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Let's talk yoga
(lemmygrad.ml)
A place where comrades can
(1) discuss how best to optimize their physical health and develop “Iron Proletarian Discipline” in a healthy and holistic manner. Including but not limited to weight training, stretching, cardiovascular exercise, meditation, nutrition, sleep, and daily routines with an eye towards cultivating the best habits possible,
(2) share motivational and educational writings or videos; bonus points if the perspective is that of a Communist thinker such as Mao or Fidel Castro, and
(3) discuss the relationship between mental health and exercise.
Rule:
Approach every conversation in good faith.
Yoga is great. My only gripe with it is that yoga and meditation are frequently associated with the divine in India because of which the "yoga industry" is full of charlatan hacks who try to amass a following kinda like how Gandhi did. If you look at this list of modern yoga gurus on Wikipedia, many of the recent ones are hacks as well. I can only speak of the ones that are alive because I don't know about the older ones. Yoga (and ayurveda) is also the pride of Hindu fascists who like to bask in the false glory of a mythologised past where yoga (and ayurveda) was a cure to a multitude of ailments, an art which now has supposedly been forgotten about due to the rampaging colonisation by Western ideas. They take the popularity of yoga in the West as affirmation of the idea that India of the past was the most advanced civilisation and other idealist notions like that.
Mostly though if you go to a normal gym which has yoga classes, it is usually fine and normal. But there are a ton of "foundation" run by aforementioned hacks. My neighbours tried to indoctrinate me into one when my parents told them I was depressed. It was extremely stupid.
Wut
What do you mean?
I think they’re just pointing out the absurdity and orientalism of suggesting that as yoga has been distorted and popularized in the West, Indians must be backward and not doing enough yoga, or at least not correctly (correct being the coopted version).