From Yoga to Ayahuasca- Can we buy healing in a burning world?

Is it alternative medicine or is it just capitalism/ colonialism...

“We must accept the eventuality of bringing the USA to its knees; accept the closing off of critical sections of the city with barbed wire, armored pig carriers crisscrossing streets, soldiers everywhere, tommy guns pointed at stomach level, smoke curling black against the daylight sky, the smell of cordite, house-to-house searches, doors being kicked in, the commonness of death.” — George Jackson, Blood in my Eye

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From Measles to Apple Cider Vinegar

There’s been a sharp & alarming rise in Measles cases due to declining vaccination rates. It’s been frustrating watching medicine & major western scientific societies try to address vaccine hesitancy without addressing capitalism & the violent, flaming pile of garbage that is a profit-driven “healthcare” system that our communities rightfully have little to no faith in. However, it isn’t poor, working-class communities that are the face of the anti-vaccine movement. It’s privileged (mostly white) upper class (often wealthy) people. But I’ll go that in the next piece…

There has been a simultaneous surge in the popularity of “alternative, natural medicine” in the last few decades. I’m not talk about tools of traditional, indigenous/ collectivist medicine but rather the wellness industry co-opting, stealing, desecrating & commodifying said tools to create products that are AT BEST lose caricatures of the real deal. The target consumer base of the wellness industry? Westerners with relative privilege & middle-upper class people in general. Sure, there’s the lululemon wearing, core-power yoga queens but there’s also vulnerable people in distress, desperately seeking relief who often fall for “too good to be true” stories churned out by wellness influencers.

Love of the alternative medicine & wellness industry is that overlapping area of a Venn diagram where many leftists, fascists, alt-right wingers, liberals & all the weirdos in between or beyond intersect. I find that FASCINATING & highly informative. It is a reflection of our collective individualistic obsession with quick fixes that can be bought— pills, products & packaged “cures” that are marketed as the “solution” to our distress.

What do anti-vax movements in the West & the wellness industry have in common? Capitalism/ colonialism. This two-part series is about unpacking that connection.

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But what IS natural medicine?

I recently watched the show “Apple Cider Vinegar” which is about Australian influencer Belle Gibson who built a multi-million dollar wellness brand based on the lie that her terminal brain cancer was cured by “natural medicine”. She had a popular app called “The Whole Pantry” which led to a book deal. She also raised a ton of money for charities she never donated to. Her holistic, “natural healing” focused, well-curated “I was sick & now I’m better” IG page appealed to countless people (mostly in the west) that were enthralled by a concept that at it’s simplest core level isn’t too far fetched.

The idea that conventional/ mainstream/ modern medicine has failed us & alternatives may be better resonates with many people because at baseline, it’s true. This is the general idea that I’ve devoted my life to. The details is where it gets hairy.

The show Apple Cider Vinegar also had a character based on the story of Jessica Ainscough— another wellness influencer dubbed the “Wellness Warrior” who was truly diagnosed with a rare form of skin cancer (Epithelioid Sarcoma). She rose to fame on the interwebs by documenting her journey where she turned to the alternative medicine wellness industry rather than conventional medicine in an attempt to cure her cancer “naturally”. She famous wrote “I'm healing myself from cancer naturally" in an article. This included her following an alternative medicine modality after attending a wellness retreat at the Gerson institute in Tijuana. “Gerson therapy” included a plant-based diet, hourly glasses of vegetable juice, many proprietary dietary supplements, coffee enemas, & much more. Her mother also followed Gerson therapy rather than conventional medicine after her breast cancer diagnosis. Jessica died less than 6 years after. Jessica’s mother died 2.5 years after her diagnosis. Both died due to untreated cancer.

The show didn’t address capitalism/ colonialism but it did show how westerners & the privileged in general are prone to strengthening capitalism & existing power structures in their pursuit of “simple” alternatives. If an “alternative” healing tool does not fundamentally flip your entire worldview, life, priorities, values on it’s head & push you to anchor into the collective struggle for liberation— then it’s likely just more capitalism disguised as an exotic, enticing, “eat, pray, love” alternative.

