Yoga "Gloubi-Boulga"

Mix your own unpalatable cocktail?

I wish there was an English equivalent of gloubi-boulga. 🥣

This French expression for an unappetising blend of incompatible ingredients seems a good metaphor for many modern versions of yoga philosophy. The closest synonym is probably “mish-mash”, but gloubi-boulga also carries hints of “gibberish”, which in the age of AI might translate into “slop”.

Before I say more, I should make it clear that I’m not a traditionalist – at least not an inflexible one. Innovation has always been part of how yoga evolves, which has helped it stay relevant as contexts change. Yet throughout that process, there were generally threads that maintained a connection to earlier teachings.

This is not always the case in modern yoga, particularly not if what’s taught involves making things up, or reinventing ideas to serve different priorities. That wouldn’t be a problem if people admitted as much, but they tend instead to source their creations to Patañjali or other ancient authors – as discussed in a recent podcast and article.

However, going it alone can also have pitfalls. I wrote about those at the end of my last book, The Truth of Yoga, which discusses the variety of yogic traditions, and how contemporary practitioners might seek to integrate them. To quote the conclusion:

“Everyone is free to create a new version of yoga philosophy. However, it seems wise to engage with tradition before going freestyle. The alternative is like trying to play jazz with no knowledge of scales, or trying to paint abstract art without learning to draw. We might well be gifted with insight, but the chances of making a mess are considerably higher.”

That’s pretty much the textbook definition of gloubi-boulga. French Wikipedia calls it “an imaginary dish and the favourite food of Casimir the dinosaur, who was the main character in L’Île aux enfants, a children’s television show broadcast in France from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s”.

Casimir enjoys gloubi-boulga

In an episode transmitted just before I was born (embedded below), Casimir explains gloubi-boulga is a dessert that “everyone can’t help but love” because it’s “so delicious”. The recipe mixes unspecified amounts of the following into a bowl:

• powdered chocolate

• strawberry jam

• crushed banana

• mustard

• Toulouse sausage (lukewarm but raw).

This sort of combination is common in yoga. Texts throughout its history have mixed and matched different systems of philosophy. However, this has got more blurry with globalisation. To quote a chapter on the topic in my forthcoming book, The Evolution of Modern Yoga (about which more soon):

“Modern yoga is a synthesis of influences. Postural practice is usually described through the prism of a text – the Yoga Sūtra – that promotes sitting still, while [contradictory] ideas about oneness from different traditions are used to explain this. Non-yogic sources, from poems to psychology, are also widely cited…”

Add to that such hybrid developments as using crystals to cleanse rainbow-coloured cakras – none of which is found in Sanskrit texts – or “manifesting” what one desires, despite the yogic emphasis on conquering desire, and things get more complex.

This isn’t to suggest that there’s anything wrong with combining ideas to develop new methods. It’s just more helpful when it’s clear that’s what’s happening and what might get left out. Scholars use another French term to discuss this. To quote an article by Véronique Altglass, which references two modern yogic lineages:

“Despite being untranslatable into English, ‘bricolage’ has had a remarkable trajectory in the social sciences and beyond. The term designates activities of fabricating and repairing, meaning something like ‘do-it-yourself’ and ‘tinkering’. It also conveys the idea of an amateurish or not serious practice: ‘bricoler’ in some contexts can be translated as ‘fiddling’…”

Nonetheless, Altglass notes, the “diversification of cultural and religious practices” has its own validity, and is driven by “manifold social, cultural and political logics” that are difficult to isolate, so what comes from where can be hard to untangle.

Since the constituents of gloubi-boulga are just as commingled, it might even help to make that a focus of practice. The Buddhist scholar-monk Anālayo suggests mixing all one’s food in a bowl to diminish attachment to sensory pleasure. As he writes in Satipaṭṭhāna Meditation: A Practice Guide, “artificial sweets like chocolate or cookies lose all their attraction on being mixed with soup, rice, and vegetables”.

As a result, he says, one learns that “the main task of eating is to nourish the body, rather than to entertain the taste buds”. And should one wish to take the practice further, “there is the option of chewing our food and then, before swallowing it, taking it out of the mouth again for a brief moment of inspection”.

Mmmmmmm, gloubi-boulga! 😋

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