After seeing a rude comment on a yoga-based ad on Instagram about how ‘white people doing yoga is offensive’, I felt it prudent to share this post from the CEO of Yogamu, Nikolai Manev:
“More than 100 years ago, Swami Vivekananda came to the USA to bring us yoga. Then more yogis came. They all had one goal: Spreading yoga all over the world as it is mainly a science to learn everything about yourself. That belongs to everyone without exception and it was the lifework of many great yogis to make sure that all over the world people say “namaste” and things like that.
If you want to conquer a country, bring your culture;) The romans knew it, the Greeks knew it, everyone knew it. Today most holidays are patchwork made from hundreds of different cultures. The best thing? We have NO idea who started it all.
If it would not have been for people like Swami Vivekananda, there would be no Pichai Sundararajan CEO (Google/Alphabet), Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO, Arvind Krishna CEO (IBM), Shantanu Narayen CEO (Adobe) and many more that run today some of the most valuable USA corporations.
How was that possible? In the 70s America brought IT work to India. Also companies like Tata were asked to mobilize their huge work force to learn programming mainframes. IT became a big thing in India.
Now they are all here. If it would not have been for “Namaste & Co” I quote: “Indians would still be laughed at with their “funny turbans” (I am quoting Swami Vivekananda).
By making the world “Down dog” and say Indian words, drink Indian tee and more we have opened our hearts and minds for Indians. We love the parts of the culture they so carefully exported to us. Americans do the same as they travel the world. It has never been different for thousands of years.
As T.K.V. Desikachar once said: “We wear your jeans. Please take as much from us as you feel like. We are all one people. Yoga belongs to everyone. Its about the mind and body. Everyone has one. How can we own yoga?”.
That is important to understand. A yogi understands union.
Have a great weekend my friends and namaste!
Nikolai
Here a couple CEOs of American companies that are Indians. They represent a huge percentage of corporate America. Thanks to yoga and global trade.
