Netī - Ancient Remedy or Modern Health Trend?

The most famous of haṭhayoga's six therapeutic methods (ṣaṭkarma) is netī - nasal cleansing, which has become synonymous with jalanetī - a technique of irrigating the nostrils with saline water using a small vessel known as a 'Neti Pot'. This variety of netī rose to global prominence in 2007, following its promotion on the Oprah Winfrey Show as a panacea for a wide range of nasal conditions. Uncoupled from haṭhayoga and marketed solely as a self-care therapy, netī became firmly established within the complementary healthcare sector, where it has remained ever since. Netī's enduring success is reflected in the Neti Pot's widespread availability from Amazon, Walmart, and a growing number of high-street pharmacies. While netī has been widely promoted as an ancient yogic remedy, premodern Sanskrit sources do not describe nasal irrigation of this kind or refer to a practice named jalanetī. Instead, haṭhayoga texts teach sūtranetī - the passing of cotton thread through the nostrils.

This paper investigates netī's historical provenance and asks how jalanetī became popularised as a yogic technique. I examine parallel treatments within Greco-Roman, Islamic, Āyurvedic and European medicine before exploring where these systems converge with yoga in the production of netī as a complementary healthcare product in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This inquiry builds upon the work of Elizabeth De Michelis and Mark Singleton by demonstrating that, like Modern Postural Yoga, netī did not originate solely within a monolithic Indic tradition but emerged through adaptation and exchange with wide-ranging influences during the colonial and post-colonial periods. By uncovering netī's syncretic development, I disrupt prevailing narratives surrounding its antiquity and contribute to wider discourses on yoga's commodification, arguing that the marketing of netī is propelled by manufactured tropes of authority and authenticity.