Yoga gets dunked on a lot. Even more when you are a guy doing yoga. It is seen as a feminine and hippie kind of thing.
But that’s a dumb way of thinking, of course.
Yoga is good for flexibility, training your balance, focussing on your breath and staying calm and it even trains strength. A daily yoga session of ten minutes can keep you stretched, flexible, and calm.
As I said, yoga for women is already pretty popular. I know multiple women who do yoga on a regular basis. Men, not so much. But I want to change that, and inspire men to step out of their comfort zone, break the patriarchic view of yoga and keep them fitter.
Who in here has experience with yoga already? Please share your tips and visions!
The disturbing sides of yoga don’t stem from yoga itself, but the people using it. Nationalists will always seek to misappropriate cultural artifacts of “their people’s history”. This is why Indian nationalists use yoga to justify supremacist actions, why Nazis use Viking imagery, Buddhism misappropriated by Tibet, etc etc.
So we shouldn’t shun or dismiss a practice just because nationalists use it for evil. If we do that, then that becomes a victory for the rightists as they can further point to it being “exclusively theirs”. Culture is meant to be shared and enjoyed by all, including guests, so long as everyone is respectful.
When rightists use culture artifacts to justify the suppression of others, they do not respect even their own culture any longer.
When studying the history of yoga, you won’t find original yogis, or even the disciples/students suggesting the elimination of other cultures. What you’ll find is people suggesting that by exercising control and discipline over your mind and body, you will come closer to and possibly achieve enlightenment and experience divinity.
Yes, of course. I didn’t meant to discredit yoga and its spiritual sides but I can see how my wording is a bit wrong.