For many yoga enthusiasts the practice is simply good exercise. But it seems for some it’s all about profits, ego and power. Some yoga schools and related businesses apparently are more concerned with maintaining their franchise and market share than the bodies of their clients, reports Business 2.0.
The article takes readers on a tour of prominent yoga entrepreneurs, who appear to be the antithesis of what you would expect, much more about the bottom line than something transcendent.
The yoga notables covered include seemingly status-driven celebrity name-dropper Bikram Choudhury, who likes flashy watches and John Abbot former banker and now the owner of “Yoga Journal” magazine, who seems intensely focused on his market share.
The article is an interesting look at how yoga has become little more than a business to make money for many of its advocates.
But another aspect of the yoga business is the use of the now popular and fashionable practice to proselytize. That is, some groups called “cults” or “cult-like” draw in adherents through an apparent kind of “bait and switch” process. These groups seem to feed off yoga as a vehicle to bring people into their subculture and/or mindset. And this process can be intensified through the use of “meditation,” often more like hypnotic trance induction, which makes students more malleable.
Yoga practitioners involved in this process may eventually become more than just exercise buffs. They can become devotees of some charismatic leader and/or sect.
This recruitment process is not uncommon. After all, yoga’s actual roots are religious not secular. Anyone interested in taking classes should check out the background of their school before becoming involved, to make sure it doesn’t have a hidden agenda.
Some groups, which have raised concerns are 3HO led by “Yogi Bhajan,” Integral Yoga International (IYI) and “Yogaville” founded by Swami Satchidananda, Dahn Hak Tao “Healing Society” led by “Master Lee” and a Patanjali Yoga Shala studio in Manhattan run by teacher Eddie Stern.
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