On Yoga Superiority — Or Why Your Spiritual Practice Isn’t the Center of the Universe
Recently, a woman commented under one of my essays: “Now you are a true yoga teacher.” She meant it as a compliment. In yogaland, this is premium praise. To be called a “real” yoga teacher signals moral refinement, spiritual maturity. The opposite label, “unyogic,” lands somewhere between critique, spiritual shaming, and insult.
Anyways, at this point, both categories feel irrelevant to me. And that indifference is strangely liberating: distance sharpens observation, and from that distance, one pattern keeps revealing itself with unnerving clarity — yoga superiority.
No doubt some yoga teachers are doing meaningful work. They speak about injustice, reflect on political realities, and try to connect inner practice with outer responsibility. But alongside that exists an underlying assumption, rarely explicit, but widely embodied, that yoga represents the highest available form of spirituality. That it sits at the top of the pyramid, with other traditions, sciences, and cosmologies arranged far below it. Everything gets filtered through yoga, measured against yoga, and validated by yoga — a one-size-fits-all moral and spiritual ruler.
I’ve seen discussions on racism rerouted into the yamas and niyamas, without any mention that yoga itself was historically shaped by the caste system, which is frankly a racist system. You see, my spiritually curious friend, it is possible to practice yoga and even frame it in the language of liberation while completely bypassing … important things. We see this everywhere: words, systems, practices elevated as if they were the pinnacle of understanding, without ever pausing to look deeper, without questioning history, context, or the power dynamics embedded in them.
Recently, a yoga teacher posted a meme with a celebrity’s face that read something like: “How I look when somebody says yoga is not for me.” It was framed as humor. But underneath it sat the same assumption: that not wanting to practice yoga is somehow uninformed, resistant, or spiritually underdeveloped. Telling people they “didn’t get” yoga if they aren’t interested is a perfect example of subtle moralizing. And, frankly, I find the missionary attitude always exhausting — whether it’s Bibles, Qur’ans, or Yoga Sutras.
There are countless reasons someone might not feel drawn to yoga, and all of them are valid. Cultural preferences. Religious frameworks. Personal boundaries. Histories of exclusion. Caste oppression (which is almost never acknowledged in yoga spaces despite being deeply entangled with yoga’s historical access and transmission). Not everyone experiences yoga as home. For some, it represents appropriation. For others, elitism. For others simply… irrelevance.
What often happens in yoga bubbles (because they are yoga bubbles) isn’t reverence; it’s centralization. Yoga becomes the explanatory framework for everything. Social justice is translated into yogic ethics, political awareness becomes yogic wisdom, entire liberation struggles are spiritually reworded until they sound more… “yogic.” I understand that those immersed in yogic philosophies and studies — who are seen as “experts” — view the world through a yogic lens. Often it is their job, and their students expect it. But somewhere along the way, this framing starts to feel superior.
The moment yoga stops being a path and starts positioning itself as the path, we have a problem, my friend.
Remember the whole “yoga for everybody” movement? Originally, it emerged to make yoga spaces more inclusive, which is a meaningful goal. But I’ve watched it often morph into something else entirely: a subtle form of domination over spirituality and spiritual practices. I have a very fine radar when it comes to intentions, and what I am seeing with many well-meaning teachers and practitioners is just another form of yoga superiority — and it’s harmful. Structurally, it reproduces the same hierarchies we see in religion: the assumption that our framework is the most evolved. And in that move, it quietly erases the vast plurality of other spiritual and cultural knowledge systems that have guided us for centuries.
If we are serious about dismantling power and oppression, we also have to investigate the “yoga as superior spiritual practice” dynamic. Yoga then gets cast as a civilizational savior, a universal remedy for social, political, and ecological crises. Which is a lot of responsibility to place on a toolbox. Because that is what yoga is: a sophisticated, historically layered toolbox for self-inquiry, consciousness, and transformation. Practiced correctly, it can be powerful. And sacred. But it is still one system among many.
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