White Girl Yoga

Shape without content. The degradation of philosophy into gymnastics and of spiritual depth and perennial wisdom into an aesthetic cliché.

White Girl Yoga is essentially an aesthetic that is often mistaken for spirituality. It is built around pretentiousness, cultural appropriation, neoliberal consumerism and the banalization and trivialization of the sacred, and generally expressed in a color palette of beige and pastels. It is an aesthetic that often lacks the complexity and depth of the systems of knowledge it superficially emulates, mostly for instagram likes from dudes with sacred geometry tattoos .

It can be applied to a variety of situations that while might seem meaningful and deep at first glance, are actually just nicely packaged spiritual cliches or platitudes and pseudo-psychological banalities. A White Girl Yoga aesthetic can range from the purely misguided and innocuous to the opportunistic and obscene.

“I am really not sure about that ayahuasca ceremony. The facilitator seems very White Girl Yoga to me.”

“Can we please change the music? That Spotify playlist is totally White Girl Yoga”

-“Hey, do you like my new top?

-"Wait I can’t tell whether you are asking me seriously or you’re wearing that White Girl Yoga stuff ironically”

Spirit-coating

Spirit-coating is similar in usage to the more common term, "Sugar-coating", used to talk about or describe (something) in a way that makes it seem more pleasant or acceptable than what it actually is.

"Spirit-coating" is a phenomenon abundantly common amongst people who have a tendency to resort to "spiritual" and metaphysical frameworks in order to find comfort and/or create meaning and coherence in their human experience.

"Spirit-coating" refers to the tendency to coat *Life-as-it-is* with extra layers of spiritual ideology, pattern-seeking and interpretation, often drawing from standard New Age concepts such as non-duality, the imminent evolution and/or ascension of consciousness, or flimsy constructions of an eternal and everlasting "soul".

"Spirit-coating" can be innocuous and harmless, but it can also be a gateway for pretty harmful spiritual gaslighting.

1. “Man, I had a really mind-blowing, toe-curling mushroom trip the other day, but this facilitator person kept trying to spirit-coat my experience EVEN THOUGH I TOLD THEM that my experience was perfectly meaningful to me for what it was and their spirit-coating was just unhelpful"

2. “Man, all of these “sacred sexuality” and "tantra" cults people are so funny. It seems so much easier (and healthier) to just acknowledge their basic human drives and admit that they want to have relatively decent sex with a bunch of different people, and try and deprogram themselves from the shitty puritan ethics that they still carry with them so they won't feel guilty about fucking around. No need to spirit-coat it, really!"

3. "Man, Adam is such a judgmental little bitch. He could definitely spirit-coat his cynicism just a tiny bit."