Catholicism, and Buddhist retreats, if the combination works for them. The historian Catherine Albanese argues that American metaphysicals have constructed a "new and American yogic product" in which the body itself is a vessel for the spirit. The journalist Stefanie Syman notes that effortful yoga has a Protestant streak, as it is both "an indulgence and a penance." Cosmopolitan yoga By 2016, according to an Ipsos study, 36.7 million Americans were practising yoga, making the business of classes, clothing such as yoga pants, and equipment including yoga mats worth $16 billion, compared to $10 billion in 2012. Some 72 percent of practitioners were women. The historian Jared Farmer noted that if the yoga-practising population were a religious group, they would easily exceed the number of American Hindus, Muslims, atheists, Mormons, and Jews put together. Farmer identifies 12 general trends in yoga's history in the United States from the 1890s to the 21st century: Considering all these trends, Farmer stated that modern yoga as exercise belonged to Srinivas Aravamudan's category of the "global popular", which Farmer glossed as "a postcolonial realm of religious cosmopolitanism." In Lasater's view, American yoga in the 21st century has lost "the gentleness, consistency, and direction of the practice", replaced by ambition. Lasater believes that many Americans "have conflated asana with yoga." Schrank, reviewing the literature in 2014, noted that the journalist William Broad's The Science of Yoga, "lambasted mercilessly by the American yoga community", however took yoga seriously as therapy for mind, body, and spirit. Schrank describes the situation of yoga in the United States as "a complicated dynamic between transnational history, cultural appropriation, and therapeutic science". Schrank notes that none of the books she reviewed addressed the feminist, class, or racial aspects of American yoga, even though most practitioners are women and few are from minority ethnic groups. See also Yoga in Britain Yoga in Germany Yoga in Italy Yoga in Russia Yoga in Sweden References Sources United States American culture