#commodificationofyoga

🧘🏻‍♀️From Practice to Product?

Yoga once unfolded slowly. In quiet halls, with simple mats. We gathered not for the burn, but for the stillness. Not for aesthetic, but for awareness.

Classes moved like seasons - 90 minutes long, with time to arrive, breathe, reflect. Teachings included not just poses, but pranayama, myth, philosophy, mantra, and silence.

Now, yoga comes in countless forms: Rocket, Broga, Acro, Power, Beer. 10-minute hits for the algorithm. Retreats that feel more like resorts.

The pace quickens. The scroll deepens. And something ancient risks being forgotten - not gone, but buried beneath the noise.

🎓Training for Depth or Branding?

There was a time when to teach yoga was a sacred vow. Years of practice, mentorship, and spiritual discipline were the threshold.

Now, fast-track trainings offer certifications in weeks. Logos, hashtags, and packages precede lineage or embodied understanding.

Of course, accessibility matters. And yoga should be for everyone. But when depth is traded for speed, and presence for performance - what is being taught? What, truly, are we passing on?

💸The Marketplace of Mindfulness

We live in a world of sales and scarcity. Yoga is not immune.

Studios and teachers offer referral bonuses, flash sales, unlimited bundles. Prices undercut one another in a silent scramble for survival. Even sacred days are co-opted: Black Friday Yoga. Cyber Monday Memberships.

The problem isn’t generosity - it's the why.

Are we inviting access, or playing into a system that values profit over presence? Have we mistaken popularity for purpose?

And still - students click, book, attend. We all participate in the dance of commodification, even as we long to break free.

🌲Rooting in the Yamas

What if we recalibrated? What if our businesses were shaped not by trends, but by Patanjali’s Yamas - the ethical roots of the yogic path?

Ahimsa - non-harming

Satya - truthfulness

Asteya - non-stealing

Aparigraha - non-hoarding

Could our pricing reflect non-violence - to ourselves, our students, our peers? Could we market with truth, not illusion? Set prices that honour experience, rather than steal value through competition? Release the grip of scarcity, and trust in enoughness?

This is not naïveté - it’s radical. It is yoga.

🍄‍🟫The Mycelium Model

Imagine a yoga economy rooted like a forest.

Each studio a tree. Each teacher a root. Each student a leaf turned toward light. Beneath it all, a mycelial network of shared intention - unseen but essential.

This is not about perfection. It is about practice.

A business rooted in yamas doesn’t reject the world - it nourishes a new one. It swims upstream, slowly, bravely. It becomes a quiet revolution in how we live, share, and sustain.

Tiny shifts. Honest pricing. Mutual care. These small, invisible gestures ripple - butterfly effects in a complex system desperate for meaning.

🔥Reclaiming the Fire

Yoga is not passive. It is not aesthetic. It is practice - fire, courage, commitment, sacrifice.

To walk the yogic path as a teacher, student, or space-holder is to hold a light up against the currents of consumerism.

To choose slowness in a fast world. To remember depth when we are told to perform. To nourish the whole forest, not just our own canopy.

Yoga begins where we live. How we price. How we speak. How we honour each other’s time, labour, lineage.

🕸️Conclusion: Remembering the Invisible

Let our yoga businesses be like woodland roots - interwoven, rich, unseen, alive.

Let us be musk deer - no longer searching for the scent, but remembering it lives within.

Let us walk slowly. Speak honestly. And rebuild this sacred web together - not as brands, but as beings.

✨Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

What does true yoga mean to you in today’s world? How do you balance making a living with practicing and teaching authentically? How do you navigate yoga and capitalism in your practice or business? What does ethical, rooted yoga look like in today’s world?

📩 Message us to continue the conversation ❤️ Reblog to share these thoughts 🪷 Tag someone walking the path with heart

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