It was bound to happen eventually. With the growing popularity and commercialization of yoga, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to turn a practice that features sexually alluring young women toning their butts in skin-tight gym clothes into a hard-core porn industry.
In fact, some would say that yoga has been teetering close to soft-core porn for years. In 2006, Aaron Star struck upon the idea for "Naked Yoga," ostensibly as a way of bringing gay men in big cities like New York and Los Angeles into the yoga mainstream, by tailoring the studio environment to the gay culture's "cruising" scene. The concept has caught on, and includes some straight venues, and websites like yogaundressed.com, as well as naked yoga geared specifically to couples. Officially, sex is discouraged in Naked Yoga, but unofficially Star says "it's meant to be a turn on," and classes include extensive body contact that is so intimate that it might as well be sex, though no genital stimulation, let alone full-scale intercourse, is permitted.
The proliferation of Naked Yoga, one of the industry's better kept secrets, it seems, has gone hand-in-hand with a far more public shift toward nude and semi-nude advertising featuring yoga models like Kathryn Budig, who's posed in the buff (with her body "parts" hidden) for Toe Sox, the boutique clothing manufacturer that claims her as a spokeswoman. Budig recently received a flattering profile as an up-and-coming yoga entrepreneur in Forbes, and has already put together a nude erotic calendar that illustrates her performing a number of advanced yoga poses, this time without the socks. She's gone on to promote industry's latest pop sensation, the Thai-born Briohny Smyth, a former child actress who recently appeared in skimpy black lace panties in one of the first web videos devoted exclusively to promoting yoga's new erotic "expressionism." The 3-minute video, which includes no words or explanations, was paid for by Equinox, a super-elite, Manhattan-based fitness company that's been gobbling up smaller exercise chains nationwide and that recently announced plans to set up studios throughout Europe.
Budig and Smyth, in fact, seem destined to become part of a new yoga celebrity "stratosphere," hob-nobbing with senior executives at Equinox and at the posh apparel company Lululemon, which likewise caters to high-end suburban white women whose disposable income has cushioned them from the effects of the current recession. Among marketers this demographic has been dubbed "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability," or LOHAS, for short. It's meant to meld the fruit and crunchy granola set, concerned about the fate of the environment, and anxious to preserve its alternative lifestyle, with the mainstream fashion and beauty consumer.
"Of course, not all of the women being recruited as a new breed of corporate "show girl" are quite so oriented to erotic glamor as Budig and Smyth are. Elena Brower, a former top aide to John Friend, the disgraced ex-CEO of Anusara Yoga who fell from grace during a major sex scandal earlier this year, is a spokeswoman for Adidas but apparently still finds time to teach yoga -- or a reasonable facsimile of it -- as part of her expanding life coach business. Another rising star is former drug addict Seane Corn, who flaks for Lucy Active Wear, one of Lululemon's low-end competitors. Corne promotes herself as a progressive political activist and yoga "purist" of sorts, which, in theory should place her at odds with elite companies like Lulu that treat yoga more as a sales prop than a wellness practice. But, in fact, she's merely the "socially responsible" face of an industry that's fast becoming the spiritual avatar of global capitalism, much as Coca-Cola and McDonald's once spread the gospel of American democracy and the virtues of benevolent empire.
Which brings us to the "bad girls" of the burgeoning hard-core yoga porn industry. One might think that the proliferation of videos with nude women performing far less complicated yoga poses than Budig's or Smyth's -- then transitioning into graphic sex acts -- would pose a major threat to Yoga, Inc.'s quest for mainstream acceptance. But if it does, there's been no audible hue and cry from industry big-wigs, or even from self-proclaimed yoga "purists" who seem as titillated by the underlying sexual dimensions of yoga as the industry "sell-outs" they so frequently chastise.
In fact, the yoga industry seems to have acquired its new porn fetish in stages. In addition to Naked Yoga, another key milestone was the decision by Playboy magazine in 2008 to promote one of its nude models, Sara Jean Underwood, as a full-fledged Yoga "playmate." Underwood, who has since starred in a series of slickly produced yoga "instructional videos," seems to be playing the part of a real-live yoga "teacher," In fact, she is largely going through the motions, and while she does correctly identify the names of some of the yoga poses that she demonstrates, her postures are often embarrassingly imprecise. And like the new yoga porn stars, she performs in her videos completely nude, sometimes in graphic close-up, and seems to delight in titillating her viewers at every turn.
