Yoga Market

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Discussion1

Yoga & Meditation on the Rise3

Consumption of Yoga in Past Years6

Conclusion9

References10

Yoga Market

Introduction

In the United States, yoga and meditation have moved from fringe movements to popular activities over the last 40 years, which reflects the changing attitudes in the public, media and scientific communities toward these mind-body practices (Stearn 1999). Meditation is now practiced by 9 percent of the adult U.S. population, and yoga is practiced by about 6 percent of the nation. Yoga has become a very lucrative industry, with about $6 billion spent on classes and products in 2008 (Norton & Johnson 2008). Highly educated women are the primary demographic for both practices, which are considered mind-body therapies by the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine. As the Baby Boomer generation has aged, alternative therapies have risen to meet their needs. Yoga is also popular with young adults, many of whom attend classes as a primary source of exercise.

Despite a global explosion of interest in yoga in the last twenty years, a growing throng of tens of millions of practitioners, and a multi-billion dollar yoga industry, up to recent times there has been very little critical academic study of the phenomenon; this essay is aimed at identifying the current situation of the Yoga market and consumption patterns of consumers in the Yoga industry in the United States.

Discussion

Americans got exposure to yoga in 1805 when William Emerson, father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, published the first Sanskrit scripture translation in the U.S. In 1883, the first Indian cleric arrived in the country and gave a short speaking tour on yoga. In 1888, Sylvais Hamati, an Indian yoga teacher, took on a U.S. student, an Iowan named Perry Baker, known as the first American yogi (Zador 2006). From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, yoga philosophy spread through the U.S. through lectures, often given by recently arrived Indian swamis or holy men. Many mainstream media outlets published sensationalized reports of yoga leaders, which insinuated that swamis were charlatans who were spreading dangerous ideas and taking money from poor families through their donations (Rani & Rao 2005).

For instance, in 1911 the Los Angeles Times published a story with the headline, "A Hindu Apple for Modern Eve: The Cult of the Yogis Lures Women to Destruction." In the early 1900s, the press often referred to yoga as a cult. Some of this negative reporting stemmed from unsavory characters that identified themselves as yogis; for instance, a grifter called “Yogi Bill Ellis” in the press conducted palm-reading sessions in New York from 1911 to 1915 before his arrest on a number of charges in 1915. During this same time period, racist organizations and laws like a ban on Asian immigrants' discrimination against East Indians and other Asians in the U.S. Yoga leaders faced government investigations and legal prosecution. In particular, yoga was seen as dangerous to women, and the press associated yoga with “love cults” (Stearn 1999). In the 1930s and 1940s, the media's attitude toward yoga softened, although yoga ...