Yoganista Fashionista

By Vedran

Some years ago, I saw a billboard campaign by a major sportswear manufacturer (I´m not telling which) that had just launched a line of clothes and other gear apparently specially designed for yoga practioners. The message these billboards conveyed was that the manufacturer in question had stuff for you no matter what kind of exercise you were into. Their yoga posters sported the word "Yoganista?". I don´t know if this word existed before but since this campaign, I have heard it spoken by several people. Yoganista, then, is apparently a person who practices yoga and now there´s a whole collection of stuff, including some kind of yoga slipper that we can get to make our practice better. A yoga slipper? What does one do with a yoga slipper?
It happens that, when I tell people that I "do yoga", they reply "Oh, that´s very popular these days". 90% of these people go on to tell me that they have been thinking about doing yoga for ages. Because it´s popular these days. Yoga is being offered in most gyms, yoga studios are booming in most cities, celebrities tell us about how yoga has changed their bodies and lives. There´s no escaping - yoga and fashion have intermingled and it doesn´t seem likely that it´s going to change.
In the late 1990´s, the media wizzard Madonna publicly proclaimed her love of Ashtanga yoga. She sported an incredibly well trained and defined body and said she had become "gym free". She even took the renowned yoga teacher Duncan Wong, the creator of Yogic Arts, with her on her Re-Invention Tour so that he could be a spot on instructor while she was on the road. Yoga and pilates were the thing. The whole world followed, as it often does. Supermodel Christy Turlington wrote a book on yoga and launched a line of clothes meant for fashionable and comfortable yoga practice, Madonna´s friend and Oscar winning actress, Gwyneth Paltrow, appeared in the documentary "Ashtanga NY" on Sri K. Pattabhi Jois´ trip to New York, alongside Willem Defoe and a member of the Beasty Boys. Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell released a yoga dvd, promising that everyone could attain a "Geri body" if they did yoga. Many yoga teachers reached celebrity status. Then Madonna fell off a horse and couldn´t do yoga for a while. She is apparently doing somethig else now. A new fad on its way?

It is easy to cringe about this. If yoga is about anything, it certainly is NOT about being a money machine and an exercise fad fueled by supermodels in Sirsasana. Trends come and they burn out. People get their fix and go on to seek the next big thing.
I have often rolled my eyes when someone told me how their gym now offers yoga classes. On the other hand, there might be benefits to be reaped here. Yoga has proved to be more than a proverbial flash in a pan of the exercise world. It stuck around for thousands of years before Raquel Welch and Madonna got turned on to it and it has displayed staying power for quite a few years after that as well. I actually taught a class in a gym for a short while and while I definitely noticed how people who had no idea what they were coming to, turned up in my Ashtanga class to "relax" after they had pumped iron, ended up facing their physical demons, often caused by pumping iron, and never returned again, there were others. These "others" seemed to have sensed that this "yoga thing" was something else. To my great joy, I noticed how some of them got themselves their own proper yoga mats and started developing into real yoga practicioners. People actually got the connection between breath and posture and noticed how their emotions got touched by the practice! What I realised was that yoga in gyms and on Madonna concerts can present yoga to a lot of people who would never be exposed to it otherwise. It turns on their inner yogis and turns them on to a lifetime of practice. Of course, there will always be people who try a yoga course or two and realise that yoga takes work and sweat and effort and that it´s by no means a quick fix and they go back to whatever they did (or did not do) before yoga. But what inspires me are those myriads of others who start up thinking they´re in it for the exercise and end up reading books, going to workshops, perhaps travelling to India and ultimately (India or not) understanding that yoga is a lifestyle and that the fat burn, flexibility and the "yoga body" are just side effects of something else, far more enormous. For amidst the nonsense of yoga slippers, teachers turning into tacky franchise owners and what not, there are so many people turning into bona-fide yogis, lives being changed and incredible teachers getting a chance to reach practicioners around the globe. This, I think, makes it worth while. Those chasing trends will go on chasing trends. They would with or without yoga. Some of them might realise along the way that they should give that sticky mat yet another try. And maybe they will stay. When I think about it, my practice didn´t start after three months of deep meditation in a cave in Tibet. It was because I had heard that people I respected and admired had started practicing. So I tried and stayed with it. I have an expensive and fabulous mat that somebody probably earns good money on. The bottom line is that using our heads is as good thing as ever. Has Geri Halliwell inspired you to do yoga? Great! Just realise that your practice will be yours and not Geri Halliwell´s or Madonna´s or Willem Defoe's and your body will end up looking like yours and not theirs because you´re you and not them. Staying with it is what it´s about, no matter what (or where or who) the starting point was. What makes us yogis is a steady, discipined practice and not developing the "yoga body". The fashionism in yoga should, if anything, be an ignition point for a lifetime of good practice. I think that it often is. If not, you´ll come and you will leave.
For all of us who have stayed: Go on - get those yoga pants if you REALLY want to (and can afford them), as long as you keep in mind that it´s about the effort. And breath and sweat. Never about the pants.