How Yoga Killed Sydney

By Charlie Tetiyevsky

King’s Cross, like any “grungy” neighbourhood at the claws of political whims (looking at you, Newtown), is being transformed in the wake of the lockout laws. It seems that #casinomike might as well be #yogastudiomike, with the transformation of closed-down nightclubs and social venues into the death knell of any fun neighbourhood: innumerable places for yuppies who love to say “namaste.”

Now, as a queer person dealing with mental health issues, I find self-care to be as important to daily life as, say, eating. But this push, which yoga studio owners ascribe in the Sydney Morning Herald as being the result of “a generational change [wherein] young people are not as interested in just going out and getting smashed on the weekend,” is like the owner of a bowling alley setting up shop in an old bar and suggesting that people just prefer bowling to drinking these days.

“We hold a meditation party every third Friday of each month,” says the delusional gentrifier, explaining that this is “how this generation parties – they want to get up in the morning and feel good,” seemingly unaware that generations are not, in fact, homogenous groups of people with identical backgrounds and access to money. Not only that, but lots of people wake up feeling super good after a night out, if you know what I mean.

Self-care is different for everyone, and not everyone has the time or the economic means or the able-bodied person’s ability to appropriate another culture’s spiritual exercise routine daily. It’s fine and well for yoga studios to exist, but the fact is that this is not reflective of a wider generational shift, it is solely a pat-on-the-back legitimisation of the restrictive laws in place that have forced the nightclubs and bars of yore to close. It’s another layer of shame heaped upon the neighbourhood, once notably home to drug users and other neglected members of society, that is meant to demonise certain behaviours to the point that the public finds it acceptable that they be pushed out of a place. If the public considers it “shameful” to not be the yoga type, they can come up with reasons for why being overtly health-conscious should be the only way to be. It is the modern Manifest Destiny: social cleansing, a further pushing of victims of government failure into the margins (now physically) of society.

Even if you look at it from an economically pragmatic point of view, yoga studios are bad business. They appeal to one very slim and financially privileged sector of the population and employ few people, whereas bars and nightclubs and restaurants other nighttime venues employ many, do business with all sorts of people, and encourage the sort of melding of personalities and minds that you would never find in the self-selecting world of the yoga studio.

This is not to mention, of course, the very serious divides that arise in yoga classes when it comes to being a different shape, or gender, or colour.

Not everyone wants to put their body on display; lots of trans, queer, and non-binary individuals (myself, for instance) feel terribly uncomfortable having to contort in tight-fitting shorts in front of everyone. I am protective of my body and care for it in my own way, which is not intrusive upon the yoga-doers but certainly seems to confound the smugness with which they push their particular brand of health-nuttiness around. It seems, in a sense, that if my lifestyle isn’t wrong then they feel as though they are less right. The face here may be different, but it’s the same shame-based ethics policing perpetuated by any socially conservative, pro-status-quo movement—like that of those fighting against LGBTQI rights, for instance.

I’m not going to try and suggest that exercise is a bad idea—I’ve come to terms since a rather upsetting doctor’s appointment last week that even the most body positive of people can be susceptible to an unavoidable genetic predispositions to diabetes. I love my body intensely, even if I don’t like to show it off the way some people do, but of course I recognise too that sometimes it’s beneficial to reconsider ingrained personal eating or exercise habits.

Health is not the actual point of the King’s Cross revolution, or else the result would be to cater to the health needs of the existing population (harm reduction for addiction, mental health support, and so forth). Rather, as a different socioeconomic slice comes to power in a neighbourhood that used to cater to different ideas of self-care (like, you know, having fun or whatever), it bleaches out the history of the area and supplants it with stores and activities inaccessible to the original residents.

Like the environment, a neighbourhood — and society — is only as strong as it is diverse. Ideas creep into our minds and effect our goings on, and without the safeguard of a variety of people in view it’s hard to tell who is being affected how by what. It’s easy enough to say that yoga studios encourage some people to be healthy, but for the people who have no access to such bourgeois pursuits or choose not to live life that way, there are simply no options left.

It would be sad enough if such sprawling gentrification was restricted to one neighbourhood, but the reality is that as housing becomes less accessible and affordable the whole cycle of gentrification spreads elsewhere. It’s becoming alarmingly noticeable in the Inner West that as housing prices spike and long-term residents are getting pushed out of their communities, our neighbourhood values (personal freedom, tolerance of others, the importance of safety) are quickly dissipating. There’s nothing wrong with moving into a new place; it’s when new neighbours bring with them preconfigured notions of what a place “should be” that the age-old stability and peace in places like Newtown is compromised. It is people who move who need to adapt to the place around them, not the other way around.

Someone’s lifestyle, especially when it comes to personal lifestyle choices, is simply none of anyone’s business. It is not for the yoga studio owners to make blanket statements about a generation to excuse the part they play in gentrification. The point in the SMH article that “it is common now to see people in The Cross walking around with their gym gear and yoga mat, and to see cold-pressed juices in cafes” does not mean anything about people’s desired preferences or activities.

It means that there is one way to live in The Cross now and one way only, and if you don’t, can’t, or won’t adhere to the mores of being hyperconscious about health, you have no choice but to get out or else go broke buying juice.