If I had promised you a cake and I presented you, on a plate, a block of (vegan) butter, would you accept this as cake? Would you not say, ‘this is not cake, this is butter’? To which I would reply ‘there is butter in cake, and I like the butter the most, so I have taken out the flour, the eggs and the sugar (and anything else there might be in a cake) and just keept what I like the best, so here is cake’! Would you ever accept butter as cake? No?

So, when we take yoga and strip it down to the asanas (perhaps with a sprinkle of pranayama), the bit many like the most, can we still call it yoga? If you remove the meditation, the chants, the scriptures, the prayers, all what are really the main (spiritual) components of yoga, and just keep the physical part, because that is what we like the best, how is this Yoga any more than butter is cake?

So next time you hear (or say) ‘I love yoga, I just take out the spiritual part’, think about a block of (vegan) butter and try to see a cake.