http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-10/c ... on/9235858...at what point does the commodification of something dilute its substance?
Yoga student Lauren Anseline's practice began as a concerted effort to avoid consumerist fitness programs.
"I was never one of those people who liked the gym," she says.
"I'd been to one in my life and it just seemed really consumerist — you're working on your body, and you want to look really good, you wear all the freshest new clothes, and have this lifestyle of 'going to the gym'."
She says that image-focussed mentality is filtering into yoga practice, too.
"Yoga has become something in Western culture that's a bit more material-based, with all the ridiculous yoga clothes and that culture you can buy into," she says.
"The idea that enlightenment can be sold as a consumerist thing, it's maybe indicative of the society we live in. People want to pay money for a membership to a yoga studio to achieve some kind of happiness.
"Maybe that just shows we're always searching for something because in our growing secular society we don't have that spirituality to focus on anymore." ...
Kim