page_title: Sexual abuse by yoga gurus
section_title: Social mechanisms
hierarchical_section_title: Sexual abuse by yoga gurus / Debate over causes / Social mechanisms
caption_attribution_description: English: The Hoysaleswara Hindu temple is dedicated to Shiva. It was built in the first half of 12th century in Halebid (previously called Dwarasamudra, Hale bidu means "old capital"), sponsored by King Vishnuvardhana of the Hoysala Empire. During the early 14th century, Halebidu temple site along with others were sacked, looted and much artwork damaged (particularly nose/face, hands) by Muslim invaders from northern India (Khilji dynasty and Tughlaq dynasty of Delhi Sultanate). The temple belongs to the Shaivism tradition of Hinduism, yet reverentially presents its Vaishnavism and Shaktism tradition legends and ideas. The relief panels present legends from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas. Vedic deities such as Agni, Indra and Surya, various avatars of Vishnu, the Hindu goddesses such as Saraswati, Lakshmi avatars, Durga, Kali among others are presented. The carving is three dimensional where reliefs often emerge as statues with depth. Panels are continuous, with one perspective showing one part of the legend, a perpendicular perspective of the same column or wall or corner showing another part of the same legend. The carving material was soapstone.
context_page_description: Sexual abuse by yoga gurus is the exploitation of the position of trust occupied by a master of any branch of yoga for personal sexual pleasure. Allegations of such abuse have been made against gurus in international yoga as exercise such as
  Bikram Choudhury, John Friend, Kausthub Desikachar, Amrit Desai, and K. Pattabhi Jois. There have been some criminal convictions and lawsuits for civil damages.
  The role of the guru has changed from the traditional restrained one-to-one relationship of hatha yoga to one of unrestrained celebrity yoga teachers in close contact with strangers anywhere in the world, a very different social structure. This altered relationship, according to some scholars, is among the causes of the abuse. In America and Britain, governing bodies have published policies covering sexual misconduct.
context_section_description: The researcher Amanda Lucia, writing in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, analyses how the pupil's desire to be close to the guru and to "sacralize" bodily contact with the guru, along with authoritarian relationships between guru and pupils, facilitate sexual abuse by creating suitable social situations. She argues that instead of seeking causes in the personality or psychology of individual gurus, the root cause is "structural aspects of guru-disciple physicality, haptic logics, which tend to produce these social effects." Lucia notes that one element of this is the guru's charisma as described by Max Weber, reinforced by Émile Durkheim's concept of the way that the sacred is "generated, concentrated, and apotheosized." She observes further that the spiritual power of gurus is created by belief among their devotees that they embody "cosmic energetic forces", personified in Hinduism as the goddess Shakti. She quotes Tulasi Srinivas on how devotees physically longed for proximity to the guru Sai Baba, experiencing the sight of him in darshan as "like receiving an electric charge", and observes that "In modern global Hinduism, guru sex scandals have become so ubiquitous that they have become the foremost representation of the guru, certainly in the popular media", giving a long list of well-known gurus in the 2010s, and another list of those of an earlier generation in the 20th century.
  
  The yoga scholar Andrea Jain cites what Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad wrote in their 1994 book The Guru Papers, that the guru-disciple relationship is dangerous because it embodies "the seductions, predictable patterns, and corruptions contained in any essentially authoritarian form". Jain however suggests that "surrender to a guru and his or her spiritual wares is not necessarily quantitatively or qualitatively different than surrender to a brand", both being linked to a person such as a guru, business leader, or "simply a celebrity".
caption: The Hindu goddess Shakti personifies the sacred "cosmic energetic force"[28] that some devotees believe attracts them to a guru. 12th century,[29] Hoysaleswara Temple, Karnataka
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