This Controversial Magazine Article Says Bingeing and Purging Is a Legit Yoga Exercise Naturally, it has some people wondering if yoga isn't as zen and body-loving as they thought. Shutterstock
Yoga Magazine, which calls itself the "number one yoga, health, and fitness brand in the U.K. and U.S.A.," came under fire after publishing an article in its May 2015 issue detailing how to do a controversial yoga exercise that sounds an awful lot like promoting bulimia.
In the article, editor and certified yoga instructor Yogi Dr. Malik (yup, that's the name he goes by—although we couldn't find any evidence that he has a degree that makes him an actual, you know, doctor) gave details on toning your abs through Vyaghrasana, also called the Tiger, which involves drinking a lot of water and purging several times.
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Malik explained how to do the Tiger with a five-step process while answering a question from a reader who came across the technique in an old yoga book and asked whether it was legit. Step number three was particularly controversial: "Now drink at least three glasses of water even if you feel full. Push the fingers down the throat and vomit. Repeat this process until you are only vomiting water with no traces of leftover food."
Malik says yogis designed the system after observing the way a tiger deals with food. He added that, if you practice the Tiger once a week, you'll have stronger abs and better stamina.
Naturally, people freaked out.
According to a 2012 study conducted by Yoga Journal, more than 20 million people in the U.S. practice some form of yoga. But is there a legit subset of the population that's purging after vinyasas? Probably not.
"This practice is radical BS without medical basis," says yoga and wellness expert Sadie Nardini, author of The 21-Day Yoga Body. "The body can clean itself out quite optimally with a simple regimen of whole foods and hydration without having to hurl multiple times a day."
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The idea of bingeing doesn't seem to fit into the overall yoga philosophy of being in tune with and nurturing your body, although Nardini points out that some people can take yoga philosophy to the extreme.
"Perhaps purging every day was appropriate for that time in a culture and time where hygiene didn't rule and parasites often did," she says. Now, however, the practice is most certainly harmful to your health.
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In answer to the criticism, Yoga Magazine published a follow-up on its website explaining why they chose to talk about the Tiger exercise. "We were not promoting bulimia but answering a genuine reader question who had asked whether this exercise that he had found in a textbook dating back to the 1950s was true or not," Yogi Dr. Malik wrote in a blog post. He continued, "The Tiger exercise has been practiced for centuries, and like other ancient yoga kriyas including Vasti (colon cleansing), Hrid Dhauti (cleansing the tongue) and Neti (cleansing the nasal passages)—these are all genuine yogic practices that can help to detoxify and purify the body—and these techniques have been around for thousands of years."
However, the mag didn't say that people shouldn't try the Tiger: "As with every exercise and technique we feature in Yoga Magazine, it is up to each individual whether they perform or not."
Er...
To be clear, bulimia is bulimia—whether it's disguised in the form of yoga or not. And last we checked, you don't need to practice any form of bulimia in order to be a yogi.
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