The Globalized Jogini

Once again, in the absence of a centralized Tantric “church,” “canon,” and “pope,” people are free to plunder and reinvent the Yoginı ¯ traditions in whatever way they please, in this case to effect the bricolage that has been the hallmark of the stories humans have told about themselves from time immemorial, here in a revisionist religious mode. But none of the developments taking place in modern-day India can rival the commodification of the Yoginı ¯ going on in California and other Western “Meccas” of New Age spirituality. So, for example, a story from the business section of the New York Times, with a Beaverton, Oregon, dateline, begins: 

“She called herself the Yogini . . . ”:
She could twist her body in all kinds of ways. . . . Her body quivered
like a plucked guitar string. She was teaching at a yoga studio in Los An-
geles when she was discovered by Nike, which plastered her face across
magazines and beamed her body over television

“We love the Yogini,” said . . . a spokeswoman for Nike, as she paused
a tape of the commercial in Nike’s headquarters here [in Beaverton]. . . .
From opening women’s stores in the Los Angeles area to starting a Web
site called nikegoddess.com to creating sneakers that have a snakeskin
look, Nike is trying to dominate a market where having a trendy image
scores more points than macho advertising.

One might view this globalization of the Yoginı ¯ as her final victory, a last howling laugh against the male forces that have tried for over a millennium to domesticate her. But such would be to forget that every day, ersatz entrepreneurs of ecstasy, male and female, are still in the business of selling Yoginı ¯ kisses.

Source: Ibid.