Yoga as Physical Culture

Physical culture, or empowerment, is very alive within the yoga community based on what I've read and viewed. It makes claims about helping with your health and making your life better overall. We watched a web series called Namaste Bitches and the physical culture was glaringly represented, as well as the over-commercialization. This week I went to the Lodge, and thankfully Stevee is not at all like this. When she was giving us some background on the postures she was getting ready to show us how to do she told us that some teachers say the postures help with wrinkles and will reverse gray hair, among other things. After telling us that she kind of laughed a bit and was like I don't believe any of that. This is one of the reasons that I like going to Stevee's classes. She doesn't make any of the ridiculous claims, and she also demonstrates a secondary way to do the posture (usually including the block) to help if you are having trouble with it the normal way. The question was posed, "Why not run, or do zumba?", well, I feel like for awhile zumba was the big craze. Dance away those extra pounds, lose that extra weight in a fun way, blah blah blah. As for the actual physical culture of it, I can't presume to have much knowledge of. At the height maybe there was some to an extent, but I don't think that it would be like yoga for one reason. Zumba has no roots in a religious or spiritual history nor does running. Yoga, on the other hand, does. Its common place for miracles to go hand and hand with religious or spiritual happenings, so for yoga it makes sense that if you do these specific postures it is going to make you stay younger longer.