Yoga Essay

Yoga is a triumphant American survivor. Where other esoteric or foreign-born spiritual practices have veered off course, endured only in the margins of society, or failed altogether, yoga has thrived. Theories abound as to why Americans have taken to yoga. Maybe it's because yoga, with its quiet poses and careful breathing, provides the perfect ballast to stressful American lives. Maybe it's because yoga offers a cure for American body-hating Puritanism. Or maybe it's because yoga offers spiritual transcendence, an hour at a time, all within the confines of your yoga mat.
Yoga started out on the edges of American life, the province of poets, seekers, dreamers, drifters, bohemians. It has journeyed to the center of things, to our neighborhoods, our gyms, our schools. Now, with the practice settled into the mainstream, it's fitting that we have two new histories of yoga in America that seek to understand how and why so many of us ended up here, blissed out in cobbler's pose. Reading these books, I wonder whether the secret of yoga's lasting allure is maybe more obvious, and more down to earth, than we devoted practitioners might like to admit. From the very start, the American reception of yoga was a blend of rhapsodic spiritualism and harder-nosed skepticism. I don’t really enjoy nor not enjoy yoga. Meaning I don’t really have an opinion. I do believe it is good for the body and can be great for the soul. But I don’t see myself practicing yoga after this