Selling yoga back to its teachers is pure neocolonialism | Swami Ambikananda Saraswati

This week began with the proverbial storm in a teacup as the British public were warned we were in danger from … yoga. On Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, the British Wheel of Yoga’s chair, Paul Fox, claimed that teachers without sufficient training are giving yoga classes. What has since emerged is that the British Wheel, one of the wealthiest yoga organisations in the UK, has agreed to provide Skills Active, a quango, with funding to develop a National Occupational Standard for Yoga – to protect and keep us all safe in down dog.

As I listened in the Radio 4 studio, it was clear that this misrepresentation of what is happening in most yoga classes is a pretext for a kind of neocolonialism. When powerful organisations seek control, they always say it’s to “protect the public” and “keep them safe”. Are these not the claims put forward by any group seeking to impose its authority and undermine all other groups existing alongside it? A meta-analysis of studies on yoga by Dr Holger Cramer of the University of Duisburg-Essen confirms that it is as safe as other physical movement disciplines.

In the days of the British Raj, when Britain’s economy depended on commodities such as cotton, Indian cotton growers were forced on pain of imprisonment to sell their cotton yields to Britain at prices determined by the buyer. The raw cotton was sent back here, to our “satanic mills”, and Indians – who had been weaving cotton for centuries – were then prohibited from weaving their own and forced to buy woven cotton back at prices determined by Britain. That wouldn’t happen today – would it?

The art and science of yoga, which began in India, has become big business all over the world. According to Ibisworld, in the UK alone Yoga is worth about £790m a year. Nonetheless, yoga continues to be the ancient path of Hindu mysticism, and its first how-to manual, called the Katha Upanishad, dates back between 2,000 and 3,000 years, and forms part of sacred Hindu texts. In it a young man encounters Death and a dialogue between them ensues. Death is asked about the meaning of life and offers yoga as a way of understanding it all. A National Occupational Standard dismisses this spiritual connection and replays the cotton trick: giving the British stamp of approval to a particular brand of yoga and then – under the guise of health and safety – selling it back to the teachers who are already teaching it.

The financial penalty for not complying is a tax that will hit self-employed teachers, most of whom are women

Of course, yoga teachers, like all teachers, always need to improve on their training, but this proposal is just a way of paying a bureaucracy to ensure a two-tier system: some teachers get the stamp and others don’t. It won’t improve the training, but it will make it much more expensive and limit who can afford it. The financial penalty for not complying is a tax that will hit self-employed teachers, most of whom are women. A better use of resources might have been to finance research into exactly what areas of further training are needed.

A number of years ago yoga teachers formed the Independent Yoga Network to ensure that teachers applying to get on to the Register of Exercise Professionals had an acceptable level of training. The IYN undertook this without any financial compensation and in support of the diversity of yoga schools.

While yoga is part of their religion for over a billion people, it is not so for all those practising it in the UK. Many people do yoga for a sense of wellbeing – for aching backs, or muscle tension from a pressured week, or just a break from a 24/7 agenda. None of us has to change our religion – or even have one – to enjoy the benefits it offers. But nor should anyone try to misappropriate and redefine another’s religion in order to enjoy a bigger slice of yoga’s financial pie.

Is yoga dangerous? Absolutely! Here’s what it did for me: I was a young mum suffering from crippling postnatal depression that disengaged me from life when I encountered yoga. It changed all that and taught me, because I needed to learn it again, how to become a fully participating human being. Becoming engaged always makes us dangerous – we become participators rather than merely spectators – and we see very clearly when the cotton is being pulled over our eyes.

Selling yoga back to its teachers is pure neocolonialism | Swami Ambikananda Saraswati