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| Author | Andrea R. Jain |
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| Subject | Modern yoga |
| Genre | Sociology of religion |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 2015 |
| Pages | 240 |
Selling Yoga: from Counterculture to Pop culture is a 2015 book on the modern practice of yoga as exercise by the scholar of religion Andrea R. Jain. [1]
Since Elizabeth De Michelis's 2004 A History of Modern Yoga and Mark Singleton's 2010 book Yoga Body, the origins of the modern practice of yoga as exercise have been debated by scholars of religion. Singleton examined its origins in the physical culture of India in the early 20th century. [2] [3]
Andrea Jain is a scholar of South Asian Religions and yoga at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts. She gained her bachelor's degree in 2004 at Southern Methodist University; and then a master's degree in 2009, a graduate certificate in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in 2010, and her PhD that same year, all at Rice University. She is editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion . [4] She contributed the essay on modern yoga to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. [5] In 2015 she published the book Selling Yoga: from Counterculture to Pop culture. [1]
Jain prefaces the book with a personal note in which she explains how she came to research the subject, and records that despite her name she is not a practising Jain.
The book is introduced with an account of premodern yoga systems. It then examines the role of yoga in western counterculture, and its relationship to consumer culture. It examines with worked examples the branding and commercialisation of modern yoga. It then analyses the extent to which modern (postural) yoga can be seen as a body of religious practice. Finally, it looks at the debate between the yogaphobia seen for example in some branches of Christianity, and the Hindu nationalist claim that modern yoga has Hindu origins; Jain illustrates the weaknesses in both types of claim.
The book is illustrated with a small number of monochrome photographs.
There is an academic bibliography and a detailed index.
The anthropologist Joseph Alter, reviewing Selling Yoga in Nova Religio , writes that the book is about much more than just the selling of yoga, covering in "a carefully argued and exceptionally sensitive and insightful account" both yoga's combination of the body, spirituality, and branding, and the interaction of politics with "the embodied fetishization of cultural heritage and identity." [6]
Maya Warrier, reviewing the book in the Journal of American Studies , writes that Jain "decisively counters the notion that there is such a thing as an 'authentic' form of yoga", arguing instead that yoga has always been "polymorphous and adaptable", among other things, fitting into Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. Warrier notes that Jain's account of early Western "entrepreneur-yogis" like Ida C. Craddock, Pierre Bernard, and Sir John Woodroffe were all countercultural, appealing to westerners with "unorthodox" religious views. [7]
Jaime Kucinskas, reviewing the book for Sociology of Religion , notes that there has been confusion, even amongst academics, as to what yoga is and where the modern form of it came from, and states that the book "provides important and insightful answers" to these questions. Kucinskas writes that Jain describes "contemporary postural yoga" as "a new product that formed through dialogical interactions between Indians and Westerners from the nineteenth century to the present", building in "transnational cultural elements" like military callisthenics and modern medicine. [8]
Kimberley J. Pingatore, [10] reviewing the book for Religion , writes that Jain "challenges the notion that all yogas exist as part of a monolithic, unbroken lineage... [and] convincingly locates [modern postural yoga]'s recent popularization in Europe and the United States as part of capitalist consumer culture", arguing that Jain then makes use of this consumer centre of gravity to attack the argument that this yoga belongs to non-Westerners. Pingatore finds Jain's first two chapters "brilliantly" summarize the research of the major scholars of yoga including David Gordon White, Joseph Alter, Christopher Key Chapple, Mark Singleton, Sarah Strauss, Elizabeth De Michelis, and Hugh Urban. Pingatore argues, too, that Jain "ferociously" deconstructs the East/West, Us/Them dichotomised understanding, in Chapter 3 showing that modern yoga systems grew "in response to transnational [consumer] cultural developments". On the other hand, Pingatore observes that while Jain argues that modern yoga defies attempts at definition or regulation, and disagrees that it is spiritual, she claims that it is a "body of religious practice". Pingatore remarks the absence of gender in Jain's account, writing that this is surprising given that yoga practitioners are predominantly female, young, affluent, fit, and white. [9]
Bhujangasana or Cobra Pose is a reclining back-bending asana in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise. It is commonly performed in a cycle of asanas in Surya Namaskar, Salute to the Sun, as an alternative to Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Upward Dog Pose. The Yin Yoga form is Sphinx Pose.
Sarvangasana, Shoulder stand, or more fully Salamba Sarvangasana, is an inverted asana in modern yoga as exercise; similar poses were used in medieval hatha yoga as a mudra.
The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga is a 1960 book by Swami Vishnudevananda, the founder of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres. It is an introduction to Hatha yoga, describing the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. It is said to have sold over a million copies. It contributed to the incorporation of Surya Namaskar into yoga as exercise. While some of its subject matter is the traditional philosophy of yoga, its detailed photographs of Vishnudevananda performing the asanas is modern, helping to market the Sivananda yoga brand to a global audience.
