Fuck you, namaste!

People who’ve never been exposed to the “fuck you, namaste” crowd have trouble believing just how weird and intense hippie hate can get. For years I’ve been getting hate mail from these people, usually massage therapists or homeopaths who are outraged by my opinions about those professions, but who want to seem spiritually sophisticated so badly that they will stick the word “namaste” at the end of an e-mail full of petty bile and venom. The irony is completely lost of them, of course.

They also have no idea what “namaste” actually means. So I loved this take-down of the word “namaste” as it is used on this continent — plus all the geeky context and word stuff. The Allusionist is awesome.

This kind of bullshit is why I quit the profession of massage therapy.

‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’ Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder wants people to stop saying 'namaste' after a yoga session. Jim Mallinson recounts the history of this Sanskrit word, while Andrea Jain explains how yoga went from being a 2,500-year-old spiritual practice in India to a lucrative fitness trend on the other side of the world.