as per usual, a lot of the wests hippie shit can be traced back to the nazis, iirc yoga, mysticism and vegeterian clean living were popularised during the late 19th C, and plenty of fascists were real keen on it all

The German yoga teacher Mathias Tietke [de] wrote that Nazi leaders including the SS commander Heinrich Himmler were interested in yoga.[1] A captain in the SS, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, wrote several books on yoga, namely the 1922 Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien ("The beginnings of yoga practice in ancient India"), the 1932 Der Yoga als Heilweg ("Yoga as a path to healing"), and the 1934 Eine indo-arische Metaphysik des Kampfes und der Tat, die Bhagavadgita in neuer Sicht mit Übersetzungen ("An Indo-Aryan metaphysics of struggle and action, the Bhagavadgita in a new perspective with translations"). Hauer seems to have persuaded Himmler that "yoga can internally arm us to prepare us for the forthcoming battles."[2][3][4] The Nazi racial ideology included the belief that the "Nordic race" was distinguished by "courage, bravery, creative ability and desire, loyalty";[5] that this race was one of the "Aryan peoples"; and that the German people was among "the most racially pure of the European peoples".[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_in_Germany

shit source cause i'm lazy sorry

Archived a rare good Baffler article on this nobody read ;^)