Member-only story
Yoga is not your toy
On t-shirts and other gimmicks
The person selling these t-shirts (not the person pictured) is some fake yoga teacher trying to capitalize on this new gimmick. But actually, no, this is NOT what Yoga is.
If this person cared at all about the ancestors and the lineages of yoga, they wouldn’t be appropriating yoga for their own ends.
Yoga is not your plaything. Yoga is not your object to mould and break and throw away how you want. Yoga belongs to LIVING PEOPLE WHO ARE RIGHT HERE ON THIS EARTH. Yoga belongs to my people — Hindus and other Dharmics each according to their authentic lineages. NO ONE ELSE. Therefore, no one else gets to define what yoga is. And no, you don’t get to re-write history to pretend like yoga somehow came from your country instead of the ancient Hindu civilization of INDIA. No amount of fantasizing and co-optation of my ancestors wisdom is going to make yoga yours so just stop. Aren’t you ashamed to do such an dishonest thing?
But the fake yoga teachers who make t-shirts like this don’t see my people as people. We don’t count as humans with the right to our own traditions and philosophies and practices to the thieves who call themselves “yoga teachers”. They have decided that they have a right to take what is ours and present it as “theirs”.
