Yoga & Hinduism
Can yoga exist without Hinduism?
The first time I practiced yoga was at home from a book with pictures after my second hip dislocation. Ten years later I became a Ashtanga based Vinyasa Yoga Teacher. For a decade after that I taught private yoga classes and ended up specializing in Chronic pain. I can tell you from personal experience, Asana is a gift to the chronic pain community. It works. But towards the end of the decade, I really started to wonder if I was doing right by yoga itself.
The first time I read The Upanishads was outside of yoga because I was just curious about world religions. I was in college when I bought The Upanishads and The Dhammapada at the same time from Borders. I still have those copies and have returned to them over the years. I didn’t realize it then, but it was fitting for my eventual career in Yoga and Thai Massage, or perhaps that is how I ended up there. However, I actually bring these two separate occurrences up because despite discovering them both around the same time, they did not cross over until years later when I would personally do the work to connect them.
As I reflect back on my years as a yoga practitioner and as a soul on this earth searching life’s greatest questions among scriptures, I have come to perhaps one of the biggest questions in the west right now; can yoga exist without Hinduism?
To help answer this I want to review the works that brought yoga to the world.
The Upanishads and Yoga
The Upanishads are fourth of the Vedic scriptures and considered the most modern of the Vedas. Yoga was mentioned in the other Vedas as a spiritual path, but it was not until The Upanishads that yoga would be described closer to how we view it now in the modern world, though not necessarily how the west views yoga.
While I was reading the Upanishads for the first time, my takeaway was not “I should be a yoga studio member to get closer to Brahma.” In fact, I didn’t really make the connection to western yoga at all. That is not because Asana is not mentioned in The Upanishads, but because it is so incredibly minor to the much greater message.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Patanjali is a common name in the western yoga world, so surely the yoga sutras look like western yoga, right?
They do not.
The yoga sutras are the sutras for yoga, the literal blueprint, but the physical aspect of yoga is nothing more than a comfortable seated position in order to do everything else that is yoga. This is where the idea comes from that we should be comfortable to practice yoga though, so the seed for the argument that Asana is necessary for the west is present.
The Bhagavad Gita
Ah yes, this one is a favorite. Lord Krishna and Arjuna. Guru and student.
During the Mahabharata epic is the story of The Gita. In the middle of this epic war, Lord Krishna comes to Arjuna to guide him on his Hindu spiritual journey and reveals to him the easier pathway to God (Brahma, to Krishna). They are yoga paths, but they are not yoga postures yet again.
I do want to note, Krishna taking on Arjuna as a student and presenting as his Guru does come up in Western Yoga and I will come back to it.
Autobiography of a Yogi
The most revered book in the western yoga community. This book is actually about a particular yogi’s life; Yogananda, his search for a guru, and spiritual journey to God (Brahma) through the yoga pathway. He does end up coming to America and leaving a footprint here if you will, however, despite helping bring yoga to America, his book does not set the stage for what western yoga looks like today either.
So where does it come from?
and are we going to answer the question; “Can yoga exist without Hinduism?”
Yes, hang in there!
The idea the west has of yoga honestly took a while to develop after a few failed attempts to take root in America. It didn’t sell here. It is really that simple.
It is interesting a country that could be convinced to buy water in plastic containers for way over the cost of water because of simple marketing in the 80’s could only be convinced to practice yoga as an exercise, but at the same time, maybe that is not so shocking.
In fact, it was not even Yogananda or Swami Vivekananda who would popularize yoga in the west either despite Yogananda’s book’s popularity with yoga students in the west nor Swami Vivekananda’s personal invitation to talk about yoga in America. It was Indra Devi, a Russian aristocrat who would really start to gain recognition for yoga in the west and open a yoga studio in Hollywood, CA. She developed what the west considers yoga.
Bikram really drove what the west considers yoga home with his very heated, very intense, and disciplined 26 poses named after himself: Bikram Yoga.
I understand he is no longer a favorite household name, but unfortunately that does not erase what he did for western yoga, but perhaps it sheds light on how the western version of yoga is a little too far removed from true yoga.
Today all over America we have studios with daily schedules for Asana, way overpriced “yoga pants,” and Hindu deities as decoration. Doctors are recommending it for health reasons (both physical and mental) and yoga teachers are citing American scientific research to support it.
Why Ask if Yoga can Exist without Hinduism?
Because we can’t ask if yoga can exist without Hinduism before knowing why we are even asking it.