I could understand why Belle did what she did as a single mother who came from a working class background. But, instead of asking herself “How are my struggles connected to the struggles of the people around me? Why are we all struggling? Where does our collective pain come from” to identify capitalism/ imperialism/ these empires as the true enemy of the people, she just asked herself “How can I feel better?” And that self-centered chase of success got her a multi-million dollar mini-empire that serves the larger empire— one that peddles the lie that “alternative” medicine & healing can simply be bought.

Funny side note: After the scandal broke, Belle moved onto her next conquest while battling many lawsuits. Right after s**t hit the fan, videos surfaced of Belle (who now went by “Sobontu”) wearing a headscarf, in traditional garb, praising Allah, claiming she was“adopted” by the Ethiopian Oromo community & commenting on the political landscape of Ethiopia referring to it as “back home” (local tribal group leaders did later confirm that she was not in fact a “community member”).

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This isn’t a piece glorifying conventional medicine— if you’re familiar with my work then you know that is the opposite of what I do. As a clinician-scientist in academic (colonial) medicine AND community organizer committed to decolonizing medicine, I’m trying to help dismantle these exploitative systems that profit off of sickness while building collectivist, community-led alternatives that care for human & land health as one (which is mostly about reviving & strengthening traditional indigenous/ collectivist knowledge systems that have existed for eons). This work is explicitly political, as is healing. It requires us to build power to be a threat to existing violent systems that are decimating our communities. It requires us to figure out how to feed, clothe, shelter, & care for the most marginalized who have been long abandoned by the state— from prisons to the streets.

But that is not the natural medicine that Belle or other western wellness influencers peddle. The latter is much more nicely packaged, simpler, doesn’t require effort from you (just your money), definitely doesn’t require you to question everything you thought you knew & doesn’t ask you to transform your political values or build community etc… in fact it fits right in with the capitalist, consumerist status quo & that makes for a trending tiktok reel or IG post. The average post on healing, natural/ alternative/ herbal medicine that you see on IG is alluring because it promises a quick fix.

Want to feel better fast & heal? All you have to do is get this executive functioning app for neurodivergent people, buy that nootropic for brain, get this calming adaptogen supplement that regulates your stress, sign up for this bikram yoga class, follow this daily meditation technique & so on.

Either extreme is harmful. Unquestioning, uncritical glamorization of modern medicine & science is enabling & bolstering a fundamentally violent colonial system. So is unquestioning, uncritical glamorization of so-called natural medicine which is also a thriving, predatory & exploitative industry. The common thread is the lack of political context. What do healthcare CEOs, big pharma, profit-driven healthcare systems & wellness companies have in common? Capitalism.

We can simply consume our way to healing. “The answer” to our distress isn’t buying an herb, tool or tradition from someone else’s culture but rather putting in the work to build/ sustain community, to understand how colonialism/ capitalism has shaped us & to let that jarring knowledge transform us from individualists to collectivists, to seek connection in our local context, to dedicate ourselves to figuring out how we can serve the people in this collective struggle for liberation. This of course applies to people who have the capacity to do this if they’re honest & critical with themselves. This sounds like a lot of work— but what do we think it takes to build, practice, & sustain culture? The process is itself where we find healing & any attempt to “skip” that will not give us the relief or benefit we’re hoping for.

