I just watched Yoga, Inc. for free online, and you can too! Just click on the little widget at the end of this post!
I was really impressed with the quality of this documentary. There were lots of informed yogis that shared their perspectives on the history of yoga in the US as well as speculations for the future. There are two camps of people on the commercialization of yoga: there's the "YAY! Let's go! It's the American way to make money on everything!" and there's the "Yoga is an ancient spiritual practice not to be sullied by the dirtiness of money!" This film did a good job of giving each camp equal voice, as well as some balanced perspectives from realist yogis.
There was extra focus on the YogaWorks guys (who also founded AskJeeves.com, back in the day. Who knew?!) and my favorite yoga don, Bikram Chowdury. The filmmaker and some of the interviewees seemed concerned that Bikram and YogaWorks are paving the way for other McYogas that will kill all the independent yoga studios. I don't think that will ever happen, unless there is some widespread regulation of yoga teachers, beyond what the Yoga Alliance is already doing. Anyway, it would be a long time.
Personally, I'm not that worried about it. I get a thrill out of Bikram, I love the abundance of chic yoga wear available to me, and it doesn't bother me that yoga is super commercialized. If any of this brings people to the practice, good can come out of it. People come to yoga for all sorts of reasons, and because there is such diversity in instructors and teachings, there will always be room for everyone.
Your thoughts?
Comments
This sounds familiar
Oh boy, all the stuff about Bikram reminds me of the whole ATS kerfuffle from a few years ago, except Caroleena's request seems to come more from the spiritual and less from the financial side of things (though she is a savvy businesswoman).
I think that the YogaWorks idea could work well in one aspect, that of quality control. It seems that, like in the BD world, there are concerns about yoga teachers being good at what they do and not just deciding to teach for the heck of it out of a substandard teacher training program (is there the 6 week wonder phenomenon in yoga?). I see something like YogaWorks being able to give people a feeling of safety if there is a standardized teacher program so that all YW trained teachers are starting at the same place. Maybe from there they can continue their studies in different ways, but at least you know you have a teacher grounded in a solid basic yoga background with anatomy info and the ability to teach a class. Of course then there is the question of how do you figure out if YW's program is decent? And yes, this does sound a lot like the reason people go to chain restaurants, for the safe experience.
On the other hand, no matter how noble the intent of the creators they are still going to put some small studios out of business. It's like Howard Schultz of Starbucks. It's great he expanded the company out of his love and passion for Italian style coffee, but he still put a lot of mom and pop cafes out of business.