Puravi Joshi who switched from a corporate job to being a Yoga instructor narrated her struggle. With the switch, however, came several shocks including the toxic lens with which several Christians viewed Hindu Dharma and deities.

Puravi Joshi’s job switch ordeal

Puravi was 29 years and eight years into her corporate job when she made the switch. She says although she had a flat in London, a car, and enjoyed regular luxury holidays, the stress of working in a male-dominated industry and the long work hours impacted her physical and mental health. Furthermore, she says she noticed that very few women progressed to senior roles.

She was already suffering from migraines since she was 12 years. Stress accentuated her migraine problem which caused panic attacks and even led to sleepless nights. The stress became so much that she took a break to visit Cambodia. Her meditation sessions with Buddhist monks led her to decide that she should switch her career and become a Yoga teacher.

“I was clueless when it came to finding a well-regarded course, so I just picked one that fitted into my travel plans, paying £2,500 for 200 hours of intensive training in Costa Rica…For the most part, the course was good. But one thing struck me as odd — being told by the lead trainer that Hindu gods were just cartoon characters and figments of the imagination. I was shocked and upset, but it would be the first of many occasions when the spiritual principles of the Hindu faith I’d grown up with — and of which yoga is an intrinsic part — seemed at odds with the superficial Western interpretation”, Puravi told DailyMail UK.

She expected her full-time job as a Yoga instructor in Londo would be straightforward. However, the reality turned out to be much different than her expectation. Yoga Studios sought instructors with either two to five years’ experience or employed those who had trained with them. Even when she got a chance to audition, the employers were more interested in everything but teaching ability.

Puravi says the audition environment was cold and non-inclusive. She adds that often she was the only Bharatiya person auditioning. A high profile Yoga centre rejected her without meeting her as they believed her use of Sanskrit terminology would ‘scare modern city workers’. She finally landed an unpaid job in East London that lasted two days as she was told her thighs were too ‘chunky’ for an ‘advanced’ yogi.

“Bearing in mind I wear a size 8, and yoga is meant to be accepting of all body shapes, the comment astonished me. It knocked my confidence and made me feel so insecure about my body that I stopped trying to teach in studios for three months. My experience in finance means I’m used to a cut-throat attitude at work, but I didn’t expect this from an industry that is supposed to prioritise people’s well-being. I was being attacked because of how I looked and having to endure judgments based solely on my name. The irony of experiencing racism from those who had appropriated yogic principles from Hindu culture wasn’t lost on me”, DailyMail quotes Joshi as saying.

She began doubting her decision to quit the corporate job as her financial condition became unstable. The pandemic brought the perfect opportunity to connect with Yoga practitioners directly through online classes. Puravi says starting her online classes taught her that practitioners valued one’s teaching method more than anything else.

“Although I found an unexpectedly ugly side to the yoga industry in London, with each experience I have grown a thicker skin — and with that comes strength. And it has made me even more determined to help make the yoga industry what it should be: inclusive and supportive while honouring where yoga really comes from”, she signs off.

Christian Perception and Appropriation of Yoga

This interaction between Terry Gross and Michelle Goldberg shows how the West views Yoga and Bharatiya culture. According to Goldberg, the person who brought Yoga to America was Latvian native Eugenia Peterson who took on the name Indra Devi. The lengthy discussion talks about Bharat and West ‘influencing’ each other and many Bharatiyas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ‘rediscovering their culture’ through the new age movement of Theosophy.

“The civilization of India has produced a great variety of systems of spiritual beliefs and practices. Ancient seers used yoga as a means to explore the exterior and interior world and, perhaps, ultimately to achieve wisdom and knowledge of the sacred Indian texts: the Vedas, Upanishads, and Shastras. These great teachers, or gurus, did not equate yoga with religion but more as an art of living at the highest level in attunement to the larger life–reality. The emphasis in yoga was on personal verification rather than on belief. The practice of yoga was a way to inner joy and outer harmony”, write Marian Garfinkel and Ralph Schumacher.

“Yoga was all about searching for the meaning of life. So it’s no wonder that it ebbed and flowed with influences from major religions in the area such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. Many tenets from those religions, such as prescriptions for better living, would make it into the evolution of yoga, which really heated up between 300 CE and 1000 CE, a full two to three thousand years after the first mention of the word yoga”, says the blog Body by Yoga.

While some Westerners admit to the Dharmic roots of Yoga for a vast majority of Christians it is merely an exercise. This is the reason we have often seen demands for removing/getting rid of its Hindu elements.

In 2016, Bullard Elementary School in Kennesaw, Georgia USA was forced to make changes to its yoga classes after Christian parents complained about the Hindu origins of the exercises. “The school hasn’t cancelled yoga; however, principal Patrice Moore sent a letter of apology to parents and vowed to tweak the program. “When yoga moves are used in classrooms, students will not say the word ‘Namaste’ nor put their hands to heart centre,” Moore wrote. When colouring during ‘brain breaks,’ Mandala colouring pages will not be used says a report by 11Alive.

The Christian fundamentalism against Hindu Dharma was again seen in 2021 when the Alabama Senate stalled a bill reversing the 28-year-old Yoga ban in the state due to pressure from Christian conservatives who feared the spread of Hindu Dharma if it was allowed to be taught in public schools.

The Alabama House of Representatives had earlier overturned a decades-old ban on the practice in Alabama public schools. The bill authorized schools to decide whether they want to conduct yoga classes in K-12 schools and was approved with 73-25 favourable votes. However, even that bill had delinked it from Hindu Dharma despite the fact that yoga has its roots in and is inherently connected with Hindu Dharma.

For Christians, it might be merely another form of exercise but for Hindus, it is a spiritual practice connecting with the divine.

(Featured Image Source: DailyMail UK)