In a consumer culture the offering of commodities overwhelms us. Hence choice becomes essential and the sum of the consumer’s choices sends a strong signal out about who we are. This choice – our selection, combination, display and use of commodities – tells others who we are, our tastes, and our values. This cluster of chosen commodities – a selection of specific products, services and experiences/activities (like for instance travelling, clubbing, spirituality or cycling) – becomes in our consumer culture a sign of a given lifestyle. Hence in a consumer culture, lifestyle (Wikipedia link) is about your choice of consumption – you are what you consume’. Your lifestyle becomes a signifier of status and identity.
Through participation in a lifestyle the individual communicates identity to her/him self and others. (Giddens 1991, Bauman 1998, Barker 2012). Hence on countless yoga websites and blogs we find yoga sympathisers displaying their personal signification of yoga by often surrounding and relating it to a bricolage of objects, interests, narratives and symbols (like pets, hobbies, opinions, vacations, music): this is me, this is who I am. Here yoga discourse is clearly an essential part of self-identity building, often signifying values and ethics.
I will return to this later: yoga as a totem signalling images of social identity and lifestyle; yoga signified as a provider of cultural values and ethics to the yoga amateur. It now suffices to conclude that yoga like so many other activities and experiences became conditioned by the post-war welfare society’s consumer culture. The yoga sign in other words became part of lifestyles signalling identity and status.
Stretch your toes and lift them up, which activates the Hero Pose Yoga whole lower leg. Balance your weight on the four corners of your feet. Retain the Hero Pose Yoga elevated toes, then squeeze your shins in toward the midline, and widen your thighs apart. You can lean forward a little to do this. With thighs still wide, pull your tailbone down and your spine up vertically. Inhale and stretch fully up from inside. Exhale, bend forward, and touch the floor or two blocks. Bend your knees if necessary, taking care to track them straight forward.
