Zineb Fahsi, taking positions – Liberation

The yoga teacher, who denies being a spiritual guru, has taken out a rant against this practice which she considers misguided, subject to the excesses of capitalism.

As much to say it from the start: before reading Zineb Fahsi, we hated yoga for vague reasons. We hate him now for specific reasons. Among his best punchlines:Yoga and meditation are becoming methods aimed at improving productivity, performance and employability and are now being praised for their merits by economic weeklies such as Challenges, management books, and human resources departments.So much for the tone. His book Yoga, the new spirit of capitalism, released a few months ago by Textuel editions, is a historical dive into the texts at the origins of the discipline. But it is also a reflection on the way in which, in the 20th century, this practice would have been misused to turn the body and the mind into a small, malleable and docile enterprise, capable of responding to neoliberal demands on the minute.

Among the funniest (or most distressing) examples, Zineb Fahsi notes that at Amazon headquarters, there are meditation cabins called “Amazen” which are “designed to stimulate employees and help them recharge their batteries“. The success of his book still amazes him:I thought I was going to write for four people who practice yoga and two others.