Cultural Appropriation Summary

Introduction:

After reading “Like It Or Not, Western Yoga Is A Textbook Example Of Cultural Appropriation”, the author Smith states that yoga practice is an example of culture appropriation. Yoga practice has its origin from Hinduism. People in the USA have adopted this practice and practice it as their own way. Therefore, they have ended up practicing yoga incorrectly since it lacks many of the original elements. According to this article, US yoga practitioners are utilizing asana as spiritual practice. What they fail to understand is that yoga involves a mixture of exercises that are intended to link individuals with the divine and it is a feature of the Hindu faith. So I strongly disagree with author’s opinion on yoga is appropriated by

Throughout this article, the author is just taking one side: yoga has the ancient Hindu roots and therefore, westerners have no right to practice yoga. According to this article, Americans have just taken yoga from the Hindu tradition and “branded it as “exotic,” diluted and twisted it, and gone ahead to call it their own.” I think that the point the author is trying to drive through is that every time a person rolls out their yoga mats to practice yoga, they are personally insulting Hindus. However, in the real situation, when people practice yoga, they take it as part of a spiritual practice, and they try to do it as respectfully as they can and hence, they are not trying to offend anyone. (Devanada,

For this point, I strongly disagree with it and I think everyone has a right to engage in whatever kind of spirituality they deem fit for them. A certain spiritual practice should not be restricted by one’s origin. If the religion that one was born in fails to resonate with the person, the individual should be free to reach beyond so as to discover the path that does (Demartini, 2002). Yoga ends up being the path that many people take in this journey of rediscovery (McCrary, 2013). In addition, this article affirms that what Americans called yoga is actually not yoga. This point insinuates that the yoga practiced by Americans is fake. Does it mean that such a spiritual practice is fake in some particular way since they were not born to it? The answer is no. This is because this point appears to be needlessly limiting.

Moreover, components that are copied from other cultures can adapt denotations that substantially deviate from or are simply less tinged than those that were held originally; for example spiritual practice that is traditional (Scafidi, 2005). There are people out there who are trying to learn the meaning of yoga even though the practice is not originally their culture. This is the reason that they even end up undertaking a yoga teacher training class in order to be more informed about spirituality that underlies the practice