Still, there's one big difference. While there's full frontal nudity in the Playboy videos, there's no actual sex. Underwood, in fact, always appears alone, and she does stick to the semblance of an instructional "script." No men suddenly appear on camera while her body's provocatively splayed in "Wheel Pose" to push their erect penis into her mouth. She may not be offering much in the way of spiritual stimulation, but she's no vulgar exhibitionist, either. Her videos seem more designed to suggest that Playboy is keeping up on the latest health and fitness trends, and may actually have some regard for the physical welfare of its models, rather than treating them as mere sex objects. As absurd as that seems given the hyper-sexual context of the videos, one does gets the impression that Underwood is actually trying -- her glossy makeup, bikini-waxed legs, and utterly hairless vagina, notwithstanding.
But does it really matter? While women may enjoy these videos, too, it's clearly the male consumer that is the primary target of the emerging yoga sex campaign. Men, by a more than 2-1 margin, are the more avid consumers of commercial porn, and of course, from Playboy's very inception, they've also been the key demographic targeted by the magazine. So, in fact, a subtle and still largely imperceptible -- and certainly unremarked -- shift may be underway in the yoga market, which, according to market research reports, has hit something of a wall among female consumers. They're buying more yoga-related products than ever -- at double the gross revenue level of five years ago -- but the total number of consumers appears to have flat-lined. Women continue to be the most active and attractive names and faces around which the yoga industry is most visibly promoted, but the market clearly needs fresh blood -- and increasingly that blood is male.
And while porn may soon be leading the way, as it often does, in fact, it's not just the sex industry. One can see a parallel shift underway in the recent embrace of yoga by the male-dominated U.S. military establishment. While most yogis stateside still preach the gospel of peace and love, the Pentagon embraced yoga as a modality for training recruits to become more flexible and for sharpening the specialized war-fighting skills of elite warriors like the U.S. Navy Seals. It's also being promoted as a treatment regimen for post-traumatic stress disorder, which the military is finally admitting is more widespread than ever, thanks to its recent engagements -- and the multiple tours of duty of its soldiers -- in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In other words, yoga, which has hitherto catered to women by a 3-1 margin, may have finally found a way to reach consumers with penises. Less as avid yoga practitioners in the full-fledged lifestyle sense, perhaps -- though male yogis or "brogis" are slowly emerging, too -- than as highly specialized consumers in selected venues. But make no mistake: this is no mere niche male market. There are nearly 4 million active-duty soldiers and nearly 24 million military war veterans, mostly men, and together with their families, they constitute roughly 10 percent of the total U.S. populace. And there are an estimated 40 million Americans who access an internet porn site daily, most of them men, too, though according to some estimates, a growing proportion, 30 percent, or 12 million -- roughly equal to the size of the current U.S. yoga market -- are now women (one of the reasons for the rise of lesbian yoga porn, perhaps).
This is "yoga for the masses," alright, on a hitherto unknown scale. For a few good men, and for lots of devilish ones, too. And anyone else, apparently, who's open to yoga's sprawling -- if not unseemly -- commercial orgy.
The John Friend scandal is just one high-profile example of something I came to see as epidemic in the industry during my years as a yoga instructor. Teachers thinking they've attained guru status because they undertook a 200hr certification course, students thinking teachers WERE gurus simply by virtue of their position as teacher and their flexibility/pretty words, and both sides exploiting the entire scene while personal/social/sexual dysfunction ruled behind the scenes.
In short, some things (like spiritual progress) cannot be bought, despite consumer culture's attempts to commodify them. When individuals buy in to the belief anyway, it's only a matter of time before the John Friends of the world exploit that gullibility. Or an industry exploits it by blending their marketing with the oldest enticement in the book - sex.
A new term may be entering the yoga lexicon to describe the pathology of devotion to gurus as if they were actual Divine presences. And there's even a web site devoted to this very topic. Why not? Note the wonderful sub-title.
Guru-Philiac:
Revealing Self-Aggrandizement and Superstition in Self-Realization
Since 2005
www/guruphiliac.blogspot.com
in other words,
it has gone "a-goy".
1. This is just as true of the yoga motherland - India - as it is in America. The idea that American "commercialization" promotes this is misleading; actually, it's endemic to the yoga world.
2. Increasingly - thanks to the exhibitionist potential of modern communications - there's a sex video (or salacious photographs), too!