The west is starting to not acknowledge Yoga’s roots in Hinduism. Yes, even with Lord Shiva statues on the reception desk facing you as you pay for your yoga class. In fact, in recent years, we have seen yoga practitioners go so far as to say it is not Hinduism at all, which begs me to ask sarcastically, “Where did it come from then?” I bet I would get some very interesting, all over the place, very wrong answers.
The other question cropping up with yoga’s increasing popularity is can Christians practice it? We have Hindus saying yes because you don’t have to be a Hindu, yoga is a spiritual path to God. We have Christians saying no because the postures are worshipping Satan and false idols (Hindu Deities).
We also have yoga practitioners trying to avoid it all together by quoting scientific studies saying, “It’s just good old science.”
The truth is, I could care less if a Christian believes they can practice yoga or not, but I do care that people think Yoga is not Hinduism.
Finally
Can Yoga exist without Hinduism?
Everyone has a right to their own opinion and thank you for hanging in there to discover mine.
Yoga is Hinduism. Hinduism is not yoga.
You do not have to be Hindu to practice yoga.
Hinduism is not a religion; it is a Dharma.
The removal of Hinduism from yoga and breaking it down to just some postures and scientific studies has made it, simply put, not yoga.
Let’s break it down.
Yoga is Hinduism. Hinduism is not yoga.
Hinduism can exist without yoga because yoga is just one of the spiritual paths in Hinduism. It isn’t even that popular among Hindus as a path oddly enough. However, yoga is Hinduism because it is a spiritual Hindu dharmic path. If you take Hinduism out of yoga in other words, you take out everything that actually makes it yoga. All of the 8 limbs that make up yoga are deeply rooted in Hinduism and they would not exist if Hinduism wasn’t the belief system to bring it to the world. Science can back up what the Hindu scriptures have already stated, but not science, nor any other religious scripture we currently have, would have created the 8 limbs of yoga and that is a fact.
You do not have to be Hindu to practice yoga
The spread of yoga, even by Hindus, is not some deep-rooted mission to spread Hinduism. The reason Hindus say anyone can practice yoga is because that is true. It doesn’t matter if you believe in God, the old gods, are agnostic, or atheist, you can practice yoga.
This is where you have to understand Hinduism itself to understand why anyone can practice even though yoga is Hinduism.
Hinduism believes everyone in time will come to recognize Brahma. And Brahma can loosely be defined as “God” but it also can be “One consciousness” or “God is in everything” or “everything is God.” It gets a little more confusing to realize you also can not believe in God and be a Hindu, they have a sect for that. You can believe we don’t know if there is a God and be a Hindu too, they have a sect for that. They can fall more under “Hindu Philosophy,” but at the same time they are still a spiritual path because in Hinduism, that is the point.
Hinduism is not a religion; it is a Dharma.
The west does not have this ingrained in any of our more popular belief systems or philosophies so that makes it somewhat difficult to separate without studying the belief systems first. But Dharma beliefs are personal spiritual paths, they don’t tell you exactly what to believe, they just encourage you to work on your spiritual path and then give you the guidelines to do it. The rest will come when it does.
Buddhists are Dharmic too and they don’t support nor deny the existence of God, but they do highlight how to work on oneself spiritually. So, if you are more familiar with Buddhism, maybe that is an easier way to see Hinduism. Though, they aren’t the same.
This is why they have no issue with Christians practicing yoga and Christians should not see practicing yoga as being converted or Satanic or Demonic. They just can’t take Hinduism out of yoga if they do opt to practice. They instead have to recognize and respect that their God can exist in Hinduism as an Avatar of Brahma or that they are the same as Brahma presenting to a different culture differently. If they can’t do that, then no they shouldn’t practice and they also shouldn’t call it the devil’s work, they should just leave it alone entirely.
If After all that you have More Questions Than Answers
That is perfectly expected.
This post sat in my drafts for two weeks while I came back to it and tried to grasp what I was saying as briefly yet as detailed as possible. I could really only accomplish answering the question at hand briefly.
Not to mention if you asked this question to someone else who had the exact same stance as I do, they would answer it probably a little differently.
That is why I really like highlighting that Hinduism, and therefore yoga by proxy, are philosophies as much as they are spiritual paths. Don’t get me wrong, the more you dig into Hinduism, especially once you find out they have Hinduism Nationalism in India, it starts to feel a lot like Hinduism does have a “right way,” but the scriptures (and they have so many) say otherwise.
Therefore, on one hand, what Indra Devi made yoga for the west is not necessarily wrong, if you stand that the physical aspect of yoga for you is what makes it possible for you to access the 8 limbs, then that is true.
The only take away I wanted from this article is that Yoga is Hinduism and it cannot exist without it and that is not a bad or exclusive thing.
Until next time!