S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 1 9 3 5 Sama Fabian In using online applications to practice Yoga, are we actively participating in the automatization of the human body or is this part of the democratization of Yoga and its accessibility to all? By asking this question I would like to introduce a reflection on the practice of Yoga online. No so much to polarize opinions about whether this might be good or bad, but to offer facts as well as subjects for reflection. There is an economical and political aspect, and then I question the medium of the digital screen itself its effect on the nervous system and the philosophical questions that this generates. We all know the story of UBER. The American application, which connects taxi drivers to their potential clients (recently diversified into delivering food). What distinguishes UBER taxis is that there is no money exchange and the charge is visible online. There is usually a bottle of water and some sweets available in the car.What’s relevant here is that the manner of the delivery of the service is dictated by the app, the driver is no longer the provider of the service, Uber is, but the mere executor of it, in other words, becoming automated. What we have to understand is that the value and profit are no longer in the service provided but in the interface between consumer and supplier, the application. This de-humanization of people in both the “service and the cultural industries” is now happening on many levels of the socio-economical strata. In the next few years we are to see a massive automatization of all manner of work. So you might ask what has all this to do with Yoga? The proliferation of online Yoga over the past few years has followed the logic of the market. Targeted advertising and competitive posturing. Apparently, we can “do yoga anywhere”, we don’t have to worry about cool outfits, expensive studio fees, big classes, annoying teachers, the state of our hair or the smell of our breath. We are supported in being the center of our own universe, unquestioning the new forms of oppression distilled by the technological super-powers or GAFA, i.e., Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, the matrix on, which these apps depend, and that will make use of anything that it can find a market for. It so happens that Yoga is in great demand in these times of uncertainty and despair. All manner of spiritual practices are traded on the internet, previously hermetic teachings are made available to all. Yogis and thinkers of all kinds are bringing value to these apps, mostly in good faith, but I suspect, utterly unaware of the economic and ideological consequences they are participating in propagating. It matters no About the author Sama Fabian is a Yoga practitioner, teacher and teacher trainer based in South Wales, UK. She has been in Yoga all her adult life studying with several renowned teachers, such as Sri Satchidananda, Silva Mehta (Iyengar Yoga) and others. In 1999 she founded AurolabYoga, a laboratory for experiential Yoga and conscious living and is a founder member of the Independent Yoga Network, UK. Her email contact is samyoga@btinternet.com. longer what the content might be, anything goes really, even the most radical ideas are appropriated, what matters now is the frame work within which these ideas are delivered. Yoga anytime, anywhere through the medium of screens has the potential to destroy temporality, the dance of intermittence. The alternating rhythms of life. Time to work, eat, relax, sleep and dream, time to practice. It can also blur seasonal rhythms. All of which are essential for us to be able to take conscious action. The singularity of the human brain is that it can disorganize itself completely and reorganize itself throughout in relation to its environment and the “screens” it has invented, from cave paintings to digital tools. How does the current addiction to screens reorganizes the brain? What makes our brain
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