Here is the the latest development on India's charismatic Swami Nithyananda, who has long extolled the virtues of abstinence and celibacy. In 2010, a video surfaced of Swami N. having sex in a hotel room with a leading Indian film actress, Rajintha.
http://www.southdreamz.com/2010/03/swamy-nithyananda-scandal-video-affair-with-an-actress.html
Swami N. now admits to 15 "consensus" affairs with devotees, but says "I cannot remember any of their names." That's sweet - probably because he treated them all equally, in effect.
http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_cid-gets-proof-to-nail-swami-nithyananda_1665809
This is a case where the yoga-porn connection was actually being made from the yoga side. It started with Romanian-born Bivolaru's Tantric sex cult which recruited the porn stars to help make the porn videos, but apparently the cult also prepared people to become prostitutes.
Apparently, Bivolaru considered "sex work" a form of service - or what he freely called "karma yoga."
The group was kicked out of the International Yoga Federation several years ago.
Oh well, it's just yoga, right?
http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-film/disclosures-from-the-misa-hell
http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-film/disclosures-from-the-misa-hell
The fact is that Bivolaru (although under prosecution for sex with an underage)in a very strange circumstances got political asylum an citizenship in Sweden.
Yes, this is all part of the shiny new global reality of yoga. I constantly hear from my yogi friends here about the Tantra and the need to embrace the "sacred and the profane". Really? The sacred? Where's that?
Thanks for posting.
Sending young "yoginis" to work in bars in Europe as dancers/strippers or as sex hostesses in Japan - and calling it "karma yoga." Now that's real Tantric genius!
And these female urination rituals? I guess there's a name for it "yoga scat" Can't wait for yoga beastiality.
By the way I read on some romanian blogs and forums that MISA are really striving to spiritually conquer US, I wonder why ;)
Reply --
Eduard, because Americans are so ripe for conquest! America conquers other countries in the military, political and economic spheres, but in the spiritual realm - pardon the expression, we are everyone's "bitch."
Actually, no one "conquers" us - we go looking for subjugation, in every region of the world, but "Orientalism," the fascination with Asia and its perceived exoticism, this holds a very special place in the Western imagination.
Yoga, India, the embrace of gurus - this is hard-core American yuppie chow. It's this deep-down sense of cultural emptiness, spiritual inadequacy combined with decades of family dysfunction that leave this YAWNING VOID. Just a rampant soullessness
"Fill me up, make me whole" - and titillate me, too? Just intoxicating for the "average" suburban stooge here. And of course, it takes on sexual meaning too.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/European-cult-that-mixes-yoga-with-sex-sets-up-base-in-Tamil-Nadu/articleshow/8702536.cms?prtpage=1
EUROPEAN CULT THAT MIXES YOGA WITH SEX SETS UP BASE IN TAMIL NADU
By Arun Ram
Times of India
June 3, 2011
CHENNAI: A European cult that mixes yoga with sex and pornography has been found to be operating out of Chennai.
Training nearly 100 youngsters in yoga and 'tantric love' at a rented house in Chokalingam Nagar, Teynampet, for more than two years now, the Movement for Spiritual Integration in Absolute (Misa) is trying to spread across the country, investigations by TOI have revealed.
A team of seven Misa teachers, nationals of Denmark and Romania, is now in the city for a special camp, titled 'Tantra - The Path of Love'. A majority of them, including the lead couple Mihai Stoian and Adina Stoian, have starred in porn movies produced by Copenhagen-based production house Sublime Erotica, which the Misa group has close ties with. Misa operates under different names in different countries. It is Natha in Denmark, Tara in the US and Satya in India.
TOI is in possession of videos that show the yoga teachers, now in India, in explicit sexual acts. Misa's supreme guru, a Romanian called Gregorian Bivolaru, has been jailed on several charges, including pornography, and is now said to have taken political asylum in Sweden.
This looks like the same broad direction John Friend was heading in with his own Tantric/Wicca sex cult under the cover of Anusara, Inc. I suspect if the Anusara center in Encinitas had gotten off the ground, it wouldn't have been long before Tantric sex videos and Tantric sex "teacher training" would have appeared.
Only John Friend and a few others probably know the real Master Plan. A lot of people in and around Anusara aren't really talking about what they do know - too busy practicing "Cover Your Arsana" Yoga at this point.
spiritual benefits, then we get into to the full-busted ladies stripping is slow-motion, to their bikinis.
It even introduces one guy as a token "male" presence. But the camera never lingers on his butt or crotch. Fabulously subtle.
