My first exposure to real Yoga - The Westernisation of Yoga

Many moons ago, more than I care to count, I was walking down Goldsworth Road in Woking 🚶🏻‍♂️. For those of you who remember it, there used to be an independent bookshop just next to where Al Pasha Kebab House is. I must have still been a teenager. I went in for whatever reason, and I found Iyengar’s Light on Yoga (1st edition). I still have that book now. It’s falling apart a little, which feels about right, so was I when I found it 🫣.

That was the first time I really thought about yoga. I’d always seen it referenced, especially in Bollywood movies. There’s a great scene I shared once on Instagram years ago, Amitabh Bachchan doing a headstand in a comedy bit from Coolie. I remember absolutely loving it and trying it (as a kid) with limited success. So I always knew of yoga. And then that book disappeared somewhere in the house 🤷🏾‍♂️

Fast forward, I’m 26 and my lower back is getting worse. I’m moving less, no more football and I’ve started working in an office. So I went back and found that book again, or maybe I just stumbled across it, I don’t remember now. I then started doing yoga in my lounge. I’ve shared those photos before and they’re quite embarrassing 🙈. I was just trying to get a feel for my own body and loosen up my lower back. Less Diazepam, I thought, and more diaphragm 🫣.

Then I went to my first yoga class, with a woman called Jessica Stretch at BeatBox gym where I worked. It was brilliant. After that I did yoga in the LA Fitness studio, and it was cold 🥶, and I kept my hoodie and my trainers on, and it was honestly one of the worst experiences going, with all due respect to the teacher. I did a bit more here and there, never a lot, because I was always worried my back would go.

But here’s my point. I came into yoga through its westernised form. A book written by Iyengar, a yoga class at an MMA gym. A studio in a big corporate gym chain. The exact kind of yoga the purists and the gatekeepers look down on and call watered-down anti-yoga 😬. Yet that is the yoga that brought me closer to myself and brought me here. And helped bring yoga to so many of you.

This western postural yoga, the kind so many people say isn’t real yoga, helped me reconnect to myself. It helped me work out who I was, mentally and spiritually. If I’d never walked into that first class, I’d never have the life I have now. No Laura. No Zaccy. I’d never have gone back to Kashmir to trace my family history. I’d never have gone to Nepal. We’d never have heard of or helped the Hope Foundation. I’d never have gone further, not just into yoga, but into myself. And all of it came from this “westernised” form of yoga.

And here’s the thing the purists miss. The Yoga we do is just a doorway 🚪. And there isn’t just one way in. The holy men have their door (the yoga sutras), Krishnamacharya built another, and modern postural yoga, the power, the flow, the static, is just one more door that leads the yogi towards something more. The purists can stand there arguing about which doorway is the real or right one whilst the rest of us are walking through.

Because for a long, long time, yoga was exclusive only to holy men of India seeking god and 90% of the "poses" were seated variations with zero flow. These were semi-naked men who often frightened the locals. But it was a way of life for these outcasts, and it was dying a death before it was rescued by the great Krishnamacharya. So I don’t get this argument that the western form isn’t real yoga. The western form saved yoga and brought our attention back to what it always was. It didn’t survive because it stayed pure. It survived because it evolved. As all cultures and traditions do.

If you’re a student and you do yoga to feel better about yourself, to connect or reconnect with yourself, or if you’re a teacher who helps just one person find a bit of faith in who they are, then you’re doing and teaching the purest form of yoga there is. And you don’t need anyone’s blessing for that. When something genuinely changes your life, you don’t owe anyone an explanation for it, and you certainly don’t need a stranger on a podcast to approve of it. Don’t let a purist on their high horse make you feel that what you do isn’t real when it so clearly is.

Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, says a person must have faith in their path. And Shiva, legend has it, said a seeker must be willing. Will, and faith. Those are the only prerequisites to yoga. Not a lineage and not a birthplace and certainly not the approval of some stranger who has a podcast.

If you show the will, and that will helps you find and keep a little faith in yourself, you are a yogi. Because ultimately, yoga isn’t something you try to live up to. You don’t do it for anyone’s approval. You do it because somewhere in your heart you know it’s helping you be a little better in who you are.

Sign up to our Newsletter so you never miss out. I send 3x emails a week.

Namaskar - Eternal Seeker

Zahir Akram

IN-PERSON TRAINING 👇🏽

→ 200h YOGA TEACHER TRAINING

→ ADVANCED 300H TT

🧠 ONLINE LEARNING 👇🏽

Free Courses

💡 Advanced TT,

🧠 Anatomy Blueprint,

😤 Science of Breathing

🧘🏽‍♀️ Teaching & Structuring

☯️ YIN Yoga

References 1. Goutham S, Bhargav H, Holla B, Mahadevan J, Nagendra RP, Jasti N, Narasimha VL, Mehta UM, Varambally S, Venkatasubramanian G, Chand P, Gangadhar BN, Hill KP, Keshavan M, Murthy P. Yoga for Opioid Withdrawal and Autonomic Regulation: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online 7 January 2026. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2843424 Free full text (PubMed Central): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12780978/ (Study design, 59 participants, 30 yoga and 29 control, ten 45-minute sessions over 14 days, median recovery of 5 vs 9 days, improvements in heart rate variability, anxiety, sleep and pain.) 2. Powell A. Yoga can help cut severe, initial opioid-withdrawal period in half, study finds. Harvard Gazette, 24 February 2026. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/02/yoga-can-help-cut-severe-initial-opioid-withdrawal-period-in-half-study-finds/ (Group sessions, the specific practices used, and comments from the Harvard researchers.) 3. Yoga accelerates opioid withdrawal recovery. Healio, 23 January 2026. https://www.healio.com/news/psychiatry/20260123/yoga-accelerates-opioid-withdrawal-recovery (Parasympathetic activity accounting for 23% of the effect.) 4. Jha S. Drug withdrawal takes 9 days, yoga brings it down to 5: NIMHANS study. The South First, 16 February 2026. https://thesouthfirst.com/health/drug-withdrawal-takes-9-days-yoga-brings-it-down-to-5-nimhans-study/ (Stress markers rising briefly during breathing practice, then improving at rest by day 15.) 5. Gratzer D. Reading of the Week: Yoga for Opioid Withdrawal? The New JAMA Psych Paper. 29 January 2026. https://davidgratzer.com/reading-of-the-week/reading-of-the-week-yoga-for-opioid-withdrawal-the-new-jama-psych-paper-also-maois-history-and-ai-associated-psychosis/ (Average age of 25.6, and the study's limitations: small sample and no active control group.)