Yoga in advertising

The purpose of using yoga in advertising ranges from giving a favourable impression of a product or service, to selling specific yoga-related items like classes, clothing and props.

Yoga advertisements employ themes such as the sexual objectification of women, self-transformation through physical means, and the promise of reduced stress.

The scholar of yoga Andrea Jain writes that these were "mass-marketed to the general populace"; successful brands were able to gain audiences of hundreds of thousands from cities around the world.

[12] Commercialization has gone hand-in-hand with this trend, to the point where yoga aimed at the female market has become a business worth hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

"[15] The Welsh author Holly Williams, writing about the commercialisation of yoga in The Independent, commented that she had "unfollowed people on Instagram whose artful shots of their Lycra-clad one-legged wheel poses come with a barrage of hashtags (#fitspo #yogaeverydamnday #beagoddess).

"[16] The feminist scholar Diana York Blaine identifies three themes in the use of yoga in advertising: that the "chaotic female body and its desires" need to be controlled; that consumers can use yoga to "maintain the excesses of patriarchal capitalist consumer culture"; and that the values of Western consumerism and materialism take precedence over the values of Eastern spirituality.

[10] She gives as example an advertisement by Carl's Jr., a fast food business, in which a woman doing Upward Dog pose confides to her friend that her husband wants her to "get great buns".

Commenting on the sexism implicit in the scene, Blaine states that "Corporate America increasingly co-opts yoga to keep its army of workers working".