PRO: this makes healing a whole lot more accessible to the people as a whole. CON: It’s a lot more complex than taking a pill or going to a wellness retreat. I’m going to use two examples to illustrate some points:

1. Yoga

2. Hayakwaska (aka “Ayahuasca”)

P.S. An undocumented homie (double amputee) recently was ambushed by cops in a home depot parking lot with his daughter— they took his RV. He recently had more of his leg amputated due to uncontrolled diabetes (lacking adequate access to insulin & reasonably healthy food). It cost $3000 to get his RV back & there’s other costs racking up as we help him & his daughter out in this crisis. If you’re able & want to help, here’s my info: Venmo (ayesha-khan-4), Paypal (ayeshakhan4), Cashapp (ayeshakhan4), Zelle (ayeshakhan0993@gmail.com). Thank you <3

Dissecting the commodification of Yoga & “Ayahuasca retreats” as a form of colonialism

(Just like the extraction of natural resources & oil from the Global South)

I can assure you that what most of you call yoga bears little to no resemblance to ancient collectivist yoga traditions from South Asia. This is not to say that stretching, exercise, strength training, etc has no health benefits. Given that the bar is so low- many types of “exercise” have health benefits even if the context and way in which people do it is fundamentally problematic & not to mean… odd. We are meant to get our "exercise in” just by being in & serving community— from day-to-day survival tasks to cultural art/ dance/ sport traditions. Instead, we have lonely, isolated people going on solo runs, to weekly yoga class or lifting at the gym alongside strangers— no relationships, no connection, & no mutual/ interdependent pursuit of survival, just the individual pursuit of “feeling better” and/or “looking better”.

Workout culture is absurd for many reasons but it’s innate, self-centered, individualistic infrastructure is a big reason it’s harmful.

I want to take a moment to unpack why the yoga you see around you is actually just colonialism/ capitalism— regardless of if your trainer is white or not. If anything, brown & black sellouts are crucial to the maintenance & expansion of colonial/ capitalist empires.

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Traditions like Yoga, ayurveda, traditional herbal medicine of any form, anything which you may called natural/ alternative medicine has roots in indigenous/ collectivist communities. The benefits of these collectivist traditions & medicines are only truly experienced when the core collectivist, cultural, religious/ spiritual, & political context remains intact— i.e. the context in which these traditional practices originally emerged, evolved, & were/ are practiced by the communities that are the original bearers, caretakers & stewards of the medicinal practice. I say stewards because these communities generally find concepts like “founder”, “owner”, “inventor”, & “discovery” utterly ridiculous. The land is here beneath us. It is meant to be cared for. That is the driving principle of indigenous land stewardship practices which are the antithesis of capitalism & colonialism that reduce the land to a lifeless commodity that is “owned” by “individuals” & violently extracted from for a few to endlessly profit.

The “patenting” of yoga

In 2003, yoga became classified as “intellectual property” in the U.S.

Bikram Choudhury, the multi-millionaire celebrity guru, filed a copyright to a sequence of poses performed in a certain setting, temperature, etc. This came to be known as “Bikram yoga” which is a mockery & caricature of yoga. Yoga was never meant to be a product that could be sold to the highest bidder for so they can continue to hoard wealth at the expense of billions. But this patenting catalyzed a wave of legal battles over who owns the yoga being practiced at yoga studios across the U.S. There was pushback from yoga instructors and studio owners across the west who were being issued cease & desist letters. It also led to a surge in yoga trainer certification courses that cost thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, some in South Asia responded in shock over westerners fighting over who get’s to own or commodify a desecrated caricature of an ancient tradition that was never meant to be “owned” much like the land or water.

Can culture be owned, bought, taught in certification crash courses & sold to people who can afford it?

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In fact, international patent statistics show that ~99% of new patents even in the realm of technology are registered & housed in the global north despite many of them being based on work done in the global south. Colonialism is all about “pioneering” & claiming to discover something that is very much not yours, not a discovery or a nicer way of justifying conquest, domination & mass genocide.

