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The Yoga Industry: A Conscious Luxury Experience in the Transformation Economy

ABSTRACT Yoga is both a sociocultural phenomenon and a multibillion dollar industry. As consumers shift spending habits towards transformational and well-being experiences, the yoga industry provides a sophisticated and diverse offer of commodities, services and experiences that mix and bricolage conscious luxury with holistic and sustainable practices. The promise of happiness, harmony, balance and self-actualization are key indicators of cultural capital and status in contemporary consumer society. The yoga industry offers these services across a multitude of platforms and uses branding strategies that borrow emotional and sensory dynamics from the luxury market as well as upward mobility logics of social differentiation. The success of this consumption pattern is evident in the economic worth of the yoga and wellness industries. Yoga brands function as aspirational lifestyle brands offering social, symbolic, and psychological benefits that go beyond the physical practice. These brands also propose new aesthetic and ethical body ideals. This article argues that yoga is a multisensory luxury experience, providing consumers with achievement of both tangible and intangible physical, mental and spiritual individual needs and aspirations. The yoga studio becomes the immersive or escapist space that replaces traditional religious institutions; representing self-transformation, self-empowerment and community engagement. It is the space where the quest for meaning takes place, under hyper-individualistic logics of consumer capitalism and luxury market dynamics. Through the analysis of aspirational lifestyle branding and marketing strategies associated with three yoga studios, this article considers the inherent paradoxes of yoga as a conscious luxury experience and yoga as a traditional practice.