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Comment by jnathsf | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic but do Indians generally find Westerners doing Yoga cultural appropriation when it’s stripped from its original context? I actually see Yoga and Hinduism more broadly like open source software with its many philosophies as branches. As such developing a free app is in the same spirit of making (formerly) esoteric practices more accessible

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Can't answer for Indians, but as far I understand it is a bit complicated. Depending on the classification you are looking at there are like 6-8 branches of Yoga of which "Hatha Yoga" is one. Hatha Yoga is the one which most people think of as Yoga. It has the physical 'asanas' as the main component. It has other parts like 'Pranayam' as well which are breathing exercises with chanting of verses/sounds in some of them. Most people who practice yoga are doing 'asanas' primarily with 'pranayams' mixed in sometimes. 'Asanas' in themselves are mostly physical and I think anyone can do them without any context. So, feel free to do so. :)

Not much as cultural appropriation but I consider it disrespectful to Hinduism that people don't acknowledge the origins with respect. This is not just about westerners but most Indians even Hindus do the same. Stripping Hinduism of all its good parts but vociferously pinning all the bad parts on it even if they have had strong social moorings. Even Govt of India has to say it is not religious to appease to the sentiments of Muslims and Christians.

To simplify, Yoga means union (with the existence) and the word has sacred/divine connotations. So using it for all sorts of things like say naked yoga etc and disregarding the sanskrit name for the yogasanas and calling it things like downward dog pose etc is uncomfortable. Hopefully the yogasana practicioners will get curious and go deeper into the philosophy and mindset of the Hindu philosophy.

If anyone wants the full Yoga experience I recommend organisations like ISHA Yoga Foundation.

Btw regarding open source software comparisons, people either want to force the original repo into drastically changing the rules of contribution or instead of forking it and acknowledging the original project they just want to copy it with same name but do their own thing (for eg mindfulness vs meditation)

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