How Yoga Helps Reconnect Us to What Was Taken

Lost Lineages and the Longing for Sacred Connection

I remember the first time I sat on a yoga mat in silence. It felt foreign yet familiar. I wasn’t drawn to yoga because it was trendy or exotic. I was drawn to it because something in me was aching. At the time, I couldn’t articulate why. I only knew that moving and breathing in this ancient practice awakened a sense of homecoming in my body. It was as if a part of me was remembering something lost – something my own lineage had misplaced long ago.

Longing for What Was Lost

When we talk about cultural appropriation of yoga, we often overlook a deeper layer: many white people are not merely seeking novelty or fitness. We’re searching for something sacred we can no longer find in our own heritage. Sociologist Shreena Gandhi notes that many are “grasping for something to belong and connect to,” often without understanding the spiritual void they feel.

Our ancestors, in assimilating into dominant (Christian, colonizing) culture, lost rituals and relationships that once connected them to the divine. Yoga—with its union of breath, body, and presence—fills a gap left by that severance.

I see it in my studio all the time. Students arrive stressed or numb, and something as simple as lying in stillness or chanting “Om” brings them to tears. They can’t always say why, but I recognize the longing—for wholeness, for reverence, for something modern Western culture and many inherited religions no longer offer.

Old Europe’s Sacred Ways

This sacredness wasn’t always missing. Pre-Christian European traditions were rich with embodied, earth-centered practices. These cultures honored gods and goddesses, celebrated the cycles of nature, and saw time as circular—a rhythm of birth, death, and return. Nature was their cathedral. The body wasn’t shameful; it was sacred.

When I first learned about these ancestral ways—pagan Slavs lighting ritual fires, Celts honoring Brigid at Imbolc—I felt a spark. It was like hearing a forgotten song I somehow still remembered. And I grieved. Those traditions weren’t gently let go—they were violently erased.

From Goddess to God: The Fall into Fear

What happened? In a word: colonization—spiritual colonization. Long before Europeans colonized others, they were colonized themselves. As Christianity spread across Europe, it replaced indigenous traditions with institutional control. The divine feminine was exiled, and experiential spirituality was replaced with rigid doctrine.

The old ways honored community, nature, the body, and cyclical time. The new orthodoxy demanded obedience, suppressed the body, and introduced Original Sin—a concept alien to our ancestors. Where life was once seen as sacred, it became something to overcome. The joy of seasonal festivals turned into fear of damnation.

The Church essentially created a spiritual protection racket: declare everyone guilty, then sell salvation. Generations internalized fear and shame, policing their desires and bodies. Over time, Europeans were reshaped to fit a worldview that demanded domination over self, others, and the Earth.

Europe’s First Colonization

We often associate colonization with what Europeans did to others. But first, they were colonized themselves—tribe by tribe, faith by faith. Pagan Europe didn’t go quietly. Sacred groves were cut, temples destroyed, ceremonies outlawed. Some traditions survived in disguise—seasonal festivals, fairy lore—but much was lost.

By the Middle Ages, Christianity had become synonymous with Europe itself. Resistance lingered at the margins, prompting further repression—like the Inquisition and witch hunts.

These were not random panics but organized campaigns to destroy indigenous European spirituality. Tens of thousands of women—healers, midwives, ritual leaders—were executed not for magic, but for preserving Earth-based wisdom outside of Church control.

This cultural erasure laid the foundation for global colonization. Techniques first used on European pagans—outlawing language, stealing children, banning ceremonies—were later used against Indigenous peoples across the world.

White Privilege and White Poverty

We hear much about white privilege, and it’s real – I won’t deny that for a moment. But there’s a contradiction we don’t talk about as often: an aspect of “white poverty”. Not material poverty, but a poverty of spirit and culture. By this I mean the loss of our sacred traditions, the inheritance of fear-based religion, and the awkward, unrooted way so many of us now seek meaning. It can feel tone-deaf or even offensive to speak of white people having any kind of loss – after all, didn’t white colonizers choose to give up their old ways and adopt Christianity, then go on to oppress others? But many did not choose; their ancestors were coerced generations ago, and the choices made in the name of survival (converting to the dominant religion, assimilating for safety or advantage) had lasting costs.

What does this “spiritual poverty” look like? I see it in the emptiness of our modern rituals – or the lack of rituals altogether. I see it in how disconnected many of us feel from our ancestors beyond a couple of generations. We can tell you the brands we consume and the celebrities we follow, but not the blessings our great-grandmothers said or the songs our people sang around the fire. A striking passage I read described it this way: “The majority of white people have no traditions, and the ones we have are rooted in consumption and a superficial application of organized religion, both of which are steeped in histories of violence.” It’s harsh, but it rang true. Our holidays have largely been reduced to shopping events.

Our community gatherings often revolve around sports or entertainment rather than seasonal gratitude or spiritual reflection. We inherited a culture that teaches us to conquer and consume, not to listen and tend. In that sense, many of us white folks walk around with a hidden grief. We have privilege in the worldly sense, yes. But we also feel poor in meaning. Our souls are undernourished.

