BRANDING YOGA

What Is Yoga ?

A Physical, Mental & Spiritual discipline that originated in Ancient India.

What is the present situation ?

SITUATION ANALYSIS

Yoga is practiced by about 16 million people in America

Getting those Yoga Practitioners that the roots of

Yoga came from the Hindu Philosophy

Campaing is run by HAF (Hindu American Foundation)

Campaign ran the gamut & Various reactions from

High profile Yoga personalities

Objectives of the Case !

• Yoga & it’s Spread in America

• To present the Idea of Branding Yoga

• Whether it has Hindu roots ?

We will Focus On:

• HAF Campaign

• YOGA Commercialization

Biography of :-

• Bikram Choudhary

• Tara Stiles

History Of Yoga

The earliest records of apparent yoga practice were found in Indus Valley archaeological relics that dated to

the third millennium B.C.E.

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 of aphorisms authored by the Indian philosopher Patanjali, were also among yoga’s

most important precursors.

All of these texts were also sacred to Hinduism. Some historians argued that yoga predated Hinduism.

Yoga was associated with quieting the mind, transcending the physical self, and attaining

communion with the divine.

Modern-day yoga reflected a plethora of ideas that teachers of yoga had passed down to their students

over thousands of years.

Arrival of Yoga in America

The story of American yoga began in the mid-19th century, when Indic and Hindu literature fascinated

American Transcendentalist .

In 1893, Swami Vivekananda, one of the first Hindus to bring yoga to the U.S., represented India and spoke

about Hinduism at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.

One Student of Swami Vivekanand, Sara Bull, set up conferences to introduce Vivekananda’s ideas to

Harvard professors; others helped establish the first American Vedanta Society in New York.

In 1947, Indra Devi, a 48-year-old former Latvian film actress, arrived in the U.S. and opened a Hatha yoga studio in Los Angeles that quickly attracted a bevy of

stars. She also wrote several books about yoga, targeting American women and linking yoga to health

and good looks.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Richard Hittleman, an American from New York City, began to teach Hatha yoga, focusing first on its physical elements and then

moving toward yoga’s more spiritual aspects.

In 1966, B. K. S. Iyengar published Light on Yoga, which Yoga Journal claimed was “still considered to be the

Bible of serious asana practice.

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.b TM

became extremely popular in the U.S.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Maharishi and Chopra partnered to focus on mind-body medicine. They used a holistic approach, eliminating the division between

mind and body—a way of thinking that became increasingly popular in the U.S.

Biographies of some Famous Personalities

who planted the roots of Yoga in America

Bikram Choudhary• Born in 1946 in Calcutta, India.

• Started Studying Yoga under Guru Bishnu Ghosh at age Four.

• National India Yoga Champion 1959 – 1963 (4 times).

• Moved to Japan in 1970 & Invented TORTURE CHAMBERS.

• Moved to U.S. in 1971.

• Started 90 mins Classes with Nominal fee.

• In 1979, Bikram obtained his first copyright, for his book Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class

• By 1984, admission to classes at his Beverly Hills studio cost $20 per person, a 10-class package cost $100, and the studio was taking in roughly $1,000 a day.

• In 1994, he started Teacher training courses & by the time 2000 it was generating 200 teachers a year.

• In 2002, he sent several cease-&-desist letters for his Yoga style copying.

• By April 2003, Bikram had more than 700 studios in 220 countries.

• 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.

• By 2011, some 5,000 Bikram Yoga studios had opened around the world.

• Bikram’s business earned him about $5 million a year, according to one estimate.

Tara Stiles• Born in 1981, illinois.

• As a preteen, she discovered meditation.

• After graduation, moved to Chicago to study ballet & Landed a contract with Ford modelling Agency.

• Through the Ford Agency, she moved to New York in 2000.

• She decided to practice yoga alone in her apartment in New York.

• In 2007, Stiles left Ford & started promoting Yoga through FACEBOOK video lectures.

• Women’s Health and the Huffington Post hired her as a blogger.

• In 2008, Stiles opened her own studio, Strala Yoga, in New York’s NoHo district.

• Stiles’s yoga was highly secular

• Stiles created controversy because she was “making yoga cool,”

• In 2010, Chopra and Stiles also released a yoga iPad app, “Authentic Yoga,”

• Stiles’s book, Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, was published in the summer of 2010

• Stiles did not patent her yoga classes

HAF Campaign

In 2009, the advocacy group Hindu American Foundation (HAF), concerned over yoga’s commercialization and disconnect from what it claimed were its Hindu roots, launched a campaign called “Take Back Yoga—Bringing to Light Yoga’s Hindu Roots.”

The goal of the campaign was not to convert yoga devotees to Hinduism but to have them acknowledge the connection between them.

HAF began to present the paper in settings such as the 2009 Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia.

On April 18, 2010, Aseem Shukla, a member of HAF’s board, wrote a piece for the Washington Post’s On Faith

column, entitled, “The Theft of Yoga.”

In November 2010, the New York Times ran an article on the front page of its Sunday edition about HAF’s

“Take Back Yoga”

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.”

Take Away from the Case

• Yoga has Indian Roots.

• But are the roots attached to Hindu Philosophy also ?

• How Yoga has evolved from Private practice to Branding of Yoga !

These slides were created by SOHIT KUMAR, as part of an internship done under the guidance of Prof. Sameer Mathur (www.IIMInternship.com)