The weird and disturbing history of the cult of yoga
The practice of yoga promises peace, self-realisation and release, thanks to the power of its 'mystic' Indian origins. But what if this is just hype? In Fascist Yoga, Stewart Home sweeps away the half-truths to tell a new origin story of modern postural practice.
Starting with the world's first modern yogi – a Californian escapologist who added Hindu fairy dust to circus exercises, this history reveals a community full of grifters, occultists and white supremacists, out to exploit and recruit via the medium of exercise.
From Aleister Crowley to Ezra Pound to Heinrich Himmler; cult leaders and brainwashed followers; TV celebrities and fake gurus, the story of yoga has involved some of the strangest currents of humanity with a dangerous understanding of wellness.
'Anything Stewart Home writes, thinks, fancies, or loathes intrigues me. Reading Home is a special experience, dizzying. Home turns things upside down and shakes them up, and sometimes he recites his work standing on his head. Engaging with him, you might land on your head, also'
-- Lynne Tillman, author of Weird Fucks and Mothercare'With this scabrous broadside, Stewart Home exposes Hatha yoga's political shadow. His painstaking research reveals a hidden, decidedly inauthentic history as murky as it is intriguing. Teasing a thread from a pair of dhoti pants, soon the whole garment threatens to fall apart before our eyes'
-- Matthew Ingram, author of The Garden and Retreat'The author's desire to stand on his head led to this book, but there is nothing upside down about his exposure of the plastic gurus and spiritual sex pests to be found in these pages. Intense, funny, always original – there is nobody quite like the brilliant Stewart Home'
-- John King, author of The Football Factory and Human Punk'With an energy and style that only he could muster, Stewart Home eviscerates the two dominant manias of our era — individual self-optimisation and collective neo-fascism — and, reading their entrails, finds they share a common ancestor.'
-- Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder and The Making of IncarnationStewart Home is a legend of counterculture. He is an artist, filmmaker, pamphleteer, art historian and activist, and the author of countless pulp fictions, including most recently Art School Orgy and She’s My Witch. He regularly performs to audiences across the world and recently started making headstand paintings with the canvas placed above him and brushes held in his toes. He was born and lives in London.
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