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by Stewart Home
“Swami Vivekananda, one of yoga’s great proponents, looked down upon what is today its most popular incarnation—asanas, or the postures one strikes for better health. He thought them fit only for “sorcerers, fakirs and jogis”, writes historian Meera Nanda in a 2011 piece cited in Stewart Home’s Fascist Yoga, a recent book arguing that yoga’s spiritual aspects—traceable at least to the 2,000-year-old texts by Patanjali—have nothing to do with its physical ones. Historians say that the origin is just 100 years old, when white journalists, religious leaders and military men started using “orientalist fairy dust” to legitimise Aryan supremacy through what were essentially very European gymnastics.” - Udbhav Seth in India Today
In this book, Stewart Home (an adept at the lotus headstand) traces the development of postural yoga in North America and Europe through the twentieth century, up to its explosion in popularity in the 1970s. He shows us how postural practice wad first claimed by fascistic and conspiratorial ideologies. Grifters, occultists and white supremacists latched on to a rebranding that packaged yoga as an exotic Indian, Aryan import. After Covid, the yoga industry’s repressed fascism resurfaced. Home tells a history that includes cult leaders and brainwashed followers, TV celebrities and fake gurus, all part of an entanglement of occultism and the far right. This exposé shows us that nothing is sacred.
by Stewart Home
“Swami Vivekananda, one of yoga’s great proponents, looked down upon what is today its most popular incarnation—asanas, or the postures one strikes for better health. He thought them fit only for “sorcerers, fakirs and jogis”, writes historian Meera Nanda in a 2011 piece cited in Stewart Home’s Fascist Yoga, a recent book arguing that yoga’s spiritual aspects—traceable at least to the 2,000-year-old texts by Patanjali—have nothing to do with its physical ones. Historians say that the origin is just 100 years old, when white journalists, religious leaders and military men started using “orientalist fairy dust” to legitimise Aryan supremacy through what were essentially very European gymnastics.” - Udbhav Seth in India Today
In this book, Stewart Home (an adept at the lotus headstand) traces the development of postural yoga in North America and Europe through the twentieth century, up to its explosion in popularity in the 1970s. He shows us how postural practice wad first claimed by fascistic and conspiratorial ideologies. Grifters, occultists and white supremacists latched on to a rebranding that packaged yoga as an exotic Indian, Aryan import. After Covid, the yoga industry’s repressed fascism resurfaced. Home tells a history that includes cult leaders and brainwashed followers, TV celebrities and fake gurus, all part of an entanglement of occultism and the far right. This exposé shows us that nothing is sacred.