The fascinating world of yoga practitioners

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This article was published 22/03/2025 (193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With an estimated seven million Canadians doing yoga, there’s no question the practice is popular today.

But why is it so popular? That was the question on the mind of Paul Bramadat, director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria — and an avid yoga practitioner himself.

Drawing from his own experience, and through conversations with hundreds of yoga teachers and students in the U.S. and Canada, Bramadat sought to find out what it means for people in the modern West. The result is his new book Yogalands: In Search of Practice on the Mat and in the World. (McGill-Queen’s University Press.)

Originally from Winnipeg — he’s a University of Winnipeg graduate and also taught in that university’s religious studies department from 1998-2008 — Bramadat started doing yoga at age 45 when the avid runner’s knees “blew up,” as he put it.

At first, he resisted. “I didn’t want to be that guy,” he said, referring to the stereotype of a West Coast, rainforest, hippie, vegetarian yoga practitioner.

But today, because of his rigorous practice of doing yoga six days a week for one to two hours a day, he can walk pain free.

For Bramadat, yoga started as a health intervention. But as a scholar of religion, he found himself wondering more and more about the spiritual roots of yoga, and whether people who do yoga today are aware of them.

“I couldn’t resist exploring it,” he said. “I decided to study it like any other form of religious experience.”

In the book, Bramadat, who was raised Unitarian, notes there is debate about the age and origins of yoga, with many practitioners claiming that it is over 5,000 years old and has Hindu roots.

And while Westerners use the generic word “yoga” to describe the entire practice, in fact there are many forms of yoga such as Hatha, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Yin, and Jivamukti. Each has its own unique history, focus and style.

“There are dozens of different schools and styles,” he said. “Think of them like denominations in Christianity. They have the same root, but have different expressions.”

Bramadat himself practices Ashtanga yoga, which in its current form is about 100 years old, but which sees itself as being part of a roughly 2000-year lineage dating back to the sage Patanjali.

That form focuses on ethical guidelines or principles that govern interactions with others and the world; personal observances or practices that cultivate inner discipline; physical postures or poses that help build strength, flexibility and stability; breath control; meditation; concentration; and enlightenment.

In the book, Bramadat notes that yoga became popular in the 1970s and 1980s during the fitness boom — workout and aerobics videos aimed at women produced by people like Jane Fonda. That history has possibly led to yoga being a predominantly female activity; today, over 80 per cent of practitioners are women.

The “studio, mat and music” form of yoga that is familiar to most people today is a relatively recent phenomenon, he noted. “It really only jelled about a hundred years ago when several key people promoted it and made it more marketable in that way,” he said.

Bramadat also explores why yoga’s religious dimensions are rarely mentioned in classes.

“Yoga is almost always categorized as spiritual but not religious by its practitioners,” he said, adding that almost nobody he talked to “explicitly connected yoga with religion in any conventional or orthodox sense.”

That reluctance to use even quasi-religious language to talk about yoga, and a preference for other terms such as wellness, spirituality and philosophy, “tells us something about our existing options for talking about selves and transcendence,” he added.

Other things Bramadat explores in the book related to yoga include its relationship to feminism, misogyny, nationalism, authority, colonialism and new expressions like “Christian yoga,” which combines traditional Christian theology with the ancient Hindu practice.

During his research, Bramadat visited seven Canadian and American cities, including Winnipeg. He discovered differences between why Americans and Canadians do yoga. For Americans, it’s primarily a way to stay out of the hospital and avoid huge medical bills. For Canadians, where health care is free, yoga is more about fitness and lifestyle.

In both countries, yoga is practised mainly by more affluent white people, although efforts are being made by some studios to diversify their clientele.

The book is for “curious practitioners, those who wonder if something more is going on here,” he said, adding he wants to provide a reflection on yoga from those he observed and himself as a participant.

“My hope is that combining my normal academic training in the study of religion, spirituality and society with a willingness to subject my own experiences to critical reflection, I might enhance our growing understanding of yogaland,” he said.

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