The issues concerning hatha-yoga can also be looked at from the perspective of the modernization concept that our society has undergone and is still undergoing. Modernization can be understood here as a process of social change concerning industrial and post-industrial economies, increasing the role of the public, lay, and democratic institutions, the expansion of mass-media, increasing wealthiness of the major part of the society and major flexibility in the human physical and social mobility (Lynch 2007: 100).

Emil Durkheim claims that one of the major influences of modernization on the changes in the Western culture was a social increase of the meaning of the individual. The increase of the meaning of the individual and its interests was considered by Durkheim as destabilizing for the society. Lessening of the meaning of the social structure causes the social bonds to fall apart, causes anomy. Acknowledging the individual as the highest value can be the basis of a new, humanistic religion. Durkheim foresaw that news of religiousness would emerge together with collective rituals that would celebrate the individual and keep the cult of the individual alive (see ibid.: 100).

Georg Simmel believed that modernization causes establishing new mystic forms of religion. This new mysticism accented the power of personal, inner experience of an individual, gradually moving away from the traditional forms of religiousness. According to Simmel, even though people where moving away from Christianity, the religious impulses still remained. This new mysticism is, according to him, a new way of life, without any relation to any God. As a result, the whole life is sacred. This way, the life is not devoted to following a God, but to following a specific quality of life, which is feeling the depth and completeness. Simmel was skeptical towards this new mysticism; he did not believe that it is capable of fully expressing new religious life. This mysticism was nothing but a trivial spiritualization of everyday life (see ibid.: 105).