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branding yoga
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Branding Yoga
About Yoga as a BRAND in the current scenario in the US.
In 2008, almost a million people in the
US were practitioners of Yoga.
Yoga Journal pegged
the industry for about
$5.7 billion
Thus, Take Back Yoga Bringing to light Yogas
Hindu Roots was launched.
This campaign was met with an unpleasant reaction.
Yoga is thriving for its essence as many
practicetioners continue
to patent it under their name leading to mass
resentment.
Indias Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is being formulated having 1,500 yoga poses to be prevented from patents all over the world.
This led to diverse forms
of it being practiced
nation wide.
Examples:
Bikram Yoga studios held classes at a temperature of 105 degrees
Fahrenheit. A New York City studio called Strala Yoga offered entirely exercise-focused
classes that used no Sanskrit terms.
History of Yoga
Sanskrit
The Bhagavad Gita (circa 300 B.C.E.), part of an epic known as the
Mahabharata, was a philosophical cornerstone for yoga.
The Yoga Sutras , a series o f aphorisms authored by the Ind ian
phi losopher Patanja l i , were a lso among yoga s most important precursors .
He preached the Ashatnga Yoga.
Yama or restraint, Niyama or observance, Asana or physical exercise, Pranayama or breathing techniques,
Pratyhara or preparation for meditation, Dharana or concentration, Dhyana or meditation, Samadhi or absorption.
Yoga was associated with quieting the mind, transcending the physical self, and attaining communion with the
divine.
Types of Yoga
Swami V ivekananda , one o f the f i rs t H indus to br ing yoga to the U .S . , represented Ind ia and spoke about
Hindu ism a t the Wor ld Par l i ament o f Re l ig ions in Chicago .
He went on becoming a sp ir i tua l leader , teaching ideas about yoga and Vedanta phi losophy , to
American students .
In 1940, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, daughter of former
President Woodrow Wilson, left the U.S. for an ashram in
Pondicherry, India.
He wrote many popular books about yoga, with titles such as Yoga for Health; his television show, also called Yoga for
Health, ran from 1961 to 1981.
In 1968, the Beatles made a highly visible trip to India to visit the ashram of Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi and studied transcendental meditation, or
TM. TM became extremely popular in the U.S. The movement claimed TM was neither Hindu nor religious, but only a concentration
technique
Prominent
authorities in
the field of Yoga.
The ones who really changed the course if it
and how.
Bikram Choudhary
B i k r a m C h o u d h u r y w a s b o r n i n 1 9 4 6 i n C a l c u t t a , I n d i a .
B i k r a m b e g a n h i s s t u d y o f y o g a a t a g e f o u r u n d e r h i s g u r u , B i s h n u G h o s h .
B y a g e 1 3 , B i k r a m h a d w o n t h e N a t i o n a l I n d i a Y o g a C h a m p i o n s h i p . H e s u c c e s s f u l l y d e f e n d e d t h a t t i t l e f o r
t h e n e x t t h r e e y e a r s .
Spreading his
vision.
When room is more hot, then I can sweat more, I can stretch more, I can push more, I can go more
deeper and deeper and inside the body, it hurts less and you never get injury
Bikram left India in 1970.
He first went to Japan, where executing poses became much more difficult during the winters .
He began to use a space heater, although he had already noticed the effects of heat on his stretching in India.
In 1971, he arrived in the U.S. Bikram taught at resorts and spas before opening his first studio in Los Angeles. He taught poses from Hatha yoga. The classroom temperature ranged between 100 and 105 degrees. Classes were 90 minutes long. Bikram gave instructors particular language to use verbatim during class
Expanding
1979, Bikram obtained his first copyright, for his book Bikrams Beginning Yoga Class. He also got a trademark for his companys name, Bikrams Yoga College of India. In 1994, Bikram began to offer an intensive teacher-training course, which led to a rise in the number of Bikram studios. By 2000, Bikrams accelerated training program was turning out about 200 teachers a year.
The Turning point
In 2002, when Bikram learned that other yoga instructors used his
methods or mixed elements from Bikram yoga with other conceptshot yoga with music, for example
he decided to patent the Bikram style, including the asana series and
breathing exercises.
