Download or read book Embodying Transnational Yoga written by Christopher Jain Miller and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a refreshingly original, multi-sited ethnography of transnational yoga that obliges us to look beyond postural practice (āsana) in modern yoga research. It will be a valuable resource for Religious Studies, Anthropology, and South Asian Religions.
Download or read book Embodying Transnational Yoga written by Christopher Miller and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation presents a multi-sited ethnographic research project conducted within three coastal yoga communities: Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville, New York (chapter 2); Polestar Gardens in Puna District, Hawaii (chapter 3); and Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute in Lonavala, Maharashtra (chapter 4). As the introductory chapter (chapter 1) indicates, I follow the understudied somatic practices of yogic diet, breathwork, and music through each of these field sites while utilizing an ethnographic methodology that considers somatic practice as a primary source of data. Drawing on the mobilities paradigm from the social sciences as well as theoretical scholarship concerned with embodiment and embodied practice, I argue that the practices of yogic diet, breathwork, and music reveal portable “engaged alchemies” that have been extensively deployed by contemporary disseminators of yoga. I use the term “engaged alchemy” throughout this dissertation to specifically refer to the ways by which practitioners of yoga transnationally have collectively adapted yogic diet, breathwork, and music practices within contemporaneous worlds of yoga practice which are intended to produce site-specific, embodied instantiations of yoga. The concluding chapter (chapter 5) highlights key trends concerning transnational yoga observed across the field sites considered in the current study while suggesting opportunities for future research in the field of modern yoga studies.
Download or read book Embodying Transnational Yoga written by Christopher Jain Miller and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-13 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodying Transnational Yoga is a refreshingly original, multi-sited ethnography of transnational yoga that obliges us to look beyond postural practice (āsana) in modern yoga research. The book introduces readers to three alternative, understudied categories of transnational yoga practice which include food, music, and breathing. Studying these categories of embodied practice using interdisciplinary methods reveals transformative “engaged alchemies” that have been extensively deployed by contemporary disseminators of yoga. Readers will encounter how South Asian dietary regimens, musical practices, and breathing techniques have been adapted into contemporaneous worlds of yoga practice both within, but also beyond, the Indian Ocean rim. The book brings the field of Modern Yoga Studies into productive dialogue with the fields of Indian Ocean Studies, Embodiment Studies, Food Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Pollution Studies. It will also be a valuable resource for both scholarly work and for teaching in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, and South Asian Religions.
Download or read book Modern Transnational Yoga written by Hannah K. Bartos and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to address the social organisation of modern yoga practice as a primary focus of investigation and to undertake a comparative analysis to explore why certain styles of yoga have successfully transcended geographical boundaries and endured over time, whilst others have dwindled and failed. Using fresh empirical data of the different ways in which posture practice was disseminated transnationally by Krishnamacharya, Sivananda and their leading disciples, the book provides an original perspective. The author draws upon extensive archival research and numerous fieldwork interviews in India and the UK to consider how the field of yoga we experience today was shaped by historic decisions about how it was transmitted. The book examines the specific ways in which a small group of yogis organised their practices and practitioners to popularise their styles of yoga to mainstream audiences outside of India. It suggests that one of the most overlooked contributions has been that of Sivananda Saraswati (1887-1963) for whom this study finds his early example acted as a cornerstone for the growth of posture practice. Outlining how yoga practice is organised today on the world stage, how leading brands fit into the wider field of modern yoga practice and how historical developments led to a mainstream globalised practice, this book will be of interest to researchers in the field of Yoga Studies, Religious Studies, Hindu Studies, South Asian History, Sociology and Organisational Studies.
