“NAAAMASTE!”

I jolted slightly in my cross-legged position on my borrowed yoga mat. As I peeked around my hands, held in front of me in prayer pose, I observed people bowing down to the instructor, who was sitting at the front. The thin, white, cis female instructor clad in leggings and a sports bra quickly got up and left the room without a glance back at us. The loud exclamation of “namaste” at the end of class was perhaps the only marker that this was not just a modern fitness class taking place in a sweaty, heated, fogged-up room but also a practice that had some connection to India and, more broadly, to South Asia.

But what was that connection? And why did I still feel a bit uneasy, like I did not belong in this space, even though my family had immigrated to the United States from Punjab, India, less than thirty years ago?

I had made my way to this class at CorePower Yoga studio in Westwood, California, in 2013 as a sophomore at UCLA. One of the first things I noticed walking into the studio was how out of place I both felt and looked. All around me were conventionally attractive, fit, and youthful people dressed in color-coordinated, tight-fitting clothing, with labels like Lululemon, Alo Yoga, and Nike predominantly featured. I wore baggy black shorts and the oversized, wrinkled “Go Bruins” shirt I had received for free at orientation. I immediately felt myself shrinking in comparison to everyone else, trying and failing to smooth down the frizz in my hair that I had pulled into a ponytail.

I tentatively looked around at the beginning of class, hoping to find someone who looked like me, and was met with only white faces.

Over the course of the next sixty minutes—in a room so steamy I could barely see the person on the mat in front of me, with all twenty of us squeezed in like sardines, and with pop music pumping from speakers—the instructor led us from pose to pose with efficiency and speed. I barely had time to catch my breath or connect with my physical body. By the time we arrived in savasana, I felt great relief in being able to lie down and collect myself. I did feel some sense of peace—that I was able-bodied enough to mostly follow along and could now finally rest.

However, I had come to this class hoping to make connections with the teacher and other students and to learn how yoga might help with the existential dread and anxiety I was experiencing. I was looking for life guidance and support. Instead, I got a heart-pumping workout where I couldn’t make sense of which way my limbs were flailing as I tried to keep up.

I remember going back to my roommates and saying, “If yoga is just all about exercise, I prefer running and lifting weights!”

What a shame that I walked away with this impression when there is so much more to yoga, so much more depth and potential for transformation and a return to wholeness.

I felt even more lost and confused when I attended the yoga classes in the studios around Westwood, where UCLA is located. There was no mention of any philosophy, no explanation given. Nobody I met at the yoga studios seemed to care about me.

I went in seeking wise counsel and walked away with sore legs and a desire to purchase cuter workout clothes so that I could fit in (with money that I did not have!).

Where in these spaces was the thread of connection to spirituality and deeper meaning that I was seeking so desperately? Over the span of a year and a half, I went to more than a dozen studios and never found anything that felt right or real. Instead, I would find more of the same, that is, being the only person of color or one of just a few people of color in class—including staff and instructors. Yoga practiced as a workout and diluted down to asana as a sport with the aim of perfecting poses and showcasing flexibility as competition. Sanskrit terms used without explanation, context, or understanding. Statues and pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses used merely as decoration, placed in studio bathrooms and on the floor.

As humans, we are hardwired to want to belong. This is an innate and universal aspect of human nature. And to search for a place that feels safe and like home, a place where you belong, are accepted, and are loved, can be a difficult process. This search brought me to many different places. The original ache of not belonging that I was hoping to resolve had taken me to yoga in the first place. Eventually, I gave up going to yoga studios because what I was truly seeking was not there. I was hoping to gain a spiritual practice.

The State of Modern Yoga in the West

This is largely the state of modern yoga now in the West:

It has been whitewashed and sterilized to the point that yoga is grossly equated to a workout. There is frequently no acknowledgment that there is more to yoga than just stretching and contorting the body. Many yoga influencers, teachers, and practitioners don’t know or care to learn that yoga is a spiritual practice and path that originates from the Indian subcontinent with a very specific goal of liberation or moksha.

Yoga has been over-exoticized, culturally appropriated, and commodified. T-shirts are sold with sacred deities like Ganesha on them, sold and worn by people with no understanding of who Ganesha is. We have events like “Beer Yoga” and “Goat Yoga,” and white teachers enthusiastically tell their students to “nama-slay” the poses.

In the early years of my practice, I did not have the words to name what I was seeing, only the vague, persistent feeling that something about this was not right. Since then, I have come to know that what I was seeing and experiencing was the result of decades of colonization, cultural appropriation, and commodification.

How did we get here? And why is it important to recall and acknowledge yoga’s roots and history?

How we got here is something I’ll discuss throughout Liberating Yoga. As for the why: it’s important to return to yoga’s roots because the appropriated form of yoga was not something that could solve my problem of feeling disconnected from myself—if anything, it caused more disconnection and disorientation.

And that form of yoga can’t help anyone else with their problems either.

Ultimately, yoga became a path of homecoming, to my roots and to my ancestral practices. It became a sanctuary in the truest sense of the word. I found my way to spaces where teachers who looked like me talked about the true goals of yoga and what that means for us as human beings reincarnated at this time, what our true purpose is. These teachers created real community and connection, got to know their students, and led me into yoga practice with more understanding around asana’s importance. In these spaces, I found healing. I found a sense of belonging. I found knowledge that turned into wisdom on how to live my life.

However, I didn’t find this path through yoga as it is commonly practiced in the West. For that, I had to return to my motherland of India.

This is an excerpt from Liberating Yoga chapter 1: My Search for Belonging.