Is yoga racist, with its ‘skinny, bendy and blonde’ devotees?

Broadstairs writer, dominatrix and KentOnline columnist Melissa Todd ponders the suggestion as she attempts the downward-facing dog at her regular class…

Some people - not you and I, of course, because we’re sensible - choose this, the dreariest part of the calendar, for all manner of idiotic self-improvement efforts, deciding to give up wine and cheese and jog through sleet, as if a little extra paunch combined with a sense of fun didn’t make them vastly more loveable.

Thus my return to the gym on January 2nd saw cars abandoned anyhow on grassy verges, while inside people in shiny new plimsolls strode gasping, red-faced, up the stairs on their way to their workout, hoping not to die before their first effort at spin.

I was going to my yoga class. I like to take my exercise, and everything else, lying down. This despite being told recently that yoga is racist. “You do know yoga is racist?” my pal Michael said, and sent me a Guardian article to prove it. In it, a woman named Stacie Graham described how most yoga devotees are white women, “skinny, bendy and blonde”, and has now set up an anti-racist yoga teacher training course, which covers, among other things, the harmful impact of British colonialism in India. This, she argues, has led to yoga being Westernised, focussing on its physical rather than spiritual benefits. In essence, yoga has been culturally appropriated.

I looked around my class. Well, it’s true all the participants were white, because my gym is in Broadstairs, whose residents are 94% white; but we were far from all being skinny, bendy and blonde. There were even a few brave boys among us, cowering at the back, trying earnestly to make their hips unclench. The teacher was skinny and bendy, but then she does yoga every day, which is awfully good for a girl: probably I could be skinny and bendy if my job were yoga, rather than trotting round in heels and pencil skirts, admonishing 70-year-old schoolboys.

I hesitate to mention it - for what do I know of racism? About as much as exercise - but the whole notion of cultural appropriation strikes me, ironically, as racist. It’s true, the word spiritual makes me wince, but does this mean I'm only allowed to pursue interests, exercise regimes, outfits and foodstuffs that hail from my hometown? Must I only Morris dance while munching turnips and oats, singing dum de diddle dum dee? I’m from Essex. I like Essex. But why not enjoy and explore everything interesting the world has to offer? Anything that makes us happy? Isn’t this why we invented planes, the internet and telly?

“The whole notion of cultural appropriation strikes me, ironically, as racist...”

Of course, cultural appropriation is only bad if a Western individual seeks out cultures which have historically been exploited by the West. No one would describe Jamaicans bob-sledding as racist; misguided, perhaps, but not racist. My son spent six weeks in Jamaica recently; a wag on X asked if I were worried he’d saunter back through customs sporting dreadlocks and speaking in patois. I admit the idea turned my stomach rather, not because it felt racist, but because it felt idiotic. He’s from Essex too, white as a consumptive Victorian ghost child. In Jamaica, he was repeatedly called “white boy”, while on his Starbucks cup they scrawled the legend “Mr White”. Happily, he brought back only fresh respect for WiFi and the tiniest tan.

The casual use of the term racist to describe my attempting a downward-facing dog means we will quickly run out of ways to describe actual racism, like genocide. I know nothing of racism personally, but I do know something about language. We are forcing words to take up jobs for which they are self-evidently, profoundly unqualified. Words used to have commonly agreed meanings, but now they can mean something different depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall. This makes actual debate about serious issues nigh on impossible.

Racism means hatred or prejudice based on skin colour, race or ethnicity. It doesn’t mean me trying and failing to stand on one leg.