Hold the ends with your right hand. Inhale. Lift Dolphin Plank Pose Yogayour inner body up. Remember the action described before: Inner Body Bright. Firm your Dolphin Plank Pose Yogashoulder blades onto your back to support this tall posture. Inhale again and softly lengthen up through your neck. Lift the front and back equally. Exhaling, tilt your head to the left side.
The yoga market hierarchy
Another logic of commodification is the creation of a hierarchy among producers -culminating in cartels and polarisation. It is well known that early market entrance improves the chances of market dominance. Accordingly the first yoga corporations dominating the West were early Indian entrances. Sivananda and Iyengar – two leading Indian yoga CEOs -established themselves in the 70s as two dominant yoga brand names.61 Otherwise most suppliers in the market are self-employed running small businesses. Percentage wise there seem to be more males here than we find among their customers – the yoga sympathisers. The more entrepreneurial among these specialists are already moving into small corporations promoting their own styles and brands. There is money in selling further services and related products over the Internet (Lau 2000). Who can practise yoga without mats, props, specialised fashion clothes, posters, jewellery, and statues?
Within the cultural field of yoga in the West there emerges a three-tiered social hierarchy of yoga entrepreneurs: the global celebrity stars, the regional entrepreneurs and the local freelance workers. The top rank is rich in symbolic capital and successfully transacts its knowhow and symbolic capital in the global market. Here we find the globally known celebrity instructors who are featured in magazines, writing their own books, promoting their own videos, running large advertisements and web sites, doing global tours and running courses. Some of them have practised yoga for a lifetime but others are using their celebrity status as film actress, pop singer or TV star to promote their newfound yoga. These top ranks are used in advertisements and to promote conferences, and have often developed their own styles of yoga. Many of them are from California. And they have in the yoga world reached yoga celebrity status. Most have to be constantly active and alert to stay on top – for fashions tend to change.