Download or read book Transnational Yoga at Work written by Laurah E. Klepinger and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-07-18 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a transnational yoga institution and about yoga practitioners and spiritual tourists who visualize peace through yoga. Practitioners’ aspirations for peace situate them at the heart of an international movement that has captured the imagination of cosmopolitans the world over, with its purported benefits to mind, body, and spirit. Yoga is thought to offer health, vitality, and relief from depression through control of body and breath. Yet, the vision of peace in this institution is a partial vision that obscures the important but seemingly peripheral others of its self-conception. Through in-depth ethnographic analysis, this book explores the processes through which global spiritual movements can have peace front and center in their vision and yet condone and perpetuate cycles of injustice and social inequality that form the critical and problematic foundations of our global economy. The book privileges the experiences and hardships faced by Indian wageworkers—most of them women —but it also offers a sympathetic portrayal of international yoga practitioners and of the complex patterns of work and worship central to a global mission. For more information, check out A conversation with Laura E. Klepinger, author of Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots
Download or read book Yoga the Body and Embodied Social Change written by Beth Berila and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change is the first collection to gather together prominent scholars on yoga and the body. Using an intersectional lens, the essays examine yoga in the United States as a complex cultural phenomenon that reveals racial, economic, gendered, and sexual politics of the body. From discussions of the stereotypical yoga body to analyses of pivotal court cases, Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change examines the sociopolitical tensions of contemporary yoga. Because so many yogic spaces reflect the oppressive nature of many other public spheres, the essays in this collection also examine what needs to change in order for yoga to truly live up to its liberatory potential, from the blogosphere around Black women’s health to the creation of queer and trans yoga classes to the healing potential of yoga for people living with chronic illness or trauma. While many of these conversations are emerging in the broader public sphere, few have made their way into academic scholarship. This book changes all that. The essays in this anthology interrogate yoga as it is portrayed in the media, yoga spaces, and yoga as it is integrated in education, the law, and concepts of health to examine who is included and who is excluded from yoga in the West. The result is a thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and the limitations of yoga for feminist social transformation.
Download or read book Yoga in the Modern World written by Mark Singleton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first study to engage directly with the transformations and adaptations of yoga in the modern world. It addresses the dialectic and ideological exchange between yoga's ancient precursors and modern praxis, and the development and consolidation of yoga in global settings.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies written by Suzanne Newcombe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary resource, which frames and contextualises the rapidly expanding fields that explore yoga and meditative techniques. The book analyses yoga and meditation studies in a variety of religious, historical and geographical settings. The chapters, authored by an international set of experts, are laid out across five sections: Introduction to yoga and meditation studies History of yoga and meditation in South Asia Doctrinal perspectives: technique and praxis Global and regional transmissions Disciplinary framings In addition to up-to-date explorations of the history of yoga and meditation in the Indian subcontinent, new contexts include a case study of yoga and meditation in the contemporary Tibetan diaspora, and unique summaries of historical developments in Japan and Latin America as well as an introduction to the growing academic study of yoga in Korea. Underpinned by critical and theoretical engagement, the volume provides an in-depth guide to the history of yoga and meditation studies and combines the best of established research with attention to emerging directions for future investigation. This handbook will be of interest to multidisciplinary academic audiences from across the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Chapters 1, 4, 9, 12, and 27 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book Post Lineage Yoga written by Theodora Wildcroft and published by Equinox Publishing (Indonesia). This book was released on 2020 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book presents a ground-breaking model for scholars to understand the contemporary teaching and practice of yoga"--