I think the west’s yoga patent wars are a beautiful, *chefs kiss*, example of capitalism & colonialism— McYoga. Cultural theft, appropriation, & commodification are a part of modern-day colonialism, much like the Global North reaping profits by extraction natural resources from the African subcontinent (e.g. cobalt, lithium, & other minerals) or MENA region (e.g. oil). “Globalization” of cultural traditions, from yoga to ayurveda & herbalism, mostly refers to the destruction & commodification of these traditions as they are turned into products or “experiences” that can be bought by the middle & upper class around the world. As yoga studios in the west expand, profits rising, much of South Asia remains wrecked under poverty, bearing the brunt of climate/ ecological disasters. As individuals in the west look to their weekly yoga classes for relief, they couldn’t care less about the poor in their own backyards, let alone in South Asia.

The arrogance & naivety of the individual, the capitalist/ colonial subject, is that we often believe we can reap personal benefits by using something without having to put anything in. I bought into this logic as I chase quick fixes too. But doesn’t that remind you of something? Colonialism is about extraction for self-gain. It deludes us into thinking such extractivist approaches will bring us happiness.

When Yoga is stripped of it’s traditional/ communal/ spiritual/ religious/ sacred cultural context, it is no long yoga at all.

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It is naïve to think that potent benefits of 1000-year old, revolutionary tools of medicine can be obtained by dabbling in it once a week or adding it to morning coffee with no labor, love or care put into it beyond paying for said yoga class or maca root adaptogen.

Colonial brainwashing prevents people from seeing that healing doesn’t solely come from “consumption” of the end “product”, it comes from being enmeshed in the process itself. The process of being in community, practicing & sustaining cultural rituals that are part of resisting the state & the empire— that process IS the healing. You can’t “skip” the part where we have to care for people & the land. The process of tending to land, tilling soil, nurturing a plant, sustaining a ritual through intentional, communal labor— IS healing. The idea that we have to put in the work— dismantle the colonial/ capitalist self, examine our own desires to conform/ assimilate & build a more collectivist self in pursuit of community & in service of the collective— is no doubt daunting to people in the west. It is daunting to anyone who’s deeply entrenched in capitalism/ colonialism/ individualism but healing is found within the struggle, not “above it”.

Practicing any form of traditional medicine comes with sacred, collectivist responsibility: to the community, the people as a whole, those that are most marginalized, & to our ecosystems/ the land. Healing is never going to be a byproduct of unidirectional extraction at the expense of others.

Side note and repeating for EXTRA EMPHASIS: Someone once told me that their yoga studio in gentrified corner of Brooklyn was “authentic” because one of their teachers was Black & the other Indian. It’s important to understand colonialism/ capitalism as a system that even people with marginalized identities can be implicated in, particularly in the heart of the empire. I’m sure there’s many Jay Shetty-like melanated wellness influencers & “gurus” who are actively involved & crucial, in fact, to the expansion of extractive capitalist neocolonial practices. Do not judge a book by its cover. It’s the substance here we’re talking about. Colonial empires heavily relied on sellouts hailing from the communities they colonized & conquered. Capitalism relies on people with marginalized identities chasing conformity & assimilation rather than liberation.

A diverse empire is still an empire— one could argue it is now emboldened & somewhat harder to dismantle.

Ayahuasca & psychedelic tourism

Ayahuasca is a misnomer & somewhat nonsensical term used in the spiritual/ healing industry. I will refer to it moving forward as Hayakwaska which is the original term. “Hyakata upina” translates roughly to “drinking hayakwaska”.

I can’t dive too deep here because this deserves a stand-alone piece. But you may be familiar with the rising popularity of westerners & the privileged people in general chasing “healing” through psychedelic retreats. These healing retreats, part of a billion-dollar wellness industry, are fueling destruction of the Amazon & exploiting the indigenous people that steward it.

Hyakata upina ceremonies led by yachaks (traditional healers) are deeply rooted indigenous & mestizo traditions alike, practiced as communal rituals & rites of passage— much like yoga or ayurveda. The role of sacred medicines is to maintain balance within community, faciliate & strengthen relationships between people/ the land/ forests & all beings that make up the ecosystem. Ceremonial rituals involving sacred plants are designed to help an “individual” anchor more deeply into the collective so as to better serve their collective purpose. These rituals are practiced by communities with intimate relationships between all those involved including a long-standing relationship with elders who serve as guides & traditional knowledge bearers.

