Krishnamacharya once said, "If we don't inspire women, those great Indian traditions will perish because men are not following the rules of the Vedas, they are all becoming merchants." Before modern times, yoga was As for men, female yogis and female gurus are few and far between. In contrast, today Krishnamacharya's vision has been over-realized. The yoga crowd has long been dominated by women, and the yoga sky they hold up is far more than half of it. This is a dark thread that accompanies the modernization and globalization of yoga, a great and gentle revolution.
Has the Queen of England practiced yoga? Yes.
In the 1870s, yogi Shivapuri Baba was invited to Buckingham Palace to teach 18 yoga classes to Queen Victoria. The yoga class at Buckingham Palace is a prelude to this gentle revolution, and the real protagonist is about to debut.
Horizontal popularization, participation in pioneering
In fact, in 1893, the stars of the First World Congress of Religions in Chicago, in addition to the aforementioned Vivekananda, were also representatives of the popular Theosophical Society at the time, such as female fighter Annie Besant.
The founder of the Theosophical Society was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a profoundly independent thinker, and it was at her gathering that Gandhi read the Bhagavad-gita for the first time. The Theosophical Society has contributed greatly to the rooting and dissemination of Indian ideas in the West and to the cause of yoga publishing.
Wealthy women have invested in inviting Indian gurus (guru) to come and teach, such as Vivekananda and Iyengar... These gurus not only brought yogic thoughts and practices, but also trained many excellent female yogis.
It is clearly not enough to invite male gurus to come and teach. In 1898, Margaret Nobe became a female disciple of Vivekananda and lived in India for the rest of her life, fighting for India's independence and noble life. Her converted name was Sister Nivedita, and she was the first Western woman to join the monastic system in India.
Also officially female disciples: Indra Devi, a disciple of Krishnamacharya, Swami Radha, a disciple of Sivananda... They later made pioneering contributions in different fields of yoga.
In 1956, Magna Baptiste, along with her husband, opened the first gym dedicated to fitness and yoga in San Francisco. It was also in that era that Indra Devi successfully won the first batch of celebrity fans, and the star effect began to appear. In the 1960s, Swami Radha appeared on Indian TV to teach yoga philosophy and experience, and then moved to Vancouver, where he opened the city's first metaphysical bookstore and created the first Canadian meeting house. She has authored more than a dozen books on yoga, established a publishing house, and founded the quarterly yoga magazine, the predecessor to yoga magazine Ascent.
By the 1970s, the time was ripe for yoga to move from the fringes to the mainstream, when a key role emerged - Lilias Folan: she first produced the first yoga series "Lilias Folan, Yoga and You", made yoga available live to a national audience; she gained a huge following across the country, and yoga was deeply rooted in the United States.
Spiritual depth, did not give up
In addition to the aforementioned spiritual teachers Mrs. Blavatsky and Navidit, Swami Radha, founder of Hidden Hatha Yoga, is also committed to revealing the spiritual and mystical aspects of asana; Indra Devi teaches yoga while , while promoting unconditional love; while Lilias Americanized yoga, he always remembered to retain the core of yoga - "know yourself".
In addition to staying true to the spiritual core of yoga, women are also trying to develop a culture around asanas that fits the age: Sienna Cohen, for example, brought yoga and other major projects to Africa to help build Africa; Shiva Li worked on environmental issues and cross-cultural issues; Sharon Garnen advocates combining yoga and vegetarianism.
At the same time, in other yoga schools, a series of female leaders has emerged: Amy Cliffs of Hot Yoga, Kelser of Kundalini Yoga, Anna Forest of Forest Yoga, Yoga Fitness Training Perth Shaw of Yin Yoga, Sarah Powell of Yin Yoga, and more. Before Swami Radha died in 1993, he appointed Swami Radhananda, who was also a woman, as his spiritual heir, and declared that the spiritual bloodline should be inherited by women.
According to yoga celebrity Eric Shaw, there are two important gifts women give to modern yoga. After we have sorted and deepened them, we can say this:
First, they reconstruct the tradition of yoga with a broad modern vision. They target Western countries (US and Europe) and use all possible routes of transmission, which has proven to be a wise choice.
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