The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

a brutally capitalist practice and especially so in big

cities? It’s extreme, everything is clean, presentable,

scented, there’s special music. Why isn’t anyone in

the yoga ‘industry’ — for that’s what it is now —

acknowledging it?”

There is more disappointment for Gilani, who is

of Pakistani Muslim heritage. White yoga-studio

owners “bandwagon jump about the lack of diver-

sity, acting like they’d always thought like this. The

fact is I don’t feel represented by anything I see.

Western yoga is, literally, a joke.”

Gilani is indifferent to the cynical commercial

imperative of Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellbeing brand,

Goop, but pays due respect in the book to Paltrow

and her husband at the time, Chris Martin, because

in late-Noughties London they too went to those

hardcore classes in crappy community centres with

smelly carpets. She’s also not averse to a bit of Lulu-

lemon herself, or the must-have Liforme mat.

Gilani still loves yoga, she still teaches and has her

own daily practice of 45-90 minutes. But overriding it

all is sadness. “Yoga has become so watered down, the

philosophical part has been discarded. It’s all quick-fix

cures. This bubble will have to burst. Yoga isn’t a

miracle cure, it’s meant to be a lifelong, in my mind

secular practice attached to a spiritual framework.”

The Yoga Manifesto covers a lot. For instance the

“good vibes only” slogans written across studio walls

are harmful, she says, and psychologists would agree

that it is ridiculous to expect people to be happy all

the time. She also criticises pseudo-spiritual babble,

like “Love and light ...”, uttered by sexy white

women dressed in white robes wearing bindis, and

the ubiquitous application of Om symbols, Hindu

gods and Sanskrit words. Her extra-special bugbear

is the use of the Sanskrit word namaste as a kind of

mandatory, faux-pious farewell; the word, she says,

has no place in the language of yoga or silly appropri-

ations for, say, nightwear (“Namastay in bed”). There

is also the reduction of mindfulness, let alone medi-

tation, into “something you can only do on an app”.

Gilani is by no means alone. The online soap

Namaste, Bitches takes aim at judgmental, coke-

snorting yoga teachers in LA. There is a global move-

ment among yoga teachers to change the name of

the practice to “mindful stretching”

to honour the fact that real yoga

demands many things aside from

the postures. Yoga is more than

being able to do a headstand. And

the American-based Bangladeshi

Muslim writer Fariha Roisin asks

many of the same questions of the

wider wellness economy in her own

book W ho Is Wellness For?.

The gentrification of spirituality

generally is of rising concern, as

everything we take from ancient

indigenous traditions, from animism

to psychedelic medicines, becomes

fair game for wellness capitalism.

Erik-Davis of the Chacruna Institute of Psychedelic

Plant Medicines, which seeks to preserve the

authentic cultures behind psychedelic use, says:

“Today’s spiritual landscape has been largely

absorbed into a multibillion-dollar wellness industry

that, while bringing some healing tools and tech-

niques to the market, has also banalised — ‘gentrified’

— spirituality. Rather than helping people transcend

or expand the self, the wellness industry pampers and

indulges instead.”

By the time Gilani wrote The Yoga Manifesto she

says the pain and the anger had turned into a calm

focus. “I think the anger was good,

it was right, but I needed to turn it

into something useful. I have made

strong points. I don’t worry about

hurting [yoga teachers’] egos. They

can be angry or defensive or maybe

they can take a look at themselves.”

The practice of svadhyaya, or self-

study, is, after all, an essential part

of practising yoga. The ancient

texts don’t mention looking hot in

tiny shorts while executing a diffi-

cult posture. ■

The Yoga Manifesto by Nadia Gilani is

published by Pan Macmillan at £16.99

‘I don’t worry

about hurting

[yoga teachers’]

egos. They can

be angry or

defensive or

maybe they can

take a look at

themselves’

Ashtanga teacher

and writer Nadia

Gilani is exposing the

darker side of yoga

Jared Rice/Unsplash, Jen Armstrong

The Sunday Times Style • 33