When I ask yoga teachers which aspects of their craft they want to take to a higher level, expressing cultural appreciation and avoiding cultural appropriation are always near the top of the list.
This is, of course, a good thing.
Efforts to raise awareness about cultural appropriation have succeeded in drawing attention to negative impacts of colonialism and helped make yoga environments more inclusive. However, they haven’t done much to close the gap between yoga’s original spiritual purpose and the materialistic orientation of its commodified present-day descendent.
It’s also made some Western-bodied yoga teachers who deeply revere yoga’s wisdom tradition hesitant to step into the seat of the teacher. Ironically, an initiative with inclusive intentions has had an exclusive impact.
This is a significant break from the recent past. It wasn’t so long ago that many prominent Western teachers had ties to traditional lineages and operated yoga studios rooted in a spiritual ethos.
In the post-pandemic yoga landscape, the presence of such teachers and studios has receded.
So, why haven’t good-faith efforts to address cultural appropriation led to stronger connections between Western-bodied teachers and traditional yoga lineages?
One reason is that anti-colonial critiques of yoga rely on the same modernist frameworks that gave rise to colonialism and capitalism in the first place.
In other words, when anti-colonialism looks at yoga through a modern historical lens rather than through the lens of yoga itself, it disconnects anti-colonialism from the yoga tradition it aspires to re-connect teachers and practitioners to.
Another case of not being able to solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.
Another reason is that, despite a compulsory acknowledgement that yoga is ultimately meant to help us transcend materially constructed gender, racial, and national identities, the anti-colonial yoga movement leans into the language of liberal identity politics.
As a result, they do as much to reinforce the obstacles to yoga—ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life—as they do to point the way past them.
This is, admittedly, a tough needle to thread because anti-colonial yoga requires both validation and transcendence of material identities.
Fortunately, traditional yoga wisdom doesn’t need modernizing in order to accommodate both.
Many of yoga’s traditional values—like compassion, truthfulness, and equal vision—resonate with modern liberal ideals. But yoga wisdom derives these values from an altogether different paradigm.
The philosophical floor plan of the traditional yoga blueprint can be found in the first instruction of the Bhagavad-gītā:
Yoga begins with the idea that our true identity is eternal and spiritual—a spark of consciousness that’s categorically different from the transformations of matter that constitute the temporary bodies we inhabit for an insignificant glimmer of cosmic time:
Where does this teaching come from?
If yoga is a path of liberation, it must itself originate from a liberated source. As the Gītā explains, the teachings of yoga are not human inventions; they are revealed teachings passed down through a chain of realized teachers to preserve their liberating power.
Even from a historical perspective, the Bhagavad Gītā, along with other core Vedic literature, forms the basis for Indian religion and culture; they don’t arise from them.
In other words, yoga culture is spiritual culture—not Indian, not Western, not bound to any nation, race, or time. Its universality lies in changeless principles that can be adapted to different times and places without losing their essence.
Knowing the difference between eternal truths and variable forms is the heart of authentic teaching. When we adjust for cultural context but stay rooted in yoga’s philosophical foundation, we honor the tradition in both spirit and practice.
From this view, conversations around cultural appropriation and decolonization have to shift. If we frame them within a materialistic worldview that emphasizes national, racial, or ethnic identity, we’ll miss yoga’s deeper message: that the spiritual self transcends all those categories.
So how do we honor yoga’s roots?
- Learn from a teacher who’s connected to an authentic lineage.
- Live the teachings so they become part of your own embodied wisdom.
- Share your experiences with humility and care.
The yoga tradition is inclusive by its very nature, gives everyone an equal opportunity for self-realization, and supports both individual freedom and collective harmony.
When we make a solid connection to the traditional spiritual culture of yoga, all of the objectives of cultural appreciation, diversity, equity, and inclusion are served.
This is how yoga teachers from all walks of life can, and should, integrate respect for yoga’s wisdom tradition into their classes and offer their students an experience of yoga beyond just the physical practice.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k