page_title: Sexual abuse by yoga gurus
section_title: The changing role of the guru
hierarchical_section_title: Sexual abuse by yoga gurus / Debate over causes / The changing role of the guru
caption_attribution_description: English: Guru and Disciple ca. 1740 Opaque watercolor on paper. H: 18.5 W: 28.5 cm Basohli or Mankot, Punjab Hills, India Purchase F2006.4
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: Yoga as exercise was created by the blending of Western styles of gymnastics with postures from Haṭha yoga in India in the 20th century, influenced by the popular physical culture of the time. Before then, hatha yoga had been practised in secret by solitary, ascetic yogins, learning the tradition as a long-term pupil or shishya apprenticed to their master or guru.
  The scholars of modern yoga Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg comment that the globalisation of yoga has radically changed the nature and role of the guru. The medieval relationship between guru and shishya was one-to-one, well-understood in traditional Hindu society, based on trust developed over many years of instruction. The modern situation may bring the celebrity yoga teacher into close contact with strangers, anywhere in the world, in "milieus where the religious affiliations, function, status, and role of the guru may not be well understood" and accordingly, the old restraints are no longer in place. They note that the western world is distrustful of the guru system, not least because of the many guru scandals concerning money, sex, and power. Modern western political and social beliefs, such as egalitarianism and the individualisation of the religious (finding "one's own truth") that they call "spiritual empiricism", also militate against respecting gurus, or indeed having one at all; the prevailing attitude is, they suggest, summed up in the title of the psychiatrist Anthony Storr's 1997 study of gurus, Feet of Clay. In India, too, the great wealth of some celebrity gurus has attracted suspicion, just as in the West.
caption: The traditional one-to-one guru-disciple relationship has been overturned by the globalisation of modern yoga.[22] Watercolour, Punjab Hills, India, 1740
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