🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (11 tweets)
the world makes more sense now, lol phrases like “acro-yoga” suggest to me yoga just means “making shapes with your body” in my indian spirituality classes, you could call sitting under a tree yoga, because it’s about discipline and intimacy with the mind and body https://t.co/vXx1h21yd8
these are the first four images for “yoga” https://t.co/rjBkIjNoUI https://t.co/NnMEewLgun
these are the first four images for “yoga in india” from indian websites https://t.co/qKbq79jGQn https://t.co/bSdl1UPylM
extra credit: here are the first four images for “yoga in india” from non-indian websites https://t.co/Bqe8wNcC3u
there’s one place where those meanings come together—and it’s the prototypical sun salutation version of yoga the US took one layer of meaning, India retained another https://t.co/yLtCuBFYni
i wouldn’t say the US “misunderstood.” they just borrowed a word to describe a different part of the prototypical example it’s a useful word! “making shapes with body” is a useful category of things when someone says “acro-yoga,” i know roughly what it is
reminds me of what happened with meditation america needed a term for “mindfulness” and they got one different needs, different meanings of the term just takes a bit of linguistic history to understand happened
i used to think of it hierarchically, as to what was real yoga, but eh, it’s such a narrow, forced way to think about it, it’s almost wilfully misconstruing what’s going on reality is messy, people don’t have the same goals, assuming so is projection https://t.co/HPi1CKyE0T