Yoga & Politics in the 2024 Presidential Election

Yoga is entwined with politics in the epic Mahabharata and it's most famous chapter, the Bhagavad Gita. And it's not just in the epic and mythological literature; many early kingdoms and states in India connected their politics with yoga, just as many yogis in rural India (where its majority lives) often resisted such rule. Mohatma Gandhi applied a radical commitment to ahimsa, non-violence, to help rid India of the British while Sri Aurobindo organized 10,000 yoga warriors to try to take on the British Army. The current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, has made yoga and politics an art form for his BJP party and the larger religio-nationalist Hindutva political movement.  

So what about yoga and the November 2024 presidential election in the United States, where basic rights, the planet, and perhaps democracy itself are at stake? What's an American yogi – and yoga teacher – to do, or not do?

First, consider Shakespeare, "to thine own self be true," before reflexively (or due to yoga cultural pressure) going with the convention in recent yoga, which is to eschew all things that are political.

Second, appreciate that while some people will judge you for expressing a political sentiment, others will judge you for not expressing one.

Third, if you're a yoga teacher, consider how you wish to "hold the space" of your classes. You might sense that expressing a political idea or position interferes with what most brings students to class and what they've probably paid for: a yoga class, which is generally thought not to include politics.

Fourth, in being true to yourself – to your core values – you might also consider the core values in yoga and how they are or are not involved in the upcoming election: ahimsa (non-hurting), satya (being truthful), aparigraha (not being covetous or greedy), bramacharya (respecting others especially in matters of intimacy), and asteya (not stealing).

Fifth, you might note that in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the yoga demographic in the electorate went 55-45 in favor of Clinton over Trump, which suggests that about half of the students in the average class (in the imaginary average State) is pretty diverse if not divided.

How Am I Voting?
You might have already figured out that I will be doing all I can to help support the election of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and to defeat the patently right-wing, racist, misogynist, narcissistic, pathologically lying Donald Trump, who foments violence, opposes women's right to control their own bodies, denies climate change, favors tax policies for the very wealthy over others, wants to unleash oil extraction everywhere, and will (as he has promised) use his power to cause untold harm to millions of people with the vengeful wrath that seems to animate him from his core. 

I'm also supporting Harris and Walz because I agree with their vision of freedom and policies that support working and middle class families, celebrates diversity and protect democracy, grasps the reality of climate change – even as I might disagree with them on some specific policies.

More Than Just Voting
If all you can do is vote, please vote! If you have the ability to do more, please do more! There are lots of other ways to get involved, even if you don't live in a swing state. 

To those of you who disagree on most, much or all of what I've written here, I wish you all good things, even if in expressing my thoughts and feelings I'm destined to lose my connection with you, which I don't want to do. But it's a risk I'm more than willing to take.

Namaste,
Mark