This is a sensitive topic. Recognizing this loss in ourselves is not meant to elicit pity or to excuse anyone from the ongoing work of racial justice. Rather, I bring it up because it helps explain why so many well-meaning white folks flock awkwardly to other people’s traditions – sometimes in insensitive or appropriative ways. We are starved for connection. Starved for color, for ritual, for a feeling of communion with the divine that isn’t mediated by guilt or a fear of hell. So when we encounter yoga, or Native sweat lodges, or ayahuasca ceremonies, or any spiritually rich practice, we rush toward that warmth like cold hands to a fire. We may not even realize what ancient hunger is driving us. But the hunger is there.

Seeking Reconnection (Body, Breath, Belonging)

Many yoga practitioners today – especially those of us from the dominant white Western culture – are unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) seeking reconnection. Reconnection to our bodies, which our inherited religions taught us to distrust. Reconnection to our breath and inner stillness, in a culture that taught us only to recite prayers but not to sit in real silence. Reconnection to something sacred that includes rather than excludes – a sense of the divine that is expansive, welcoming, and woven into the world, not a jealous deity on a throne.

When I guide a class through sun salutations or a heart-opening pose, I often sense an emotional release in the room. It’s as if the very act of moving with the breath, of honoring the sun (a very ancient impulse!), touches a place deep inside. Yoga, for many, becomes a bridge – a way back to what was lost. It’s ironic and beautiful: a practice that originated in India is helping descendants of Europe remember how to inhabit the sacred in their own skin. There’s a reason yoga feels good to us beyond the physical stretch. As one white yoga teacher confessed, “Practicing yoga brought me a strong body, a stable mind, and a spirit that felt connected to something larger.” It gave meaning, community, and a taste of the sacred that Western life wasn’t giving her. In my studio, I’ve had students share that yoga is the first time they learned to feel rather than suppress, to trust their body rather than feel ashamed of it. They come alive in a way that standard gym classes or church sermons never evoked.

However, this seeking can be fraught. We must acknowledge that yoga and other Eastern or Indigenous practices don’t exist just to fill our void. They are living traditions of other cultures, not trendy accessories for us to sample. The goal isn’t to appropriate or escape into someone else’s heritage, but to use these experiences to awaken something in ourselves. I sometimes remind my students: Yoga is not a replacement for what we lost. It’s a pointer, a midwife helping birth a remembrance. If we approach with humility, yoga can teach us how to re-inhabit our own bodies and perhaps even inspire us to learn about our own ancestors’ ways (however distant or fragmented).

I think of it like this: Yoga opens the door of the house, airs it out, and says, “See, the sacred was here all along.” It invites us to be present and listen. In that listening, some have found themselves drawn to explore European paganism or folk traditions in addition to yoga – not out of rejection of yoga, but because yoga showed them the possibility of a spiritually connected life. For others, yoga simply provides a non-dogmatic space to pray with their whole being.

People are yearning for a spirituality that feels inclusive and embodied, not hierarchical and shaming.

Yoga as a Bridge Home

I write this not as a condemnation of Christianity or any religion per se – there are many Christians today reclaiming the mystical, loving core of their faith, and that is beautiful. Rather, I write to name the historical truths and the emotional realities that underlie this modern phenomenon of “so many white people in yoga classes.” It’s easy to dismiss it as appropriation or fad. But underneath, there is a story of loss and longing – of white privilege built on the ruins of our own indigenous past, and of white poverty in the soul. A story of how a dominator culture was born in Europe, spread through the world, and now leaves even its inheritors spiritually adrift.

By understanding this, we can approach our yoga (and any cross-cultural spiritual practice) with more awareness and respect. We can critique the violent imposition of religion – how it was “not offered generously but forced with swords and schools,” how children were taken, languages banned, ceremonies outlawed in the name of saving souls – and we can hold that alongside compassion for the descendants of both the colonized and the colonizer. We are all trying to heal from that legacy.

For me, as a yoga studio owner, this journey has been humbling. I used to feel a twinge of defensiveness when accusations of cultural appropriation arose. Now I see an opportunity for a deeper conversation. I often silently thank the Indian sages and practitioners who kept yoga alive and generously shared it with the world. Their gift became my lifeline. And I also quietly mourn what my own ancestors lost – the particular songs and dances that I will never know. Both truths coexist.

In the end, yoga is not a replacement for those lost European traditions – but it is a bridge. A bridge back to the body, which is where all spirit lives. A bridge toward wholeness, where we no longer split matter from spirit or carry shame for our humanity. Yoga does not belong to us white folks, but it has welcomed us in, and for that I am grateful. It has taught me to stand on my own two feet and feel the earth as sacred again. It has shown me how to bow (in namaste or child’s pose) with genuine reverence – something my stiff upper-lip culture had long forgotten.

On my mat, I have felt moments of connection that transcend geography or lineage – moments that feel like coming home. And perhaps that is the gentle truth I want to offer: home was never really gone. The sacred lives quietly in each of us, waiting for us to remember. We may travel far, to India or beyond, to find the key – but when we insert it and turn, the door that opens is our own. Yoga has been my key, my gentle teacher. It helped me discover that the wholeness I sought was here all along, patiently awaiting my return.

So, no, yoga is not a new trend or a stolen toy for me; it is a patient guide leading me back to something old and holy. Not a replacement, but a bridge. A way back to the body. A way forward to something more whole, where perhaps one day we can all, of every color and creed, meet in the middle – healed, grounded, and truly home.