Download or read book Peace Love Yoga written by Andrea R. Jain and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging with the growing popular and academic interest in the "spiritual but not religious," Andrea R. Jain explores the connections between the practices of global spirituality and aspects of neoliberal capitalism in Peace Love Yoga. "Personal growth," "self-care," and "transformation" are all tropes in the narrative of the spiritual identity Jain is concerned with. This "spirituality" is usually depicted as firmly countercultural: the term "alternative" (alternative health, alternative medicine, alternative spiritualities) is omnipresent. To the contrary, Jain argues, spiritual commodities, entrepreneurs, and consumers are quite mainstream and sometimes even conservative and nationalistic. Ranging from the transnational to the economic to the activist, Jain refuses the single narrative focus of most works on the SBNR; human phenomena that can be analyzed through a single lens or narrative are few and far between, and existing research in this area too often yields a suspiciously tidy story. The heart of the book includes sophisticated analyses of: two politically divergent but equally entrepreneurial and global-capitalist yoga gurus; "athleisure apparel" corporations, such as lululemon, that successfully market consumer goods as a purchased commitment to social justice; and therapeutically-focused applications of spirituality that concentrate on healing the broken person rather than undermining the system that broke that person in the first place. Many spiritual commodities, corporations, and entrepreneurs, Jain suggests, do actually acknowledge the problems of neoliberal capitalism and in fact subvert them; but they subvert them through mere gestures. From provocative taglines printed across t-shirts or packaging to calls for "conscious capitalism," commodification serves as a strategy through which subversion itself is colonized.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Hindu Christian Relations written by Chad M. Bauman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical interplay of Hinduism as an ancient Indian religion and Christianity as a religion associated (in India, at least) with foreign power and colonialism, continues to animate Hindu–Christian relations today. On the one hand, The Routledge Handbook of Hindu–Christian Relations describes a rich history of amicable, productive, even sometimes syncretic Hindu–Christian encounters. On the other, this handbook equally attends to historical and contemporary moments of tension, conflict, and violence between Hindus and Christians. Comprising thirty-nine chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook is divided into seven parts: Theoretical and methodological considerations Historical interactions Contemporary exchanges Sites of bodily and material interactions Significant figures Comparative theologies Responses The handbook explores: how the study of Hindu–Christian relations has been and ought to be done, the history of Hindu–Christian relations through key interactions, ethnographic reflections on current dynamics of Hindu–Christian exchange, important key thinkers, and topics in comparative theology, ultimately providing a framework for further debates in the area. The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations is essential reading for students and researchers in Hindu–Christian studies, Hindu traditions, Asian religions, and studies in Christianity. This handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as anthropology, political science, theology, and history.
Download or read book Inhaling Spirit written by Anya P. Foxen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent scholarship has shown that modern postural yoga is the outcome of a complex process of transcultural exchange and syncretism. This book doubles down on those claims and digs even deeper, looking to uncover the disparate but entangled roots of modern yoga practice. Anya Foxen shows that some of what we call yoga, especially in North America and Europe, is genealogically only slightly related to pre-modern Indian yoga traditions. Rather, it is equally, if not more so, grounded in Hellenistic theories of the subtle body, Western esotericism and magic, pre-modern European medicine, and late-nineteenth-century women's wellness programs. The book begins by examining concepts arising out of Greek philosophy and religion, including Pythagoreanism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Galenic medicine, theurgy, and other cultural currents that have traditionally been categorized as "Western esotericism," as well as the more recent examples which scholars of American traditions have labeled "metaphysical religion." Marshaling these under the umbrella category of "harmonialism," Foxen argues that they represent a history of practices that were gradually subsumed into the language of yoga. Orientalism and gender become important categories of analysis as this narrative moves into the nineteenth century. Women considerably outnumber men in all studies of yoga except those conducted in India, and modern anglophone yoga exhibits important continuities with women's physical culture, feminist reform, and white women's engagement with Orientalism. Foxen's study allows us to recontextualize the peculiarities of American yoga--its focus on aesthetic representation, its privileging of bodily posture and unsystematic incorporation of breathwork, and above all its overwhelmingly white female demographic. In this context it addresses the ongoing conversation about cultural appropriation within the yoga community.
Download or read book White Utopias written by Amanda J. Lucia and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world. In this groundbreaking book, Amanda J. Lucia shows how these festivals operate as religious institutions for "spiritual, but not religious" (SBNR) communities. Whereas previous research into SBNR practices and New Age religion has not addressed the predominantly white makeup of these communities, White Utopias examines the complicated, often contradictory relationships with race at these events, presenting an engrossing ethnography of SBNR practices. Lucia contends that participants create temporary utopias through their shared commitments to spiritual growth and human connection. But they also participate in religious exoticism by adopting Indigenous and Indic spiritualities, a practice that ultimately renders them exclusive, white utopias. Focusing on yoga's role in disseminating SBNR values, Lucia offers new ways of comprehending transformational festivals as significant cultural phenomena.
