Yoga is entwined with politics in the epic Mahabharata and it's most famous chapter, the Bhagavad Gita. And it's not just in the epic and mythological literature; many early kingdoms and states in India connected their politics with yoga, just as many yogis in rural India (where its majority lives) often resisted such rule. Mohatma Gandhi applied a radical commitment to ahimsa, non-violence, to help rid India of the British while Sri Aurobindo organized 10,000 yoga warriors to try to take on the British Army. The current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, has made yoga and politics an art form for his BJP party and the larger religio-nationalist Hindutva political movement.  

So what about yoga and the November 2024 presidential election in the United States, where basic rights, the planet, and perhaps democracy itself are at stake? What's an American yogi – and yoga teacher – to do, or not do?

First, consider Shakespeare, "to thine own self be true," before reflexively (or du...