Fascist Yoga

In Fascist Yoga, Stewart Home delivers a provocative and darkly entertaining reappraisal of the origins of one of the Western world’s most popular wellness practices.

Yoga is often presented as a timeless path to peace, self-knowledge and spiritual clarity, rooted in ancient Indian tradition. Home challenges this comforting narrative, tracing the emergence of modern yoga to a far more unsettling blend of early 20th century physical culture, showmanship and ideological appropriation. At the centre of his account is an unlikely founding figure, a Californian escapologist who fused gymnastic and circus techniques with selectively borrowed Eastern mysticism.

From there, Home follows yoga’s evolution through a landscape populated by cult leaders, occult thinkers, opportunists and extremists, revealing how physical exercise has repeatedly been used as a vehicle for persuasion, control and belief. He also examines how elements of the contemporary yoga movement have intersected with conspiracy thinking and far-right ideologies in recent years.

Unflinching and iconoclastic, Fascist Yoga is an exposé that questions what we take for granted, urging readers to look critically at the cultural myths we embrace and reminding us that no tradition is beyond scrutiny.

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How does it come?
paperback, 12 cm × 19 cm approx., 224 pages