • SURRENDER TO A GURU OR A BRAND? what is the difference?
    • CELEBRITY, GURU, or CEO? What's the difference?
    • KULA (and the notion of community) created in anusura yoga as a marketing tool

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