Derek shares a story from his time as a Lululemon brand ambassador to highlight the toxic merging of spiritual practices and consumerism. Not only does he detail Lulu's post-Chip Wilson pivot in an attempt to "own yoga," he also explores the histories of branding, money, and markets in an attempt to understand how we arrived at the influencer culture that dominates social media today.
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Four Seasons Resort and Residence's Whistler looms over the northwest corner of Garibaldi Provincial Park.
Smoke rises from the hotel's thermal pools, dissipating into an aqua-white skyline as thick snowflakes cascade from the ether.
With squeaky sneakers, I trudge into the lobby, yoga mat strapped to my back.
Roughly a hundred instructors from North America, Europe, and Australia have converged on this Canadian lodge for an ambassador summit sponsored by the multi-billion dollar apparel company, Lululemon.
With humble origins constructing durable yoga pants, of course creation mythologies must appear unpretentious.
The company became synonymous with yoga couture, the Q-tip of cotton swabs, the rollerblades of inline skating, the Google of search engines.
The month is April 2011, shortly before Lululemon's founder, Chip Wilson, received a public trouncing for his not-so-subtle insinuation that not all bodies are built for his company's pants.
As he put it, The thing is that women will wear seatbelts that don't work, or they'll wear a purse that doesn't work, or, quite frankly, some women's bodies just don't work for it.
It turned out that this type of candor is antithetical to what a board of investors desires from its holistic overlord.
Accusations of fraud and false advertising followed, and Wilson ended up taking the public relations hit square in the jaw.
But back to the summit.
Perched on a luxurious mountainside surrounded by iconic scenery, Wilson is the little guy done good, an inspirational leader reciting his brand's mottos to aspirational yogis.
Do one thing a day that scares you.
Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself.
Listen, listen, listen, then ask strategic questions.
Who is John Galt?
John Galt, of course, is the quasi-philosopher-inventor in Ayn Rand's manifesto, Atlas Shrugged.
Wilson's corporate philosophy is informed by the libertarian strains of Randian capitalism combined with Werner Erhard's positive psychology mind-melding, a far cry from the faux-liberal stances many Lulu rockers assume.
Rand hated altruism, the evolutionary trait that many mammals exhibit.
She instead chose capitalism as her vehicle for transcendence.
Individual rights and ethical egoism were diligently wrapped into market forces in her philosophical fiction.
Today, she is the hard edge to the compassionate conservatism modern Republicans once championed.
Before Trump came into office, that is.
Meanwhile Erhard, who founded Erhard Seminars Training, more famously known as EST, which was a series of uplifting and expensive workshops that employ a variety of emotional techniques designed to break, subdue, and reinvigorate attendees.
And this is exactly what happens during our first day in Whistler.
Erhard ran S-Trainings and, later, Landmark Forum until he sold his intellectual property to former employees in 1991.
If you've ever watched the television show The Americans, you've seen S-Trainings in action.
This style of self-help served as the foundation of Lululemon's corporate ethic, and store employees were often required to attend landmark seminars.
And so just past sunrise on our first morning, the ambassadors line up cattle-call style to enter the ballroom, rows of Lulu-clad yoginis, and a few yogis, waiting to have our egos dissolved and ballooned like soccer balls.
The first half of the day involves deflation.
Instructors line up to tell their story.
Each anecdote follows a similar trajectory.
I was uncertain in my life until I took my first yoga class.
Yoga changed my life and now I'm a brand ambassador and nothing could be more amazing.
Tears shed, handles tagged, hugs abound.
Emotional baggage dropped, we're re-pumped with lessons culled from this secret in Tony Robbins' All Afternoon.
When top Lulu staff members sit on stage to fawn over Ayn Rand during a panel discussion, dozens of audience members scribble the titles in our new Lulu-branded journals.
Anthem.
We the Living.
One speaker pauses to spell her name for one of the yogis in the room.
And having read three of Rand's books in college, I'm somewhat mortified about this strange turn of events.
But yoga, as we know, has taken an odd turn in a capitalist society.
The former yogi, Siddhartha Gautama, taught that the self is an illusion.
Silly Indian, replies Rand.
Quote, To say I love you, one must first be able to say the I. Even the Vedic philosophy the Buddha ultimately rejected claimed good or evil to be illusory.
All forces are relative, dependent upon circumstance.
That's why the Buddha called his path the Middle Way.
Pure nonsense, says John Galton Atlas Shrugged.
Another quote.
There are two sides to every issue.
One side is right and the other is wrong.
But the middle is always evil.
We can translate that to something else from that era.
You're either with us or against us.
Brand ambassadors have drowned out yoga culture, as we've reported in many ways on this podcast.
