Here is the official stance of the spokesperson organization for Hindus in America to prove to you I am not alone in this view:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10115/1052860-109.stm
Yoga: stolen from the Hindus
Hinduism has lost control of its brand as yoga thrives, delinked from its essential religious character, bemoans ASEEM SHUKLA of the Hindu American Foundation
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Dean Rohrer / NewsartNearly 20 million people in the United States gather together routinely, fold their hands and utter the Hindu greeting of Namaste -- the divine in me bows to the same divine in you. Then they close their eyes and focus their minds with chants of "Om," the Hindu representation of the first and eternal vibration of creation.
Arrayed in linear patterns, they stretch, bend, contort and control their respirations as a mentor calls out names of Hindu divinity linked to various postures: Natarajaasana (Lord Shiva) or Hanumanasana (Lord Hanuman) among many others. They chant their assigned "mantra of the month," taking lines directly from the Vedas, Hinduism's holiest scripture. Welcome to the practice of yoga in today's Western world.
Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, agnostics and atheists they may be, but they partake in the spiritual heritage of a faith tradition with a vigor often unmatched even by this country's 2.5 million Hindu Americans. The Yoga Journal found that the industry generates more than $6 billion a year and continues on an incredible trajectory of popularity.
It would seem that yoga's mother tradition, Hinduism, would be shining in the brilliant glow of dedicated disciples seeking more from the font of their passion. Yet the reality is very different.
Hinduism is identified more with holy cows than Gomukhasana, the notoriously arduous twisting posture; with millions of warring gods rather than the unity of divinity in Hindu tradition -- that God may manifest and be worshiped in infinite ways; with colorful wandering ascetics rather than the spiritual inspiration of Patanjali, the 2nd-century B.C. commentator and composer of the Yoga Sutras that form the philosophical basis of Yoga practice today.
Why is yoga severed in America's collective consciousness from Hinduism?
Yoga, meditation, ayurvedic natural healing, self-realization -- they are today's syntax for New Age, Eastern, mystical, even Buddhist, but nary an appreciation of their Hindu origins.
It is not surprising, then, that Hindu schoolchildren complain that Hinduism is conflated only with caste, cows, exoticism and polytheism -- the salutary contributions and philosophical underpinnings lost and ignored. The severance of yoga from Hinduism disenfranchises millions of Hindu Americans from their spiritual heritage and a legacy in which they can take pride.
Hinduism, as a faith tradition, stands at this pass a victim of overt intellectual property theft, absence of trademark protections and the facile complicity of generations of Hindu yogis, gurus, swamis and others that offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of crass commercialism.
The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, under whose tutelage the Beatles steadied their minds and made sense of their insane fame, packaged the wonders of meditation as Transcendental Meditation just as an entrepreneur from here in Minneapolis applied the principles of Ayurveda to drive a commercial enterprise he coined as Aveda. TM and Aveda are trademarked brands -- a protection not available to the originator of their brand: Hinduism itself.
The Los Angeles Times recently chronicled this steady disembodying of yoga from Hinduism.
"Christ is my guru. Yoga is a spiritual discipline much like prayer, meditation and fasting [and] no one religion can claim ownership," said a vocal proponent of "Christian-themed" yoga practices. Some Jews practice Torah yoga, Kabbalah yoga and aleph bet yoga, and even some Muslims are joining the act. They are appropriating the collective wisdom of millenia of yogis without a whisper of acknowledgment of yoga's spiritual roots.
Not surprisingly, the most popular yoga publications are also in on the act. Once yoga was no longer intertwined with its Hindu roots, it became up for grabs and easy to sell. These journals abundantly refer to yoga as "ancient Indian," "Eastern" or "Sanskritic," but seem to assiduously avoid the term "Hindu" out of fear, we can only assume, that ascribing honestly the origins of their passion might spell disaster for what has become a lucrative commercial enterprise.
The American Yoga Association, on its website, completes this delinking of yoga from Hinduism: "The common belief that Yoga derives from Hinduism is a misconception. Yoga actually predates Hinduism by many centuries. ... The techniques of Yoga have been adopted by Hinduism as well as by other world religions."
So Hinduism, the religion that has no known origins or beginnings, is now younger than yoga? What a ludicrous contention when the Yoga Sutras weren't even composed until the 2nd century B.C. These deniers seem to posit that Hinduism appropriated yoga so other religions may as well too!
Hindus can only sadly shake their heads, as by this measure soon we will read about how karma, dharma and reincarnation -- the foundations of Hindu philosophy -- are only ancient precepts that early Hindus of some era made their own.
The Hindu American Foundation which I helped found released a position paper on this issue earlier this year. It condemns yoga's appropriation but also argues that yoga today is wholly misunderstood.
Yoga is identified only with Hatha Yoga, the aspect of yoga focused on postures and breathing techniques. But this is only one part of the practice of Raja Yoga that is actually an eightfold path designed to lead the practitioner to moksha, or salvation. Indeed, yogis believe that to focus on the physicality of yoga without the spirituality is utterly rudimentary and deficient. Sure, practicing postures alone with a focus on breathing techniques will quiet the mind, tone the body, increase flexibility -- even help children with attention deficit disorder -- but will miss the mark on holistic healing and wellness.
All of this is not to contend, of course, that yoga is only for Hindus. Yoga is Hinduism's gift to humanity to follow, practice and experience. No one can ever be asked to leave their own religion or reject their own theologies or to convert to a pluralistic tradition such as Hinduism.
Yoga asks only that one follow the path of yoga for it will lead one to become a better Hindu, Christian, Jew or Muslim. Yoga, like its Hindu origins, does not offer ways to believe in God; it offers ways to know God.
But be forewarned. Yogis say that the dedicated practice of yoga will subdue the restless mind, lessen one's cravings for the mundane material world and put one on the path of self-realization -- that each individual is a spark of the divine. Expect conflicts if you are sold on the exclusivist claims of Abrahamic faiths -- that their God awaits the arrival of only His chosen few at heaven's gate -- since yoga shows its own path to spiritual enlightenment to all seekers, regardless of affiliation.
Hindus must take back yoga and reclaim the intellectual property of their spiritual heritage -- not sell it out to win more clients for the yoga studio down the street.
