Daniel Simpson - "Is Modern Yoga Fake?"
Sep 7, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min · 16 segments
Daniel Simpson, author of The Evolution of Modern Yoga and host of the…
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Sep 7, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min · 16 segments
Daniel Simpson, author of The Evolution of Modern Yoga and host of the…
People seem very pleased with... my notion that I was going to let go of fretting about whether or not yoga teachers can make a living and how the industry's contracted, you know, that kind of gross grouchy thing that I've been harping on, you know, letting go of that and just turning to substantive things that are interesting and that make yoga feel relevant.
You see, the problem is that in the past, when I was like leaning into yoga substantively and just finding all the things that felt important about it, some of the things that we have said about yoga over the years or that have been taught about yoga, essentially the claims that have been made about where yoga comes from and what it can do for people.
And it's confusing because there are like observable benefits and transformational experiences that people have had from yoga and people listening to this show likely have had those experiences themselves or have witnessed them in others as teachers.
So we know there's something that works about yoga, that there's something even important about yoga.
However, And all of the bringing yoga into the marketplace and mainstreaming it and yoga for blank, you know, all the things that have become associated with what you might call modern yoga or maybe modern postural yoga, a lot of those claims about what makes it ancient and what What makes it work? What are the biological mechanisms? A lot of the things that we've been doing to make yoga legitimate in the eyes of the general public.
I'm not, I don't read all of it, but I do try to stay, you know, aware of what's been studied.
He's aware of the scholarship, but he also, he comes from this journalist background.
If you go back and listen to his previous episodes, we've talked about where he comes from.
And it was super helpful for me to be clear about what makes modern yoga relevant and what is actually obscuring that.
People seem very pleased with... my notion that I was going to let go of fretting about whether or not yoga teachers can make a living and how the industry's contracted, you know, that kind of gross grouchy thing that I've been harping on, you know, letting go of that and just turning to substantive things that are interesting and that make yoga feel relevant.
You see, the problem is that in the past, when I was like leaning into yoga substantively and just finding all the things that felt important about it, some of the things that we have said about yoga over the years or that have been taught about yoga, essentially the claims that have been made about where yoga comes from and what it can do for people.
And it's confusing because there are like observable benefits and transformational experiences that people have had from yoga and people listening to this show likely have had those experiences themselves or have witnessed them in others as teachers.
So we know there's something that works about yoga, that there's something even important about yoga.
However, And all of the bringing yoga into the marketplace and mainstreaming it and yoga for blank, you know, all the things that have become associated with what you might call modern yoga or maybe modern postural yoga, a lot of those claims about what makes it ancient and what What makes it work? What are the biological mechanisms? A lot of the things that we've been doing to make yoga legitimate in the eyes of the general public.
I'm not, I don't read all of it, but I do try to stay, you know, aware of what's been studied.
He's aware of the scholarship, but he also, he comes from this journalist background.
If you go back and listen to his previous episodes, we've talked about where he comes from.
And it was super helpful for me to be clear about what makes modern yoga relevant and what is actually obscuring that.
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