You might be accustomed to your favorite influencer sharing a code for reishi mushroom coffee or the latest superfood supplement, but Lululemon really kickstarted this trend.
The model was simple enough.
Find top local yoga teachers to represent a store.
Schedule a professional photo shoot in the hood with said instructor rocking Lulu gear to display in said store.
Hand the ambassador a $1,000 gift card for more Lulu gear to... and let me just say the insinuation is not exactly subtle... to wear when teaching.
Oh, where did you get that top?
The store is just three blocks away.
This relationship between brand and instructor isn't inherently harmful.
While I'm personally in a post-Lululemon phase, I remember them making nearly indestructible clothing.
You would think that means we'd need to buy less of it, yet the company relies on short attention spans combined with the human penchant for novelty.
Their market cap at the time of the summit was roughly $6 billion.
Today?
$62 billion.
The mindset is the problem, one that many wellness companies exploit.
More always leads to more because the same is never enough.
We're constantly sold things we don't need but are made to believe that we do.
Integral components of yoga philosophy, such as self-discipline, tapas, non-coveting, aparigraha, and contentment, or santosha, They're rendered impotent when yoga kochur and tchatskis like mala beads and mandalas are proffered as required accoutrements for spiritual development.
They're not really necessary, but many businesses and instructors bank on you buying into the idea that they are.
And of course, those supplements that are supposedly needed to keep your immune system strong.
It's the same process.
Enough is never enough.
This trend is not confined to yoga, though for many reasons yoga has become an ideal vehicle with which to study this trend.
Here's an example.
In a 2017 meeting with Spencer Bame, the founder of Virtue, which is Vice Media's in-house creative agency, Duke Stump claimed that Lululemon is giving yoga the biggest hug of its life.
A former Nike vice president, Stump said this while serving as an executive VP at Lululemon.
Given the public relations dumpster fire Chip Wilson set, the company was attempting to rebrand itself.
Stump hired Virtue because they do real better than anybody.
And what matters most in yoga is authenticity.
When Baim claims Lululemon is taking the word yoga back, Stump howled his approval.
Baim assured Stump that his company is regaining control over what yoga is.
In fact, he concluded that Lululemon has every right to, quote, define yoga the way it should be defined.
At the time, that meant, ironically, scrubbing Lululemon's advertising free of yoga imagery.
Though the Virtue-sponsored tagline was, this is yoga, the photos from that campaign featured everything but.
You had an emcee on stage, an artist scribbling, a capoeirista spinning, a volleyball player sweating, a drummer pounding.
All ethnicities and genders were represented, of course.
And this was par for that course.
Lululemon has long attempted to blow the lines between athleisure and aesthetic.
The problem is this creepy mindset of ownership.
The idea that an expensive marketing campaign allows you to redefine a spiritual discipline and mold it into whatever form that you desire.
From meditating in caves to aggressively merchandising Luon, Lululemon is an ideal embodiment of spiritual consumerism.
Obviously, they're not alone.
Similar language employed by thousands of businesses is not actually about the practice of yoga or spirituality broadly, but is very much about associating their brand with the fruits of that practice.
By appealing to our highest self, they're actually preying on our insecurities.
Bottom feeders focused on the bottom line.
Self-affirmation, spiritual psychology, being your best possible being, holistically progressive messaging is an industry unto itself, not limited to the yoga sphere.
Hotels, airlines, computer manufacturers, app makers, watches, even alcohol companies target the moderately affluent with easily digestible slogans and questionable Buddhist parables in hope of securing the contents of your wallet.
In the domain of the spiritual consumer, looking the part is more valuable than playing the part.
Instagram was inevitable.
But we can resist this trend.
Lululemon is a symptom, not the cause of our confusing relationship with spirituality and consumerism.
Throughout history, many have claimed to be the appointed beacons of particular disciplines.
Some went on to found religions, others wrote influential books and started communes, while others still concocted belief systems in boardrooms with the aim of keeping customers hooked on their products.
What's troublesome about this trend is not a pair of 200 Malibetes carved from sacred wood by Forrest Satoos.
Fashionable pretensions have always existed.
The problem is the confusion sown by marketing initiatives focused more on product than practice.
The very first studio I taught yoga at was the Hoboken YMCA.
This was long before I knew about that organization's ethically dubious past.
What I recall is the dingy carpeted basement room that had one desktop lamp on the floor for lighting.
The members showed up in sweatpants and jeans, sometimes not even bothering to bring a mat.
It was a much different experience than I was accustomed to in Manhattan studios.
In many ways, I remember that first year teaching fondly, because there were no pretensions in that room.
I mean, there wasn't even any spirituality.
It was just a group of people, moving and sweating and occasionally laughing together.
And at this point in my life, that's all I really seek.