Garbha Pindasana, Embryo in Womb Pose, sometimes shortened to Garbhasana, is a seated balancing asana in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise.
Light on Yoga: Yoga Dipika is a 1966 book on the Iyengar Yoga style of modern yoga as exercise by B. K. S. Iyengar, first published in English. It describes more than 200 yoga postures or asanas, and is illustrated with some 600 monochrome photographs of Iyengar demonstrating these.
Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.
Yoga as exercise is a physical activity consisting mainly of postures, often connected by flowing sequences, sometimes accompanied by breathing exercises, and frequently ending with relaxation lying down or meditation. Yoga in this form has become familiar across the world, especially in the US and Europe. It is derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, which made use of similar postures, but it is generally simply called "yoga". Academics have given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including modern postural yoga and transnational anglophone yoga.
Vajroli mudra, the Vajroli Seal, is a practice in Hatha yoga which requires the yogi to preserve his semen, either by learning not to release it, or if released by drawing it up through his urethra from the vagina of "a woman devoted to the practice of yoga".
Mark Singleton is a scholar and practitioner of yoga. He studied yoga intensively in India, and became a qualified yoga teacher, until returning to England to study divinity and research the origins of modern postural yoga. His doctoral dissertation, which argued that posture-based forms of yoga represent a radical break from haṭha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on āsanas, was later published in book form as the widely-read Yoga Body.
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice is a 2010 book on yoga as exercise by the yoga scholar Mark Singleton. It is based on his PhD thesis, and argues that the yoga known worldwide is, in large part, a radical break from hatha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on asanas, many of them acquired in the 20th century. By the 19th century, the book explains, asanas and their ascetic practitioners were despised, and the yoga that Vivekananda brought to the West in the 1890s was asana-free. Yet, from the 1920s, an asana-based yoga emerged, with an emphasis on its health benefits, and flowing sequences (vinyasas) adapted from the gymnastics of the physical culture movement. This was encouraged by Indian nationalism, with the desire to present an image of health and strength.
Joseph S. Alter is an American medical anthropologist known for his research into the modern practice of yoga as exercise, his 2004 book Yoga in Modern India, and the physical and medical culture of South Asia.
A History of Modern Yoga is a 2004 book of social and religious history by the scholar of modern yoga Elizabeth De Michelis. It introduced a typology of modern yoga including modern postural yoga.
Modern yoga as exercise has often been taught by women to classes consisting mainly of women. This continued a tradition of gendered physical activity dating back to the early 20th century, with the Harmonic Gymnastics of Genevieve Stebbins in the US and Mary Bagot Stack in Britain. One of the pioneers of modern yoga, Indra Devi, a pupil of Krishnamacharya, popularised yoga among American women using her celebrity Hollywood clients as a lever.
The history of yoga in the United States begins in the 19th century, with the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; Emerson's poem "Brahma" states the Hindu philosophy behind yoga. More widespread interest in yoga can be dated to the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.
Positioning Yoga: balancing acts across cultures is a 2005 book of social anthropology by Sarah Strauss about the history of modern yoga as exercise, focusing on the example of Sivananda Yoga.
Postural yoga began in India as a variant of traditional yoga, which was a mainly meditational practice; it has spread across the world and returned to the Indian subcontinent in different forms. The ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention yoga postures, asanas, only briefly, as meditation seats. Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas alongside other techniques such as pranayama, shatkarmas, and mudras, but it was despised and almost extinct by the start of the 20th century. At that time, the revival of postural yoga was at first driven by Indian nationalism. Advocates such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda made yoga acceptable in the 1920s, treating it as a medical subject. From the 1930s, the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya developed a vigorous postural yoga, influenced by gymnastics, with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next.
Gurus of Modern Yoga is an edited 2014 collection of essays on some of the gurus (leaders) of modern yoga by the yoga scholars Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg.
Modern yoga gurus are people widely acknowledged to be gurus of modern yoga in any of its forms, whether religious or not. The role implies being well-known and having a large following; in contrast to the old guru-shishya tradition, the modern guru-follower relationship is not secretive, not exclusive, and does not necessarily involve a tradition. Many such gurus, but not all, teach a form of yoga as exercise; others teach forms which are more devotional or meditational; many teach a combination. Some have been affected by scandals of various kinds.
Yoga in advertising is the use of images of modern yoga as exercise to market products of any kind, whether related to yoga or not. Goods sold in this way have included canned beer, fast food and computers.
Yoga is by origin an ancient spiritual practice from India. In the form of yoga as exercise, using postures (asanas) derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, it has become a widespread fitness practice across the western world. Yoga as exercise, along with the use that some make of symbols such as Om ॐ, has been described as cultural appropriation.
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| Classical yoga |
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| Modern yoga |
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