A hidden danger within contemporary Indian society is ‘Extreme Yoga’ – an off-shoot of the fascist policies of the far-right BJP government! People are becoming ever more impoverished – and that includes the fakirs and ascetics – who before this downturn had cornered the quite lucrative market of ‘apparent’ poverty very popular with unsuspecting Western tourists!
This new generation of ‘aggressive’ Hindu asceticism has led to Yoga postures being performed in unnecesarily ‘difficult’ or seemingly ‘implausable’ positions – all designed to be ‘advertising’ friendly! Many ‘dhotis’ (loin-clothes) now worn by modern Yogis are made by famous designer-labels in the US (in Miami ‘sweat-shops’) – carrying labels such as ‘Calvin Klein’, ‘Off-White’ and ‘Amiri’, etc – exported for the foreign Indian market.
The US-dominated internet has been responsible for not only commercialising Indian spiritual culture to a far greater degree than it already was (many Indian holymen are renowned to have direct lines of communication with the Rolls Royce factory in the UK). Today, clickbait generates income and one way of securing this attention has been the distortion of the practice of Yoga positions in ever more attention-grabbing situations!
In 2008, a young, local musician living in the Woodland Park area of Colorado in the US – an 18 year old man known as ‘Joshua Maddux’ – was introduced to the practice of ‘Extreme Yoga’ by his friend Andrew Newman – himself quite a successful ‘Extreme Yogaist’! What people did not know, however, is that Andrew would us a pharmaceutical compound (injected daily) which rendered his musculatures comletely ‘limp’ for a short-time – an effect that would allow him to artificially assume all the Yogic postures – as if he were an accomplished Yogi!
All this misdirection impressed Joshua Maddux and he became susceptible to the suggestions of Andrew – who had the bizarre idea of Joshua Maddux assuming Yogic postures hanging upside down (like a ‘bat’) whilst secreting himself in a nearby chimney-stack! The idea of this was activity was to link an aggressive internet advertising campaign associated with Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ – whilst dressed in a ‘Batman’ outfit!
According to rumours, Andrew administered a ‘relaxing’ injection to Joshua during early 2008 – who could then fit easily up the desired chimney-stack – but Andrew gat the dose incorrect and the although Joshua had assumed the right position – he had not yet doned the ‘Batman’ outfit and Andrew had not yet set-up the camera and sound system designed to blast-out Meatloaf’s masterpiece! Joshua’s body re-assumed its natural muscular tension too early and despite his best efforts – Andrew could not pull his friend from the Chimney! Andrew quickly placed the breakfast bar over the entrance of the fire-place as a means to ‘stop the cold wind’ blowing through the passage – and disappeard into the night!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 