How Has Hinduism Transformed The West In The Past 100 Years?

Hinduism or Sanatan Dharma, who doesn’t know about it? Hinduism is one of the ancient religions of the world and perhaps one of the rare religions which doesn’t have a starting point or a founder. This religion mainly being followed by the people of South Asian regions mostly people who live in India and Nepal. One of the key things which have been noted regarding this religion is that there is some impact also which it left on the Western world in the past hundred years that has completely transformed some portion of it, like their way of exercise.

How Hinduism Completely transform the meaning of exercise in the Western world

The credit for this definitely goes to Yoga. Now, what is Yoga? It is an ancient practice in the Hindu religion which have been conducted by the rishis in the Vedic era to improve their health and promote peace and harmony among their and body. This ancient practice first arrived in the Western world thanks to Swami Vivekananda, an Indian Hindu monk who arrived in Chicago and demonstrated this practice at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. However, the popularity of Yoga spiked up when Madame Blavatsky created and presented a form of Yoga to the Western audience that they picked up as a process to refresh their mind and body.

This made the people in the Western region start to incorporate Yoga as a part of their daily exercise; one of the reasons is that they saw that their traditional exercises only focused solely on physical fitness. However, Yoga, in this process, has crafted a more balanced approach which is mindful towards the concept of exercise. 

The way Yoga has been put forward as the new curriculum of exercise can be really evident when major schools or gym centres in places such as America, France, England etc, have been practising Yoga for a couple of years as a part of exercise. Not only that, but this has also successfully created a new job opportunity through the position of yoga instructor in schools and exercise centres, with an average salary being 41,000.  So, it can certainly be said that Hinduism has transformed the exercise part of the Western world. However not only exercise also this religion also has a significant part in the healthcare portion in the West.

How Hinduism has provided a completely new path for treatment in the West

This process can be credited to Ayurveda, one of the ancient systems by which patients primarily used to be treated during the ancient era of Hinduism, which is composed of various herbs and roots. The popularity of Ayurveda occurred during the 1970s when Ayurvedic teachers started to visit the United States from India. It has also led to various Ayurvedic Colleges in Europe, Australia, and the USA being opened.

There is a major impact that the Ayurvedic medicines of Hinduism have provided regarding the treatment. One of the things is that in the majority of Western healthcare facilities, to deal with chronic illness or pain, the doctors, most of the time, use massage and herbal remedies with the fusion of Western medicines that also work significantly in this process.

Various Western medical professionals have also said that mixing Western medicine and Ayurveda  IoT helped them to understand the progression of the disease quickly, especially to recognize the patterns of cancer and diabetes in this process.  Besides Yoga and Ayurveda, however, it is noteworthy to mention another thing of Hinduism that has played a part in providing a major transformation for the Western people.

How an alternative mediation of Hinduism became a game-changer for Western people

Transcendental Mediation, which we will talk about in this article, primarily deals with an alternate way of meditating. This particular thing was brought to the West by the Hindu spiritual leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1950s. However, the popularity of this mediation technique became widespread when the popular music group Beatles, during their stay in India, practised this particular thing for a couple of months at Maahrishi’s ashram, which ultimately provided the credibility of this method.

Another reason why this approach of doing medication spikes interest in the Western Region as various scientific research has validated that the usage of this technique is one of the major methods for stress buster, and especially in the Western world, everyone knows how, from academic to professional life people face stress in every moment.

The impact of this meditation can be evident in the statements of other prominent celebrity figures besides the Beatles, like Katy Perry, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Scorsese, etc., who credited that using this practice changed their way of life. Now speaking about Beatles the popular music group. The next one in this portion has a strong connection with them.

How Hinduism transformed Western music and gave it a new height

If we talk about it and don’t mention the Beatles, this will be the biggest injustice as they were the forerunner of the impact of Hinduism on Western music.  This is first seen in their song Norwegian Wood, where the prominent Indian musical instrument is seen playing in the background; it is Sitar, an instrument primarily associated with the Saraswati, the goddess of music and knowledge in Hinduism. After their departure from India Beatles on their songs started to use various themes and concepts regarding Hinduism that have also drawn various interest among Western people, and they started to incorporate various Philosophies  in their daily life based on the Hindu religion.

 The usage of the Sitar by the Beatles started to become a phenomenon item, especially in music in the 1960s, which can be evident from the below chart where it is the number of 1960s music that have used Sitar as their background music.

Final Words

It can be said from this article that the Hindu religion has transformed some parts of the Western world massively in the span of 100 years, like their Music, Lifestyle, Fitness, etc. In the present era, various Hindu societies of America, like ISCKON, are still preaching their philosophy of Hindu religion in the western regions to ensure that not only the transformation of the Western world regarding the religion being limited onto this scale but also more and more deeply adjourned to there daily life and environment t but not as a religion but as a way of living.

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