It’s a booming business to be sure as new brands pop up at an amazing rate. So what does this mean for yoga?

Will it get usurped by consumerism and lose it’s way in the process?

Or, is the commodification a good thing—a way to widen the audience, increase awareness and grow? Certainly the mainstreaming of yoga can lead to awareness as Oprah and other national sources have put an important light on the health and well-being benefits of yoga.

Others have suggested that the growth will lead to a watering down or stripping away of essential elements that make yoga what it is. At some point is yoga nothing more than another form of exercise akin to Pilates or Kickboxing? That remains to be seen.

Read the post I wrote for Elephant Journal about this topic. Below is an excerpt:

As fast as yoga grows in popularity in the west, yoga brands are exploding on the scene with equal intensity to satisfy our cravings for yogi stuff. According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans are now spending a staggering $5.7 billion a year on yoga classes and products according to a 2008 survey by Yoga Journal. That’s an 87% increase from 2004.

The growth of yoga and yoga classes is great, beautiful, inspired. The idea of more and more Americans getting off the couch, getting in an hour of yoga, reducing stress, finding balance, is a fantastic shoulder-width sized step in the right direction for so much of what ails us as a largely sedate nation.

But what about all the new brands? What about the trendy factor? Yoga is very trendy. It’s also cool and hip and that scares the hell out me. Could yoga simply become another expensive hobby for snobby rich people driving SUVs and Swagger Wagons?

When I attend my $15 Ashtanga class at the local shala, you know the cool one with great chai, gorgeous wooden floors, high ceilings and the giant dancing Shiva statue at the entrance, I see affluence everywhere. From the chic bags and mats to the growing range of really sexy, extremely expensive yoga clothing, yoga is a sacrificial cash cow of opportunity to enterprising yoga companies.

A hot topic with many opinions. This isn’t meant as a critique of any yogi or aspiring yogi regardless of their decisions regarding how they practice or approach their practice. Instead, the post is meant more as an observation and a cautionary tale about motivation and the trend that finds businesses too often capitalizing on people desperately in search of meaning for their lives.

Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve been vegetarian for a couple of years now. I slowly let a vast array of meats fall away as I settled nicely into the very comfortable dairy and eggs only category (octo-lavo-something or other, right?). That was fine for a while. But alas, I now feel a tug toward the next step and find myself faced with the toughest food choice ever: Vegan or pizza?
I know what you’re thinking: Hey Coe, they have vegan cheese and vegan pizza now.

And there lies the potato starchy rub. You see, I love, love, love pizza. I’ve driven miles, hours even, to try great pizza. One of those long drives was to try a vegan pizza. Which is why I am now struggling so much with the final big step into culinary moksha. The vegan pizza, while decent, just wasn’t pizza-esque enough for me.

Read the rest at Elephant Journal. It is good to support the Elephant.

Maybe the reason this struck me so much is that I am desperate to apply and actively engage in my practice – both on the yoga mat and on the cushion with my meditation practice. However, I love books, love the intellectual challenges of philosophy and various spiritual writings and if I’m not vigilant about things I could easily succumb to the lure of purely intellectual exercises at the expense of what matters most: engaged practice.

I’ve been a Bed Stand Buddhist and theoretical Yogi as much as I’ve been an engaged, active, practicing one. Yes, I meditate and practice yoga often, but I also spend a lot of time reading books about Buddhism, reading books on yoga, both topics are profoundly interesting to me. So, how do I balance my curiosity with my desire to live by the words and ideas I so frequently immerse myself in?

I find it easy to lapse into passivity. When I’m honest with myself, I’m far too often guilty of forgoing practice in order to better prepare for practice. Preparation is highly overrated. Yes, techniques matter. How we breath matters. It’s also important that we have in place solid foundations for our yoga and meditation. However, at some point, we have to jump. I’ve meditated for years. I’ve been practicing yoga for a few years now. What I’ve found is that regardless of progress and profound insights and success, I’m still drawn to books for that other missing insight, that key secret that’ll make it all easier. But, it’s not easy. It’s hard, frustrating, beautiful, transformative and profound work. And at the end of the day, all we have is ourselves. And we’re responsible for our progress.

Maybe I’m too hard on myself. That’s okay, too.

There are some amazing artists (Jai Uttal, Krishna Das) in this genre. But of the major Kirtan performers, David Newman (aka Durga Das) is my favorite.

Newman’s most recent album is wonderfully accessible and beautifully recorded, the voices are incredible and the songs will having you singing them even off the mat.

Give this record a listen.

The Self is everywhere. Bright is the self,
Indivisible, untouched by sin, wise,
Immanent and transcendent. He it is
Who holds the cosmos together. [Isha, 8]

This is about our non-locality, our pervasiveness throughout the All and our role in the creation of the All. Or, as it has also been written: Tat Tvam Asi.

Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.

As I finish up with Entangled Minds by Dean Radin and launch into In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky, I can’t help but feel the timeliness of this statement as it bears down on me.

There is so much we don’t, can’t and won’t understand, not in lifetimes. These questions aren’t answered by religions, or science or philosophers but can only be answered I believe from within. To quote Swami Vivekananda,

The goal of mankind is knowledge … Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’, should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what man ‘learns’ is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

In other words, knowledge, knowing, learning is really a form of remembering.

This is about gnosis, knowledge of self and deep understanding that transcends books. The most important things we can learn, we already posses if we could all only remember where we left them.