Commercialisation of yoga

The commercialisation of yoga is the process of converting the practice of yoga as exercise from a personal activity conducted for reasons such as exercise and spiritual wholeness to a source of profit for businesses. These businesses are sometimes called the yoga industry, selling yoga classes, yoga teacher training, equipment such as yoga mats, clothing including yoga pants, yoga holidays, and other goods intended to appeal to yoga practitioners. The businesses support sales with specific advertising.

Free-market capitalism has made yoga into a sizeable global business, with sales of yoga clothing at $31 billion by 2018, and yoga tourism worth $181 billion in 2022. Scholars of yoga have argued that the feeling among yoga practitioners that it is largely unconnected to religion has left yoga open to neoliberalism. Yoga teachers may distrust the market and its values, but are trapped by the gig economy into serving the market, and often work under precarious conditions. Meanwhile, spiritual consumers buy products that support existing structures in society.