Indigenous traditions, medicines & knowledge are rooted in reciprocal relationships between people, animals, plants & the land that sustains us all. Sacred traditions are practiced within this ecological, collectivist context that involves people being enmeshed in community & pouring endless labor into caring for the ecosystem that they’re active a part of & having been protecting for generations. Indigenous medicines are meant to facilitate & deepen communal bonds. That is the opposite of what wellness retreats are about.

Healing is collective.

Healing is a collective endeavor.

Healing is a collective struggle for liberation.

Healing is struggling with & for each other.

Healing is struggling for the people & for the land.

Healing doesn’t happen in a room full of strangers who have no connection to each other or place in a larger community who are simply coming together to “dabble” in a distorted form of a sacred tradition.

Now think of wellness retreats & healing centers that individuals pay to attend. These are by design focused on the “self”, often individuals devoid of & detached from community, & in the absence of reciprocity or relationships to the land. People often go to these wellness retreats seeking private revelations, personal enlightenment, self-elevation (I don’t know to where, for what & why), individual inspiration that may help one better conform & succeed under the existing system. The “collective” is completely absent. Privilege people come to these wellness retreats in the Global South desperate to transcend the struggle, & escape the distress & devastation that is around them— a desire to “rise above” rather than root further into a collective.

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Whether it is yoga or hayakwasca— stripping sacred medicines & traditions of their collective foundation, takes away any medicinal or healing effects they may have had. In the absence of a collective & their traditional context, these powerful/ alive/ transformative sacred medicines are turned into dead, lifeless, commodified products— incapable of truly awakening & nourishing anyone. Consumers can now buy these products & “experiences” marketed as tools that can be used to elevate the self— the complete opposite of the true purpose sacred medicines have in their original, traditional, collectivist/ indigenous context.

What’s heartbreaking is the impact the commodification of culture has on the original bearers & caretakers of said culture. These communities are wrecked by capitalism/ colonialism thru widespread poverty & ecological destruction. Often, they are punished, criminalized, oppressed, & massacred by the state even for practicing these traditions in their original collectivist, politicized forms. Furthermore, many communities are forced to partake in the fetishization & commodification of their own cultural traditions in the face of scarce options to sustain themselves on increasingly damaged lands.

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A notable example of the negative impact is the rapid deforestation of the Peruvian & Brazilian Amazon fueled by over-harvestation of the hayakwaska plant (“ayahuasca”) to meet the skyrocketing demands of the wellness & spiritual tourism industry. Rainforest destruction has recently been exacerbated by the rise of pharmaceutical companies in the west/ global north interested in extracting sacred medicinal plants with psychedelic properties for medicines (that will eventually be patented & “owned” by rich people & corporations). While some forests are leveled to the ground, others lose their biodiversity which leads to many species of plants or animals suffering & eventually going extinct. For example, jaguars are a critically endangered species that are victims of excessive hunting in addition to habitat destruction due to the rising western popularity of jewelry made with jaguar teeth (often falsely sold by opportunists as “enhancers” that potentiate the ayahuasca experience).

“People use it, but they don’t plant it.” — A Shipibo-Conibo shaman from the Ucayali region

White sage grows in the scrublands of Southern California & Northwest Mexico has been part of native spiritual traditions, medicinal concoctions & cuisines for eons (e.g. Chumash, Tongva & Yaqui). Many white sage habitats have been destroyed due to poaching & over-harvestation of white sage to meet the demands of an industry that markets & sells sage bundles to new-age wellness spiritualists.

