"The challenge of recovery is to re-establish ownership of your body and your mind - of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed.
"For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive." - Bessel van der Kolk
It's ironic that I would start a story about yoga, its benefits and cultural appropriation with a quote from a Western psychiatrist, PTSD researcher and author of the book The Body Keeps the Score. The quote sets off a paradoxical alarm. Western approaches to yoga are both appropriate and inappropriate.
Yoga is officially recorded as being developed in the fifth and sixth centuries. But texts like The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date it back to at least a century earlier.
It gained popularity in the Western world in the 1980s purely as an exercise with physical benefits even though it was introduced by Swami Vivekananda from India to the West in the late 19th century for its rightful benefits: meditation and centering the spiritual core.
But cultural appropriation is the thief of tradition, origin and meaning. It steals for the benefit of a dominant group and yoga became something it's not.I would love to say that I abstain from the practice of yoga for ethical reasons. But that's not true. I don't do yoga because I laugh, I'm impatient and most times, I can't afford the trendy clothing.
And while we're on the subject of trendy clothing, it's fitting to mention that this is one of the ways yoga in our world has lost its meaning.
But we've come around to its benefits for stress, anxiety and mindfulness. Several studies have shown it's good for dealing with cancer - and my personal studies have shown that it's good for farts.
Unesco has classified yoga as an intangible cultural heritage belonging to a people who live its meaning and customs - no one can take it away. Here, it belongs to Lorna Jane-clad bodies who can afford the fancy classes. We have forgotten its roots and focus only on asana.
Asana is only one arm of the practice - yoga extends beyond the obligatory om and the overused namaste. Still, everyone has the right to partake. There is nothing wrong with greeting the sun every morning and you shouldn't stay away out of fear. But do fear the fact that you are forgetting its creation, its reasons for existing and its rightful owners. Yoga should be education and not imitation.I've tried hot yoga, cold yoga, inside yoga and outside yoga, all with forgetting the sacred and skipping to the stretch and ... smoothie. You see, yoga isn't trend, it's philosophy. In fact, it's one of six established way back in medieval times to improve human life. Without knowledge of Sanskrit or Darshana (Indian philosophy), this is not possible.
If you have heard any or all of the words Samkhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Purva Mimamsa or Vedanta (read more below) uttered in your yoga class, then you're in the right place. But that's unlikely because yoga lives in spaces involving forgetting instead of remembering. 
When you do yoga, don't support a trend of neglect. Learn about a thousand-year-old history. Do yoga and do it with humility and gratitude. And never forget to let your soul recognise the soul of another. Namaste.
THE SIX SCHOOLS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY ..