Who Is to Say Modern Yoga Practitioners Have It All Wrong? On Hindu Origins and Yogaphobia.

A growing movement courts fear of contemporary popularized forms of modern yoga, warning that yoga is essentially Hindu. Christian protesters, whose position is identified as the Christian yogaphobic position, warn about the dangers of yoga given the perceived incompatibility between its Hindu essence and Christianity. Some add that yoga's popularization threatens the Christian essence of American culture. Hindu protesters, whose position is identified as the Hindu origins position, criticize popularized forms of yoga for failing to recognize yoga's Hindu origins and illegitimately co-opting yoga for the sake of profit. This article demonstrates that these positions are strikingly similar insofar as they are polemical, prescriptive, and share Orientalist and reformist strategies, and suggests that the two protesting positions emerge as much from the cultural context—that is, consumer culture—that they share with popularized forms of modern yoga as from a desire to erect boundaries between themselves and modern yogis.