Yoga, White Enthusiasts and the Indian Sensibility
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 18 Apr, 2025

An Indian American mulls the line between celebrating non-Indian devotion to a piece of his culture and annoyance over cultural appropriation.

If my Indian ancestors were here right now, they would probably be shocked by 1) Driverless cars 2) The popularity of yoga among White people in the United States.

Frankly, I myself am surprised by, well, both, but particularly the popularity of yoga among White people in the United States.  But if I’m being 100% honest, my feelings go beyond mere surprise: As an Indian-American, I sometimes wonder if my culture is being co-opted.

To be clear, I have no interest in gatekeeping something that brings people joy. And even if I did, I should not be the one to gate keep seeing as how I have probably meditated only a total of three times in my life… and I fell asleep during one of them. But I do want to understand where the line is between celebrating a culture that isn’t one’s own and cultural appropriation. 

Let’s start by looking at how yoga, which has existed since before the birth of Jesus Christ, even made its way to the United States.  Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has suggested that it's thanks to her.  She once said the following:

I went to do a yoga class in L.A. recently and the 22-year-old girl behind the counter was like, ‘Have you ever done yoga before?’ And literally I turned to my friend, and I was like, ‘You have this job because I’ve done yoga before.’”

As an Indian, I immediately understood how those who collaborated on the internet must have felt when Al Gore claimed it as one of his achievements. Or how the forefathers of the English language might have reacted to Paris Hilton’s assertion that she was the first person to use the words “that’s hot” in combination.

To state the obvious, Gwyneth Paltrow did not introduce yoga to Los Angeles, or to any part of the United States. That distinction is credited to transcendentalist thinkers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson who explored its power to enlighten in the 1840s. 

Over the ensuing years many others have helped yoga claim millions of adherents in the US.  Hindu leader Swami Vivekananda explained yoga through a series of lectures in Chicago in the 1890s and wrote a book about it shortly after.  The Beatles — who conquered US pop culture in the 1960s — took a spiritual journey to Rishikesh, India in the 1970s and devoted their stay to meditation. 

That said, it would be grudging of me to deny that Gwyneth Paltrow may have contributed to Yoga’s current vogue.  1 in 6 adults currently practice yoga in this country, up from 1 in 20 in 2002.  Classes, yoga mats, athleisure wear and other related products are a multi-billion dollar industry in the US. 

Cultural appropriation is roughly defined as exploitation of an identity that isn’t one’s own. By that measure, many of the non-Indians associated with yoga would probably fit that bill.

But to be objectionable cultural appropriation, I believe it must be offensive.  Speaking in a Black accent when you are not Black. Or wearing a Native American headdress as a Halloween costume. In both cases, the act subjects a piece of authentic culture to mockery. 

The popular embrace of yoga by a Western audience hasn’t had that effect, in my view.

On the one hand (think yoga’s “one-handed tree” pose), I am proud to see interest in my culture, particularly from the upper half of American demographics.  It’s how I feel when my non-Indian friends are excited to get Indian food with me and eagerly take my recommendations on dishes they’d never heard of — even if we may have to tone down the spice-level.

It’s also how I felt in 2016 when my older brother married a fellow Indian at our home in Des Moines, IA.  At the welcome dinner the night before the wedding my Indian mother announced that she had a closet full of Indian clothes for anyone who would like to borrow them for the ceremony. The next day nearly a dozen White, Black, and Hispanic women showed up at the wedding wearing saris. It was a beautiful sight. 

On the other hand normalization of a culture’s traditions with little understanding of that culture can lead to hurt, which is something I felt while perusing the aisles of Target a few years ago. 

“Namaste in bed” 

Those were the words adorned on a T-shirt on display. It’s a pun that makes sense only if you acquired the word “Namaste” in the context of yoga. But for any native South Asian the shirt would likely be confusing.  After all, Namaste — which is often pronounced by Americans as “NAH MUH stay” rather than the more accurate “Nuh muh stay” — is a Hindi greeting, used like the word “Hello.” Seeing the shirt felt like I was intruding on a joke among White people, the butt of which was my own family’s language. 

There is in my mind quite a difference between, say, White women wearing saris at an Indian wedding and wearing the aforementioned shirt. The saris were worn in the presence of cultural traditions that those present were actively embracing and celebrating. That shirt, however, strips away any sort of cultural context.

So to answer my own question: No, I do not think that policing how one enjoys another’s culture is helpful to anyone.  But I do think that the key to mitigating concerns of appropriation lies in all of us making a good faith effort in how we consume something with which we are unfamiliar. 

I do hope that non-South Asians continue to practice and enjoy yoga. I also hope they might take interest in its origins and even look deeper into the meaning of words like “Namaste”...or “Dhanyavaad,” which means “Thank you.”  It’s a word Ms. Paltrow may be expecting to hear from her yoga followers.