Branding yoga

Bran

dingYo

gaH A R V A R D | B U S I N E S S | S C H O O L

Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline

that originated in ancient India.

It is now practiced widely all over the world especially in the U.S.A.

History of yoga

The earliest records of apparent yoga practice were found in Indus Valley archaeological relics that dated to the third millennium B.C.E. They included a seal depicting a man seated in lotus posture and a sculpture of a meditating man in lotus.The Bhagavad Gita (circa 300 B.C.E.), part of an epic known as the Mahabharata, was a philosophical cornerstone for yoga. Written in verse, it was “a yogic teaching . . . conveyed from guru to student.”12

The Yoga Sutras, a series of aphorisms authored by the Indian philosopher Patanjali, were also among yoga’s most important precursors.

All of these texts were also sacred to Hinduism. Some historians argued that yoga predated Hinduism. One historian noted that yoga was “technically a part of three ‘world religions’: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.”

yoga COMES TO AMERICA

The story of American yoga began in the mid-19th century, when Indic and Hindu literature fascinated American Transcendentalists writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

In 1893, Swami Vivekananda, one of the first Hindus to bring yoga to the U.S., represented India and spoke about Hinduism at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The experience pushed him to focus on becoming a spiritual leader, teaching ideas about yoga and Vedanta philosophy, to American students

Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Indra Devi, Richard Hittleman, The Beatles, Deepak Chopra were among the others who popularized yoga in America.

The present situation

In 2008 almost 16 million people in the U.S. were practitioners of Yoga. The Yoga Journal pegged the industry at whopping $5.7 billion.

In 2009 the advocacy group, Hindu American Foundation (HAF) ,concerned over yoga’s commercialization and disconnect from what it claimed were its Hindu roots, launched a campaign called “Take Back Yoga—Bringing to Light Yoga’s Hindu Roots.” There goal was to get people to acknowledge that the roots of yoga came from the Hindu faith.

The case is in hand is about branding a culture- YOGA. The question that arises is that

is COMMERCIALISATION OF yoga appropriate?

We see two different approaches to commercialization of yoga:

Bikram choudhary’s

TARA STILES’S

•Bikram Choudhury was born in 1946 in Calcutta, India. •Began his study of yoga at age four under his guru, Bishnu Ghosh. •Won the National India Yoga Championship at the age of 13.•At age 17, a weightlifting accident led doctors to conclude he would never walk again, but Bikram used yoga to repair his injured knee.

who is he?

Commercializing yoga

•In 1971, he arrived in the U.S and taught at resorts and spas before opening his first studio in Los Angeles. •He began to charge a fee for classes, which was unusual at the time.•In 1979, Bikram obtained his first copyright, for his book Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class. He also got a trademark for his company’s name, Bikram’s Yoga College of India.38 By 1984, admission to classes at his Beverly Hills studio cost $20 per person, a 10-class package cost $100, and the studio was taking in roughly $1,000 a day.•In 1994, Bikram began to offer an intensive teacher-training course, which led to a rise in the number of Bikram studios.

Patenting Bikram style

In 2002, when Bikram learned that other yoga instructors used his methods or mixed elements from Bikram yoga with other concepts—hot yoga with music, for example—he decided to patent the Bikram style, including the asana series and breathing exercises.

By April 2003, Bikram had more than 700 studios in 220 countries. In 2003 Open Source Yoga Unity (OSYU), based in San Francisco, California, filed suit against Bikram, claiming that his copyrights and patents were invalid, and that yoga could not be copyrighted. In 2005, the lawsuit was settled out of

courtBikram’s business earned him about $5 million a year, according to one estimate. Bikram continued to hunt down perceived copycats and send cease-and-desist letters.

In 2006, the Indian government responded to Bikram’s yoga patents by putting together a task force—a panel of 100 historians and scientists that would catalogue 1,500 yoga poses found in ancient Sanskrit, Urdu, and Persian. Their logic: yoga was part of India’s “traditional knowledge.

The goal of the asana catalogue was to keep others from following Bikram’s example.

who is she?

Tara Stiles was born in 1981 and grew up in rural Illinois. As a girl, she loved ballet. As a preteen, she discovered meditation. A ballet instructor also introduced Stiles to yoga.

Stiles said her early experiences of yoga were personal and drew from different traditions. She was put off by people who used yoga as a “soapbox” to discuss themselves or who did “guru things” such as accept offerings from students.

Yoga as a career

In 2006,the Ford Agency asked her to create and post promotional yoga videos on YouTube. In 2007, Stiles left Ford. She began to use Facebook to promote the yoga classes she taught out of her apartment, and offered private sessions. Women’s Health and the Huffington Post hired her as a blogger.

In 2008, Stiles opened her own studio, Strala Yoga, in New York’s NoHo district.“It started small and then got popular pretty quickly,” she said. Stiles’s yoga was highly secular. She did not use Sanskrit words for poses or chant in class. “People need yoga, not another religious leader.

The two approaches to commercializing yoga are very different. Where Bikram followed a vigorous and profit making approach to targeting audience, Stiles followed a more relaxed, and easy-going approach. Where Bikram made his yoga exclusive by patenting it, Stiles made it far reaching through mediums such as YouTube and Facebook.

Bikram introduced Bikram Yoga as a brand which had its own appeal and rigid structure whereas Stiles had a highly secular and flexible approach.

The other aspect of the case looks at the religious rather than the commercial side of Yoga. The HAF wanted people all over the world to acknowledge the fact that yoga was rooted in Hinduism. For them its was not about branding but about acceptance of the connection between yoga and Hinduism.

In 2008, several members of the staff at the Hindu American Foundation (HAF),examined editions of Yoga Journal, which had become a popular American yoga magazine. They saw no reference to Hinduism in the magazine and concluded that it associated Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity with yoga more than it did Hinduism.

They wrote a letter to the editor of Yoga Journal and followed it with a phone call. When asked whether the magazine avoided references to Hinduism, a young woman who answered the phone said: “Yeah, they [the editors] probably avoid it [Hinduism]. Hinduism does, like, you know, have a lot of baggage.

As a result, HAF decided to launch “Take Back Yoga—Bringing to Light Yoga’s Hindu Roots.” The goal of the campaign was not to convert yoga devotees to Hinduism but to have them acknowledge the connection between them. “It’s not about branding, but about acknowledgment. . . .

They believed yoga in its entirety is rooted in the Hindu philosophy,

Case analysis

Is branding yoga justified? Yes it is. Yoga is a discipline to achieve

balanced mind and body. No matter where it originated from it is and must be promoted

for the well being of all.Different approaches of commercializing

have there pros and cons but it appears that the advantages of branding yoga, so that

people around the world can benefit from it, are much more that the disadvantages (patenting it for commercial purposes).

The religious side of the case posed by the HAF, argues about the acknowledgement of the connection between Hinduism and Yoga. As is apparent by the history of yoga, we do see a connection between them. But it is also seen that yoga pre-dates Hinduism. Therefore a conclusion can be drawn that Yoga is rooted in Hindu Philosophy but only partly.

THANK YOU

These slides were created by Priti Verma, as part of an internship

done under the guidance of Prof. Sameer Mathur (

www.IIMInternship.com)