In 2002, he sent a cease-and-desist letter to the owners of a yoga studio in Costa Mesa, California.
The owners were among hundreds who received cease-and-desist letters. Most of them complied with Bikrams demands, but the Costa Mesa owners did not.
To this he quotes, To stop them from stealing I must go to the lawyers,
When in Rome, I must do as the Romans do. When in America, make Bikram copyright and trademark.
Resentment In 2003, a collective of yoga
teachers, Open Source Yoga Unity (OSYU), based in San Francisco,
California, filed suit against Bikram, claiming that his copyrights and
patents were invalid, and that yoga could not be copyrighted.
Tara Stiles
Rise of modern Yoga.
Tara Stiles was born in 1981 and grew up in rural Illinois
After graduating from high school, she moved to Chicago to study ballet, where she landed a contract with the
Ford Modeling Agency. A ballet instructor also introduced Stiles to
yoga.
Through the Ford Agency, she moved to New York in 2000.
But she disliked the New York yoga scene.
To this she quotes
Modern Yoga
In 2006, she went on several fashion shoots that involved yoga apparel, and the Ford
Agency asked her to create and post promotional yoga videos
on YouTube. She began to use Facebook to promote the yoga classes she taught out of her apartment, and offered private sessions.
Her rise.
Strala Yoga
Strala Yoga Studio
Stiless yoga was highly secular. She did not use
Sanskrit words for poses or chant in class.
Chopra liked her so much that he made her his personal yoga instructor sometime after she opened her studio.
I have been doing yoga for 30 years. I have had teachers of all kinds. Taking lessons from her has been more useful to me than from anyone else,
-Deepak chopra
Resentment
Stiles created controversy because she was making yoga cool
We are basically breaking the rules, improvising, adding music; in our minds,
connecting the younger generation. In society, brands that succeed stay
relevant. Deepak Chopra
In 2010, Chopra and Stiles also released a yoga iPad app, Authentic Yoga, and
collaborated on a video.
Stiless book, Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, was published in the summer of 2010 and was
the number-one yoga book on Amazon.com for several months.
At the end of 2010, workout maven Jane Fonda reintroduced her fitness brand and debuted Team
Fonda, a group of fitness instructors with whom she launched new workout videos, including Stiles.
The difference
Despite her own growing celebrity, Stiles did not think she would patent her yoga classes, as Bikram had done.
I mean, he doesnt want people using his name without his certification, which I get. I think you can have a name of a studio, but its what goes on inside that really matters. People always ask what style I teach, and
Im like, its yoga. -Stiles
The Hindu American Foundation
Linking Yoga to Hindu Roots.
Alert.
In 2008, several members of the staff at the Hindu American
Foundation (HAF), an advocacy group for Hinduism in the U.S.,
examined editions of Yoga Journal, which had become a
popular American yoga magazine. They saw no reference to Hinduism in the magazine and
concluded that it associated Buddhism, Jainism, and
Christianity with yoga more than it did Hinduism.
The goal of the campaign
was not to convert yoga
devotees to Hinduism but
to have them acknowledge
the connection between
them.
The Uprising HAF senior director Sheetal Shah published a position paper, called Yoga Beyond Asana: Hindu Thought in
Practice.70 Its main tenets were that yoga is a lot more than asana . . . and yoga in its entirety is rooted in the
Hindu philosophy, she said. HAF began to present the paper in settings such as the 2009 Council for a Parliament of the Worlds Religions in Australia.
Continued.. In November 2010, the New York Times ran an article on the front page of its Sunday edition
about HAFs Take Back Yoga campaign and the ongoing debate over the origins of yoga. The
debate thrust the foundation into a prominent role as the voice for the U.S.s 2 million Hindus
In March 2011, Sheetal Shah of HAF, Tara Stiles, Dr. Edwin Bryant of Rutgers University, Dr. Virginia
Cowen of the City University of New York, and Edwin
Stern, founder of Ashtanga Yoga NY, participated in a
discussion at Princeton University called The
Politics of Yoga.
Topics included the definition of yoga, the commercialization of yoga, the
validity of yoga as exercise alone, and whether yoga belonged to Hinduism or
to any one tradition.
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