Download or read book Yoga Traveling written by Beatrix Hauser and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on yoga’s transcultural dissemination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course of this process, the term “yoga” has been associated with various distinctive blends of mental and physical exercises performed in order to achieve some sort of improvement, whether understood in terms of esotericism, fitness, self-actualization, body aesthetics, or health care. The essays in this volume explore some of the turning points in yoga’s historico-spatial evolution and their relevance to its current appeal. The authors focus on central motivations, sites, and agents in the spread of posture-based yoga as well as on its successive (re-)interpretation and diversification, addressing questions such as: Why has yoga taken its various forms? How do time and place influence its meanings, social roles, and associated experiences? How does the transfer into new settings affect the ways in which yogic practice has been conceptualized as a system, and on what basis is it still identified as (Indian) yoga? The initial section of the volume concentrates on the re-evaluation of yoga in Indian and Western settings in the first half of the twentieth century. The following chapters link global discourses to particular local settings and explore meaning production at the micro-social level, taking Germany as the focal site. The final part of the book focuses on yoga advertising and consumption across national, social, and discursive boundaries, taking a closer look at transnational and deterritorialized yoga markets, as well as at various classes of mobile yoga practitioners.
Download or read book Yoga in Transformation written by Karl Baier and published by V&R unipress GmbH. This book was released on 2018 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores aspects of yoga over a period of about 2500 years. In its first part, it investigates facets of the South Asian and Tibetan traditions of yoga, such as the evolution of posture practice, the relationship between yoga and sex, yoga in the theistic context, the influence of Buddhism on early yoga, and the encounter of Islam with classical yoga. The second part addresses aspects of modern globalised yoga and its historical formation, as for example the emergence of yoga in Viennese occultism, the integration of yoga and nature cure in modern India, the eventisation of yoga in a global setting, and the development of Patañjali’s iconography. In keeping with the current trend in yoga studies, the emphasis of the volume is on the practice of yoga and its theoretical underpinnings.
Download or read book Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds written by Smriti Srinivas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contemporary Indian Ocean worlds. It reconfigures the Indian Ocean as a space for conceptual and theoretical relationality based on social science and humanities scholarship, thus moving away from an area-based and geographical approach to Indian Ocean studies. Contributors from a variety of disciplines focus on keywords such as relationality, space/place, quotidian practices, and new networks of memory and maps to offer original insights to reimagine the Indian Ocean. While the volume as a whole considers older histories, mobilities, and relationships between places in Indian Ocean worlds, it is centrally concerned with new connectivities and layered mappings forged in the lived experiences of individuals and communities today. The chapters are steeped in ethnographic, multi-modal, and other humanities methodologies that examine different sources besides historical archives and textual materials, including everyday life, cities, museums, performances, the built environment, media, personal narratives, food, medical practices, or scientific explorations. An important contribution to several fields, this book will be of interest to academics of Indian Ocean studies, Afro-Asian linkages, inter-Asian exchanges, Afro-Arab crossroads, Asian studies, African studies, Anthropology, History, Geography, and International Relations.
Download or read book The Path of Modern Yoga written by Elliott Goldberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of yoga’s transformation from sacred discipline to exercise program to embodied spiritual practice • Identifies the origin of exercise yoga as India’s response to the mania for exercise sweeping the West in the early 20th century • Examines yoga’s transformations through the lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures, including Sri Yogendra, K. V. Iyer, Louise Morgan, Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, Indra Devi, and B. K. S. Iyengar • Draws on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources and includes 99 illustrations In The Path of Modern Yoga, Elliott Goldberg shows how yoga was transformed from a sacred practice into a health and fitness regime for middle-class Indians in the early 20th century and then gradually transformed over the course of the 20th century into an embodied spiritual practice--a yoga for our times. Drawing on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources as well as recent scholarship, Goldberg tells the sweeping story of modern yoga through the remarkable lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures: six Indian yogis (Sri Yogendra, Swami Kuvalayananda, S. Sundaram, T. Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, and B. K. S. Iyengar), an Indian bodybuilder (K. V. Iyer), a rajah (Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi), an American-born journalist (Louise Morgan), an Indian diplomat (Apa Pant), and a Russian-born yogi trained in India (Indra Devi). The author places their achievements within the context of such Western trends as the physical culture movement, the commodification of exercise, militant nationalism, jazz age popular entertainment, the quest for youth and beauty, and 19th-century New Age religion. In chronicling how the transformation of yoga from sacred discipline to exercise program allowed for the creation of an embodied spiritual practice, Goldberg presents an original, authoritative, provocative, and illuminating interpretation of the history of modern yoga.
