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Because I’m an Indian yoga teacher in America, I’m often asked about my views on cultural appropriation. For the last several years, I’ve watched the dialogue around this topic develop into increasingly hostile and divisive. I find that, like so many other issues nowadays, the conversation lacks nuance.

As an Indian-American, I’ve grown up dancing between cultures in a way that’s familiar to most first- and second-generation immigrants. We regularly feel like outsiders once we immerse ourselves in our home culture and like foreigners once we live in western society. This experience, though, gives us the chance to seek out an inner authenticity that grounds us in each environment and allows us to see the virtues and flaws of every.

The role of yoga in Indian culture

To start, I feel it’s vital for us to have a look at all the weather that create a culture. Yes, there’s a shared history involved. Culture also encompasses language, clothing, culinary traditions, types of movement, societal norms, rituals, celebrations, art, and family structures. Indian culture is, indeed, wealthy in all these ways and more.

The practice of yoga is only one thread on this tapestry. Yoga practice could mean pranayama and a couple of stretches within the morning, half an hour of prayer and chanting within the puja room, or reading the Bhagavad Gita before bed. It’s incorporated into one’s day as concurrently essential and never an important thing.

This context is what I feel is usually missing within the cultural appropriation conversation. Those of us within the west for whom yoga has develop into a occupation or lifestyle are inclined to obsess about it in a way that I rarely witness in India. In our quest to practice or teach yoga “the suitable way,” a lot of us turn the yogic arts right into a commodity that should be consumed and perfected through books, training, retreats, and countless online discussion.

Instead, I’m wondering if it might be more useful for those of us who’re leaders within the yoga space to encourage practitioners to easily practice the way in which Indians do—as a lighthearted a part of on a regular basis life.

Redefining cultural “appropriation”

I recently read a post from someone who was indignant about how the west has adopted haldi doodh, a turmeric milk drink common in India, and stripped it of its Indian name, as an alternative referring to it as “golden milk.”

I can understand the problematic nature of removing something from its cultural context. Indeed, that is how asana practice can turn right into a circus show.

But I don’t think that the reply to appropriation lies solely in calling something by its proper name or consuming it from the suitable proprietor, whether that be a yoga teacher, an ayurvedic practitioner, or one other expert. The deeper wisdom lies in integration.

In Indian culture, we don’t need a special mix to make haldi doodh. We simply boil milk on the stove and add turmeric, ginger, black pepper, and other spices to taste. If we teach people easy methods to do that, we give them the gift of formality and we free them, in a single small way, to maneuver from consumerism to culture.

I can see why Indian culture is seductive to westerners. Within the west, we value freedom, independence, and progress. In India, we value familial bonds, interdependence, and tradition. I imagine it feels welcoming and exciting for somebody who grew up within the individualistic culture of the west to experience the wealthy sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations of India.

I feel we owe gratitude to the westerners who’ve fallen in love with our country and shared its practices with the world. We don’t own these practices because they got here from our people. And we will acknowledge this universality without condoning the exoticization and profiteering of indigenous wisdom, or excusing the harm that may come from taking something that’s been rooted in a culture throughout generations and ridiculing it or seizing it for private gain.

Nothing is ideal

I also think we must be clear that Indian culture is like every other in that it’s complex and imperfect. I had the experience of finding myself weighed down by the expectations of my home culture and drawn to chart my very own course in America. The liberty I feel here’s a gift, and I’m grateful for the grounding I get from my Indian roots. There’s value in each way of life. There are also potential pitfalls.

Let’s take the instance of a teaching lineage. In most types of traditional yoga, the practice is passed down from a teacher to their students. A number of the students will eventually develop into teachers and proceed to pass on these teachings, leading to an unbroken thread. When manifested with pure and humble hearts, lineage is a wonderful approach to give up one’s ego. Everyone within the lineage is a wave within the flow of wisdom, an element of something larger while also living out their unique purpose.

In point of fact, nevertheless, it doesn’t all the time work that way. Indian culture’s emphasis on duty can result in subservience and rigidity inside a lineage, which results in unhealthy power dynamics, which might result in abuse of assorted kinds. In this manner, hierarchies develop into authoritarian and harmful.

The west’s typical response to this can be problematic. Our tendency is to forged aside anything that requires us to quiet our individual sense of importance. We brand ancient practices as our own and inflate our egos in the method, losing the greater meaning behind what we teach.

A way forward with cultural appropriation and appreciation

So what’s the reply to those conversations about cultural appropriation? On this moment, once we are fighting all types of culture wars, often online, perhaps essentially the most radical and effective path forward is to be engaged within the technique of yoga in real life. To  come to our practice in a way that honors its roots and allows us to evolve. To spend more time on the mat, on the cushion, and in reference to people than we do worrying about pronouncing things perfectly or shouting into the social media void. To cultivate a life that’s full and to bring yoga into its appropriate place inside that life.

In this manner, the practice of yoga becomes not our primary focus but our support system. It becomes something that can not be exploited for profit since it lives inside each of us. Moving forward in this manner, we’d actually begin to trust in each other’s good intentions and construct a continually evolving culture of authenticity, respect, humility, and love.

About our contributor 

Pranidhi Varshney is the founding father of Yoga Shala West, a community-supported Ashtanga Yoga studio in West Los Angeles. She can be mother to 2 children who she describes as “courageous and sensible little beings.” The thread that runs through all her work is the will to construct community and live from the guts.