Hindus are critical of Oscar winner Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow for unnecessary pushing of expensive yoga and meditation stuff through her lifestyle brand GOOP in its â€œ2017 Holiday Gift Guideâ€.

Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that Paltrow, who had been known as â€œpart yoginiâ€ and who had been promoting â€œnourish the inner aspectâ€ through GOOP, should not be pushing the exorbitant products for the ancient practices of yoga and meditation whose techniques could be successfully mastered with little or no cost.

GOOP â€œ2017 Holiday Gift Guideâ€ is promoting a â€œMeditation Bandâ€ at $350, which claims to â€œguide you back to a meditative state: when your mind starts to wanderâ€. It is also pushing a Love Yoga Retreat for $2400, while the typical range of single drop-in sessions at yoga studios and fitness centers around the nation is $8 to $23, with average cost running around $12.

Pushing consumers to unwarrantedly high-priced products related to the spiritual practices of meditation and yoga for mercantile greed did not seem appropriate, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, indicated.

Rajan Zed pointed out that Hindus had been practicing meditation for thousands of years which was a condition of profound internal wakefulness; and added that ancient Hindu scripture Taittiriya Upanishad stated: â€œMeditation is Brahman (the supreme being)â€.

Zed further said that yoga, introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a liberation powerhouse. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra; yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

Launched in the fall of 2008 out of Paltrowâ€™s kitchen and currently headquartered in New York, GOOP claims â€œWe will never recommend something that we donâ€™t loveâ€ among its â€œvaluesâ€. GOOP is said to be a name carved from 45-year old Gwyneth Kate Paltrowâ€™s initials.

Hindus critical of Gwyneth Paltrowâ€™s unnecessary push of expensive yoga-meditation stuff