An interviewer asked me: “Does the yoga world have a conspiracy problem?” My short answer was yes, but it forced me to step back and really try to encapsulate why. I’ve got a boiled-down answer using 4 different lenses: historical, ideological, political, and technological. /1

***History*** Nazis. Loved. Yoga. The roots of modern yoga, alt health, and New Age spirituality are tangled with fascisms of the early 20th century. I.e.: Nazis were enthralled by the fantasy of the mystically powerful body, self-sovereign, free from foreign influence. /2

The 3rd Reich drew on a physical and natural-remedy fervor that was panicked about white genocide and the devitalization of cities, and sought to strengthen ties of blood and soil through body-building, “pure foods”, and fetishes with reproduction and milk. /3

***Ideology*** Conspiratorial thinking follows 3 axioms: 1) Nothing is as it seems. 2) Everything happens for a reason, and 3) Everything is connected. These are Venny with modern global yoga and New Age spirituality. QAnon biohacks the operating system of this subculture. /4

***Politics*** The US is the primary exporter of conspirituality and QAnon content. This reflects profound institutional neglect combined with constant, consumerist, neoliberal propanganda that tells citizens they are on their own, especially in terms of health care. /5

Alt-health marketing sells distrust of public health: reasonable in a country that abuses its citizens. As a protective response against the cruel ambivalence of the state, wellness/yoga easily aligns with conservative, libertarian, or sovereign citizen movements. /6

The yoga teacher is the priest of this global state, sanctifying the culture through bodily flexibility, going with the flow and ritualizing beauty, believing and teaching that consumerism can be virtuous, vacation = pilgrimage, and that the enlightened transcend politics. /7

But these are priests with no stability in their gig economy. Most are stretching on fumes, arugula, and a tyrannical sense of confidence. The profession trends towards the anti-social, based on intuition and personal truth, threatened by science and consensus building. /8

***Technology*** Social media is the combustible jet fuel of unregulated yoga and alt-health influencers, who, because they work in unregulated professions, rely on charisma to be seen. Charisma accessorizes. It must always scour the landscape for distinctive content. /9

The more inflammatory, emotionally engaging, or manipulative the content, the more it will amplify charisma. Conspirituality and QAnon content offered a devil’s bargain of viral engagement and transgressive messianism in the influencer's wheelhouse of bodily obsessions. /10

They can sell gong bathing as an antidote for 5G contamination.They can hint at QAnon through savethechildren, which is plausibly feminist and wholesome. These provocations are gold for the algorithm, and difficult to forgo in a competitive attention economy. /11

This is a tragic gateway between yoga/wellness and conspirituality. Influencers might want to step back from these addictive attentional factors. But to do this they’d have to settle for returning to the banal pretense of changing the world through handstands and smoothies. /end

Thanks for the interest everyone. My co-hosts @derekberes and Julian Walker @embodiedsacred thrash this stuff out every week on the pod at https://conspirituality.net/ . The site has some resources, such as...

A naming names "redpilled" page: https://conspirituality.net/redpilled/ . A lexicon of conspirituality-to-Cue-Anon keywords: https://conspirituality.net/keywords-and-phrases/, and...

... basic concepts in the cultic dynamics at play: https://conspirituality.net/cult-dynamics-101/. We also post reporting on key conspirituality figures like Plandemic's Mikki Willis: https://conspirituality.net/transmissions/plandemics-mikki-willis-joins-praises-violent-capitol-mob/