It is insidious and dangerous that women engage in such misogyny. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity and dignity of girls and women. It is even more dangerous when women deny that they themselves are engaging in it.
Reply:
Great point. It seems, though, that some women who challenge the patriarchy and become powerful leaders in their own right can step into the role of equal opportunity abuser. In this sense, it becomes less about patriarchy, than about the human propensity to abuse power generally.
There are at a least a couple of female John Friends out there - and let's not forget the guru lineage that John Friend comes from - Siddha - features a very powerful female abuser who inherited the throne from her father while axeing out her brother.
Here is a self-serving "video review" by the company that made that soft-core video. It includes at the bottom "interviews" with the three stars - Tara Holly and Noemie (lmao). Basically just three models/dancers looking for cash, who improvised the "yoga."
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/703/703237p1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5hkeXVHdas
This is actually more pornographic, in style and intent, than some of Sara Underwood's explicityl nude Playboy videos.
It would be interesting to know who Carolina Duchet, the "certified yoga teacher" who leads the group through the asanas really is?
Note how she plays the yoga instruction totally straight, as if this were indeed, a studio-based yoga class like any other -- but watch what the models do, how they become positioned, and how the camera lingers over them, and the music.
There are shades of gray in the "sexualization" of yoga - this is one of the more subtle and sophisticated ones.
Where is the talk of health benefits, spiritual benefits, any benefits, but the eye candy?
"People be asking me all the time....what's getting ready to happen with hip-hop? You know what I tell them? You know what's going to happen with hip-hop? Whatever is happening with us. If we smoked out, hip-hop is going to be smoked out. If we doing alright, hip-hop be doing alright. People talk about hip-hop like it's some giant living in the hillside coming down to visit the townspeople. We are hip-hop. Me, you, everybody. We are hip-hop. So hip-hop is going where we're going. So the next time you ask yourself, where hip-hop is going, ask yourself, where am I going? How am I doing? And you get a clear idea."
I'm not sure who we are talking about when we say the "yoga industry." Who needs to grow up? And what does that mean? Are you suggesting that yoga needs to be more scientific like Mr. Broad?
Perhaps there is a distinction to be made between the influence of corporate business and what is happening at the grassroots: http://yogijbrown.com/2012/05/yoga-business-government/
I greatly appreciate your writing. The discernment you are bringing is much needed in the yoga blogosphere. Cheers.
The fact that some yogis may also think of themselves as a "grassroots movement" doesn't really change this - not for the prospective "consumer" or the "taxpayer." That's where some of the controversy starts, when issues of government regulation and corporate social responsibility arise, as they typically do - and should - in an industry this large.
And that's one axis for a discussion about "growing up." Personally I think yoga is missing its real calling as a wellness practice by turning to hyper-libertarian arguments for not having any public oversight of yoga. It should find a way to comfortably embrace some kind of formal partnership with "public" authority en route to becoming, in effect, a "public good."
This is a much longer discussion, though. History shows at this stage many industries turn to SELF regulation as a way of staving off more intrusive public regulatory efforts Perhaps, the NYC yoga campaign represents this: yogis defending - but also collectively policing - themselves.
Thanks for your kind words.
Don't get me wrong, I hold myself and teachers under my auspices to high standards and lament the irresponsible things that are happening in the name of yoga. But I think it is misguided to think that public oversight will, in any way, help yoga find its true calling as a wellness practice. This goes to the point of my first response: there are more authentic practitioners utilizing yoga for its intended healing purpose then there are schlubs who are exploiting yoga. Its just that the grassroots doesn't get the same attention or money.
The only way to address the issues you bring out in your post is to move the culture. We both know that yoga porn is a symptom of deeper strains within our socioeconomic landscape. For sure, there is an important partnership to be had between the yoga industry and public authority. We just need to make sure that the partnership is actually conducive to our goals.
Does yoga need to become more science-based? I think what Broad had in mind was reducing the mutual fear, prejudice and competition between yoga and the mainstream medical establishment, so that yoga becomes more "mainstreamed" - in a good way, not simply "commercialized" - and so that the public is better served.
I think Broad may actually have underestimated how much of this cooperation is already occurring, with everyone from the HHS/NIH to the Pentagon taking a much more serious look at the variety of health benefits associated with yoga.