We can’t skip the “community” part

From the African subcontinent to the so-called Middle East to South Asia & back to Turtle Island— ecosystems with collectivist communities are being plundered, exploited, extracted from endlessly for profit. One may argue that it is “impossible” to consume ethically under capitalism & that is true. However, I’m asking us to question our desire for quick fixes that will help us as “individuals” escape the pain that is around us, the pain that most cannot escape from. By default, this pain is within us, in some form or another, & the chase of solutions through consumption furthers this pain since it further separates us from the collective that we need to anchor into. When we consume a product, exercise class, retreat or wellness experience that is derived through the destruction & exploitation of collectivist communities & their sacred ancient traditions (i.e. a purely unidirectional extractivist relationship), stripped of any communal context— the emptiness & hollowness within us deepens & expands.

We may see marginal benefits in the short term given that the bar is so low. But the long-term impact of self-centered consumption is the gradual decaying & loss of our soul and the undeniable exacerbation of pain & distress in forms that may not look like starvation, but more akin to loneliness & meaninglessness.

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Stay vigilant, stay focused, think communal

Capitalism/ colonialism survives by doing 2 things well. 1) The system is designed to commodify anything & everything for profit. 2) It’s existence is contingent on the clever neutralization of threats— via explicit or less obvious (but just as destructive) violence. One subtle form of threat neutralization is co-optation. Anything that remotely poses a threat can be co-opted by the empire, white-washing & sterilized so that it goes from being a threat to an asset for the empire. History is strategically sanitized to maintain status quo. For example, MLK Jr’s desecrated, sanitized “non-violence is the way to go” image being used to suppress rebellion & deter people from pursuing effective forms of resistance while demonizing those that do resist effectively to justify their oppression, criminalization and/ or “neutralization” (i.e. murder). Similarly, truly liberating collectivist healing practices are often sterilized & commodified which effectively neutralizes them.

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The “Eat, pray, love” wellness & tourism industry exotifies collectivist/ indigenous cultures & sells these performative fantasies to middle-upper class people. Sacred tools are stripped of their communal context, sterilized, reduced from complex cultural traditions to simple, palatable, glamorized & easily marketable products or experiences. From yoga studios to ayahuasca retreats— the wellness industry is simply part of capitalism/ colonialism, and not an “alternative” to it. It is just a slightly different flavor that has all the right packaging to appeal to both well-intentioned people submerged within capitalism & the relatively privileged who are looking to assimilate into the empire rather than resist it.

I get it. I’m struggling & trying to survive the horrors of capitalism/ colonialism too. The bar is so low, sometimes we’ll accept anything that promises an iota of relief— even if may just be predatory advertising & behavior-altering machine-learning social media algorithms shoving new-age spirituality content down our throats. We’re desperate. We want to feel better & we want it NOW because the world is burning & so are many of our insides (seriously… my back is on fire, my feet feel like they’re being forcefully caressed by a bed of needles & my left ribcage feels like it hates me so that’s probably the my sky-high cholesterol). So when your fave niche micro-influencer shares a wellness hack on IG detailing their struggles with depression/ anxiety/ any form of distress & the medication/ supplement/ smartphone app/ product that cured them or changed their life— it is compelling.

What does it say about me if I’m healing/ healed/ dramatically transformed from ill-to-well with a few products on a burning planet in perpetual unfathomable pain from the melting Himalayan glaciers to Falasteen & all the way around? Is that “healing” a commendable, realistic, plausible, logically achievable goal given that I am connected to you, to others, to the ground beneath me & to the rotting, polluted rivers next door or the toxic, starving, sick stratosphere above?

We live on a massive blue rock hurling through the infinite expanse of space & said rock grows FOOD. It has the capacity to somehow create, maintain & sustain the necessary conditions to care for all the beings that are the parts which collectively come together to create a greater, unfathomably, incomprehensibly, sentient being we call Earth. The planet really is magic if you think about it. The land gives & provides us with everything we need to survive and it does this JUST BECAUSE & all we have to do is reciprocate that love. That is our north star. It is so exceedingly to forget that when we’re stuck abiding by ridiculous concepts like rent, taxes & credit.

With care,

عائشہ

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