Good morning! Thank you for stopping by for your weekly checkup with me. I trust you’ve paid up front already? Good. I’ve got a lot of work to do to finish eating this bottle of Vicodin today, so why don’t you grab a few for yourself and sit down with this neat pamphlet to entertain yourself while it kicks in?

Thanks kindly. Sit here and take all the time you need. I’ll be asleep at my desk again shortly, so I won’t see you on your way out.

INSIDE OF PAMPHLET: Did you know that more and more holistic medicine practitioners and believers are falling victim to QAnon conspiracy theories?

YOGA: QANON’S NEW FAVORITE ACTIVITY!

What are the positives of this treatment?

Yoga has been documented to have positive effects on the human body for thousands of years. From the earliest days of the Rig Veda in pre-classical India over three thousand years ago, all the way to the spread of yoga to Western civilization, yoga – and, by extension, much of modern “holistic” medicine – has been propped up as the gateway to improved physical, mental, and emotional health.

This sets the stage nicely for the rise of so-called “holistic”, “alternative” or “naturopathic” medicine that began in the mid-1970s. Other strands of alternative practice, such as chiropractic and osteopathy have been around for longer, but most alternative medicine we’ll focus on for the purpose of this pamphlet has roots in traditional Asian practises, including Buddhist roots in India and Chinese Taoist beliefs.

Part of the cultural obsession of yoga, and of holistic medicine, by many Westerners, originated as a direct response to the inherent distrust of many mainstream institutions that began in the late 1960s. With tremendous pushback on the US government from the Vietnam War and the corruption of the Nixon administration, many Americans began to turn elsewhere for guidance on how to live meaningful, positive lives, searching for community and purpose in counterculture.

As such, holistic medicine was able to carve out a niche in the cultural landscape of the United States thanks to its emphasis on natural elements, accessibility of treatment, and a positive, egalitarian mindset. Over the last five decades, holistic medicine has often been associated with political views typically from the left… but this has started to change in recent years.

What are the negatives of this treatment?

Over the last few decades, there’s been a major reduction in governmental oversight towards certain medical practises; the American Medical Association abolished its anti-quackery committee in 1975, leading to many alternative treatments entering into more common usage in the United States and the rest of the Western world… though some have certainly been much more harmful than others.

Yoga, in most forms, is honestly a pretty positive thing. It’s exercise that is meant to be accessible to most people, and skill levels and functions are scalable to experience, flexibility, and a person’s goals and desires. It also typically allows people to form a strong sense of community thanks to participating in classes with similar-minded people.

This is why it’s such a problem when yoga, and the rest of the alternative medicine community, gets co-opted by QAnoners. This crossover of conspiracy theories and spiritual and medical practises has been dubbed “conspirituality” by conspiracy theory trackers and debunkers.

In many ways, the demographics of the so-called “wellness community” made it a ripe breeding ground for conspiracy theorists to find an audience: the majority who identify as being part of the community are white and middle-class or above, from a socioeconomic standpoint. This correlates almost perfectly with QAnon as a whole.

The issue that exists with yoga is that for many practitioners and teachers, there are many covert – and overt – spiritual themes that often take place, many of which place the emphasis on the specific needs of the individual rather than those of society as a whole. This libertarian approach to existence goes against so many of our mainstream institutions that it’s little wonder crossovers between the far left and far right are becoming more and more commonplace.

What are some real life examples of this treatment? 

A lot of the harshest imagery and descriptions associated with QAnon – secret cabals of sex-trafficking pedophiles, etc., etc. – don’t really jive very well with a lot of the traditional sort of social media content associated with yoga and the wellness movement as a whole. As such, a lot of this conspirituality content has been more gently mixed in – words, phrases, and hashtags (The Great Awakening, Where We Go One We Go All, etc.) captioned with beautiful natural landscapes, soothing colors, and more. Doctoral student Marc-Andre Argentino, at Montreal’s Concordia University, has dubbed this “pastel QAnon” – the softening of messages in order to break down barriers and enhance acceptability at the edges of mainstream society.

The QAnon Shaman, AKA Jake Angeli, recently imprisoned for his participation in the 1/6 storming of the US Capitol Building, has outwardly expressed his involvement in the wellness movement, including his affinity for yoga and his vegan diet. Alan Hostetter, a former southern California police chief and US Army infantryman, had a YouTube channel where he recorded yoga classes for viewers to try out before he became completely radicalized by the online right; he’s currently on trial for his actions in the riot as well.

In Nazi Germany, such wellness elements as astrology and holistic medicine were promoted as essential to health in the Reich; as many ordinary physicians were Jewish, and naturally highly persecuted and later murdered, the Nazis created the position of heilpraktiker – an untrained person who used alternative medicine to treat patients – to make up for the doctor shortage. Additionally, there are many parallels that can be drawn between the Nazis and the early-20th-century development of anthroposophy – an alternative medical belief system developed by Rudolf Steiner –  which draws heavily on occult rituals and intense, extreme racial hatred and discrimination.

In the lead-up to the Second World War, two former British Indian Army officers, Major Francis Yeats-Brown and Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, both made yoga the centrepiece of their prolific writing and world speaking tours promoting their fondness for fascism, personal asceticism, and the study of the occult.

How can we improve this treatment for the future?

Very easy – we need to track down Richard Simmons, bring him out of retirement, and get people back on the “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” train. Far more fun than sticking your legs behind your head, as you attempt to shove it up your own sphincter in the search for meaning and truth in your own life.

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Information for this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.