The sticking point for Leslie, and for so many others in the yoga world, apparently, is this idea of "professionalizing" and "licensing" yoga teachers, especially when these teachers begin delving into much deeper therapeutic realms. Many yogis bristle at the idea that they don't already have a very deep wisdom about the body, and resist any notion that "outsiders" should "certify" them.
Here again, I think yoga should try to narrow the gap, and to avoid unnecessary polemics. Put the public first, and accept that mainstream science-based medicine and alternative medicine have much to teach each other, and that most effective treatments combine insights from both.
I wrote an article for the IAYT where I interviewed several prominent Anatomy for Yoga teachers about the role of science in ensuring safety in Yoga and there simply is no evidence that science makes yoga more credible or safe: http://yogijbrown.com/essays/does-studying-anatomy-make-yoga-safer/ There are many physical therapists who still hurt people despite their standardized training.
Yoga is different in that it is not an academic pursuit. Attempts to standardize Yoga training
into a set of requisite hours completely undermines yoga pedagogy, which
is not contingent on time. I do think we are on the same page about combining allopathic and alternative treatments, But wisdom about Yoga can only come from within each person. There is no way to certify such a thing from the outside. I have written some on this too: http://yogijbrown.com/2011/11/yoga-alliance-approved-my-ass/
When I started in Yoga 16+ years ago, there were no commercials for banks with people doing yoga poses. That Yoga has become a marketing demographic is evidence of
It looks like someone has succeeded in having the yoga porn website, www.yogaporn.net, blocked from public view
It took all of 1-2 hours after I mentioned this web site here for this action to be taken.
Protecting the public - or simply covering the ass of the multi-billion dollar yoga industry.
YOU MAKE THE CALL
I have since come across another porn site that posts the Briohny Smyth Equinoix video and cites it as an inspiration for yoga porn. I don't think the video's pornographic, but I do think it's interesting that pornsters sense that the video is sufficiently exhibitionist to be called an inspiration.
At some point, I would love to see intelligent people in and out of the yoga world talk about the difference between erotica, exhibitionism, and pornography. Because as any connoisseur knows, what's intriguing hidden is generally more alluring than what is exposed.
Franklly, I think people are over-selling the natural beauty of yoga, by fetishizing the asanas, which are highly callisthenic (even if not aerobic) by their very nature?
When was the last time you took a look at ballet or dance profile photos - now THAT is true beauty. In terms of the flow and the lines, really nothing in yoga compares.
My biggest criticism of the Equinox video, frankly, is that after the first 60 seconds of novelty - it's boring.
This fits the '4 stages of life' model in Hinduism, from where the Yoga tradition comes, and where it is the latter 2 stages in the latter half of life when the impulses towards fame, money, career, family etc have become worn out, that a deep introspection begins in earnest. Until then, its time to enjoy the frivolities of life. Problem is that just because someone does a few stretching exercises they think they have just engaged the path of Yoga... its not so simple and easy as that. Certainly in the Indian tradition one would be hard pressed to find 'yoga teachers' recognized as such who are as green in life and mind as the young teachers in the West tend to be.
We could use a more mature movement. In fact, we used t have one. There is NO good reason - except mercenary and financial - to crank out thousands of yoga teachers the way they are being cranked out at present. No serious spiritual culture puts bimbettes with such little life experience in charge of anything.
It's embarrassing, even if the culture doesn't realize it. It's embarrassing to God and to Shiva. Even poor Shakti is probably hiding her tears.
But in the end I defer to PT Barnum, the master showman of the American Circus: "In America, there's a sucker born ever minute." No question about it.
In fact, why should we choose our yoga teachers any better than we choose our presidents?
Happy Holiday chum.
As for Shiva... he is probably not so innocent... LOL. As well as having a habit of saying "yes" to everything that his devotees ask for, he is also known to show up in dazzling, erotic forms to distract those trying to build up tapas. Even the sages admit in the Upanishads that it is good when this happens as it weeds out the poseurs from those serious about the matter of Yoga, AND it refreshes the gloss on this dusty old world with all that erotic energy refurbished. Well, so the stories tell...
You're right that it is up to us to shape things towards a better future. But also, the following seems to indicate that it has always been thus, a consternation about the golden age of yore having come to an end. Read this short selection from the Charaka Samhita (Ayurvedic source text... 500 BCE)... we are perhaps always going be pushing a boulder uphill.
If everyone became a Buddha simultaneously, I think there would be no use for this transient reality. But alas, that is not the case, never was and never will be... this world continues without beginning or end, the only option other than that is Moksha, for when its endlessness, repetitiousness is seen.
