"Manuel Vazquez Stewart Home, 63, is a legend of British counterculture: a director, writer, playwright, and activist, famous for his pulp novels that reflected 1970s London populated by hooligans, skinheads, and hustlers and for being someone who speaks bluntly about any subject he considers worth dissecting. His latest work is a book whose title leaves no room for ambiguity: Fascist Yoga (Pluto Press)."
"Modern Western yoga is 19th-century European gymnastics with a sprinkling of orientalist fairy dust, he says. It's about 120 years old and very different from the meditative yoga practiced in ancient India, although some people like to confuse the two. I'm not the only one who argues that modern yoga has its roots in European gymnastics; there's academic discourse and a good number of books and articles on the subject."
"I already knew a bit about fascist ideologies and fascist countercultures, so it didn't seem strange to me. I was aware of fascists interested in tarot and other forms of spirituality and religion, from paganism to mainstream branches of Christianity, including the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and especially their more traditionalist factions. So I did some research, and I was surprised to find not only that there were more fascist yogis and"
Modern Western yoga developed primarily from 19th-century European gymnastics infused with orientalist motifs and differs markedly from ancient Indian meditative yoga. The contemporary yoga movement is roughly 120 years old and combines physical culture with spiritual and commercial elements. Fascist and traditionalist religious groups have demonstrated interest in occult and esoteric practices, including tarot and adapted spiritualities. Historical research reveals unexpected overlaps between exercise-based yoga forms and extremist subcultures. Academic discourse and published works support the thesis that modern yoga has significant European physical-culture roots.
Read at english.elpais.com
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