Charaka Samhita 1: http://www.deepyoga.ca/dial_up_108/classical_references/108_063.html
2: http://www.deepyoga.ca/dial_up_108/classical_references/108_064.html
training" and the stages of life question? At what point was one considered ready to become a yoga disciple? Could you learn in your first two stages - but not teach or train others? Or perhaps only train them at a lesser level also? How did or does this work?
lives, they progress higher, seeking solutions to problems, towards Spirit, realising the futility of material indulgence and pursuits of temporary
pleasure and no Happiness. Till then, their desire for matter serves as a protection, like an eggshell protecting a chick until it is ready. Thus the
commercialisation and materialisation of Yoga is a rite of passage, a necessary evil, paving the way to higher conscious stages of only MENTAL and
moral/virtuous Yoga. The progress on the PATH depends solely on the stage of Soul Evolution of Consciousness. The Guru identifies the current stage
of evolution and then recommends a particular method suited to the individual. Thus individuals at the lowest stage, whose interest in Yoga and the
journey towards the spirit has just been kindled, fall into the material yoga trap...and learn by transgressing, experiencing pain and evolving to
the next stage, falling into the traps of not-so-holy gurus. With time, the right Guru arrives without seeking. This is the point of no return, the
safe harbor from where, the journey becomes pleasant and enjoyable, where worry, anxiety, uncertainty and sorrow have no effect. Lokah Samastha Sukhinoh Bhavanthu! May All be Prosperous and Happy!
animal kingdoms.At the entry point of lowest level in the human kingdom, the kinship with the animal kingdom shows in the form of addiction to material
consumption and also sense indulgences like meat, sex and alcohol. Indulgence in these create self created problems which drive one to seek solutions.
Initially EXTERNAl sources are sought as both CAUSE and also solution.Gradually these fall away and the individual progresses towards higher states of
consciousness towards Spirit where the CAUSE and SOLUTION are both from the own personality, introspecting and solving them internally. So the gradient
is from a lower level of matter and DESIRE to a higher level of Spirit, keeping the body's material wants to a minimum NEED level. At this lower level
of material addiction, MATTER attracts(the hebrew bible calls matter as the "Satan")
People at this lowest level of evolution focuss entirely on matter(Body,mind and senses, money, meat, physical wealth...instead of using them on a need
basis) .It is this category that is carried away by matter and who focus on PHYSICAL asana to the extreme, commercialising and indulging in it to the
extreme, while conveniently doing away with the virtue and mental part, because its THEIR inner nature of Soul evolution.
of return. It has been gifted by nature as an instrument to achieve this goal and we need to overcome physical matter to merge into spirit.Thus
freedom/liberation is from matter to spirit. The fastest way to return to spirit is Yoga where the matter of the physical body is wisely used as
a tool to achieve liberation. The world of matter, that is the needs of the human body, mind and senses stand in the way, continuously projecting
OUTWARDS towards lower sense attractions and enjoyments, which are only ephemeral and temporary. When the soul tires of this outward attractions,
it then introspects and turns INWARDS towards the spirit.While the physical body cannot be wished away, it can be disciplined, stilled from its various
external desires, thus calming it down to provide a stable seat(asana) for the mind to turn inwards. This stilling and disciplining is wholly MENTAL.
For the few whose bodies have health problems as a result of the body dominating the mind and soul, a set of only a few chosen physical asanas are
recommended by the Guru according to the body type to cure the health problem and again return to the main mental part(meditation).
Beneath all the polemics over pornography and sex, much of the argument in the West, for better or worse is over the "spirituality" of the body. Many here believe that Asana is no mere body practice apart from the mental meditative one, but is itself a key to triggering deep spiritual awareness. They reject wha they consider the "dualism" implied in a more Vedanta oriented perspective.
Your view of this? Strictly speaking returning to Patanjali, and the Sutras, what you have stated seems indisputable, but increasingly the emphasis here seems to be in trying to synthesize these two "traditions." Retain the emphasis on asana, from a Tantric perspective, but in the original spiritual context of the Sutras.
There are lines of yoga here that try to intermingle a set of asanas and meditations within the same practice period, as opposed to either a strongly meditative practice, or a lengthy calisthenic asana practice that simply ends with sivasana - probably the dominant method here.
It's beyond the Sutras, in the strictest sense, but remains loyal to their intent I would say.