Yoga in France is the practice of yoga, whether for exercise or other reasons, in France. The relaxation technique of yoga nidra was pioneered by Dennis Boyes, whose 1973 book preceded Satyananda Saraswati's popularisation of the technique.
Yoga in France is the practice of yoga, whether for exercise or other reasons, in France. The relaxation technique of yoga nidra was pioneered by Dennis Boyes, whose 1973 book preceded Satyananda Saraswati's popularisation of the technique.
Yoga was brought to France in the early 1930s by Maryse Choisy, Cajzoran Ali and Constant Kerneiz. [lower-alpha 1] [1] Choisy taught meditation and wrote books on the philosophy of yoga; Ali published the 1928 book Les divines postures ("The divine [yoga] postures"); and Kerneiz founded what was probably the first yoga school in France. A pupil of Kermeiz, Lucien Ferrer, opened the Académie occidentale de Yoga ("Western Yoga Academy") in 1950. From the 1960s, with growing interest in yoga as a philosophy, the number of French yoga books, journals, and courses increased rapidly. [1] [2]
In Brussels, from 1968 until his death in 2004, the French-speaking André Van Lysebeth single-handedly published a monthly yoga magazine, Yoga. He became widely-known in France and across Europe as a yoga teacher, running yoga holidays, publishing books including the 1968 J'Apprends le Yoga (published in English as Yoga Self-Taught), and training many teachers. [1] [3]
In 1971, Eva Ruchpaul founded the Institut Eva Ruchpaul in Paris; it has trained over 1000 yoga teachers. [4] [5]
In the 1990s, yoga grew to have millions of practitioners in France, as it continues to do in the 21st century. [6]
In 1973, Dennis Boyes published his book Le Yoga du sommeil éveillé; méthode de relaxation, yoga nidra ("The Yoga of Waking Sleep: method of relaxation, yoga nidra") in Paris. [7] This is the first known description of yoga nidra in a modern sense as a method of systematic relaxation in any language, preceding Satyananda Saraswati's popularisation of the technique. [8] In the book, Boyes makes use of relaxation techniques including the direction of attention to each part of the body: [9]
Yoga has remained largely unregulated in France, without either state control or official instruction in state schools. [1] Four French institutions are members of the standard-setting body, the Union Européenne de Yoga/European Union of Yoga, namely the EU Recherche sur le Yoga dans l'Éducation ("EU Research on Yoga in Education"), Fédération Inter Enseignements de Hatha-Yoga ("International Federation of Teaching Hatha Yoga"), Fédération Nationale des Enseignants de Yoga ("National Federation of Yoga Teachers"), and Institut Francais de Yoga ("French Yoga Institute"). [10]
Hatha yoga is a branch of yoga that uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some hatha yoga style techniques can be traced back at least to the 1st-century CE, in texts such as the Hindu Sanskrit epics and Buddhism's Pali canon. The oldest dated text so far found to describe hatha yoga, the 11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, comes from a tantric Buddhist milieu. The oldest texts to use the terminology of hatha are also Vajrayana Buddhist. Hindu hatha yoga texts appear from the 11th century onward.
An āsana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose, and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define "asana" as "[a position that] is steady and comfortable". Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of his system. Asanas are also called yoga poses or yoga postures in English.
Yoga nidra or yogic sleep in modern usage is a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping, typically induced by a guided meditation.
Satyananda Saraswati, was a Sanyasi, yoga teacher and guru in both his native India and the West. He was a student of Sivananda Saraswati, the founder of the Divine Life Society, and founded the Bihar School of Yoga in 1964. He wrote over 80 books, including the popular 1969 manual Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha.
Swami Janakananda Saraswati is a tantric yoga and meditation teacher and a writer, who has had a significant influence in the dissemination of yoga and meditation in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. He is the oldest active sannyasin disciple of Satyananda Saraswati in Europe.
Alain Bancquart was a French composer.
Robert Desoille was a French psychotherapist. A graduate of the Sorbonne and École centrale de Lille, he worked at EDF and he became known for his studies on waking dreams.
Babacar Khane, also known as Yogi Khane, Yogi Babacar Khane and Maître Khane, is a practitioner of yoga, author, and mystical poet. His work has focused on the diffusion of yoga in Europe and its introduction into medical treatments. He founded the International Yoga Institute and an international yoga teacher training school, active now in Africa, America, Asia and Europe. He introduced a new way of teaching yoga based on Indian Hatha yoga asanas, Egyptian postures and Chinese exercises attributed by the Shaolin monks to Bodhidharma. He is one proponent of "Egyptian yoga", a branch of yoga based on the observation of the ancient-Egyptian art.
Jean-Louis de Biasi is a French writer, lecturer, and spiritual teacher.
An Établissement public à caractère administratif is, in France, a public law legal person with a certain administrative and financial autonomy to fulfil a mission of public interest under the control of the State or a local authority.
The Union of Independent Grandes Écoles is an association of French private grandes écoles formed in 1993.
André Van Lysebeth was a Belgian yoga instructor and author whose books about yoga have been translated into many languages. He is also known for a quintessential book on human sexuality he took thirty years of his life to write, Tantra: The Cult of the Feminine.
Université Paris Lumières is an association of universities and higher education institutions (ComUE) for institutions of higher education, research and culture in the Île-de-France region of France.
Shozo Awazu was a Japanese master of judo who achieved the rank of Kōdōkan 9th Dan. He led the development of judo in France.
Francis Pollet, is a French professor and General officer. From March 2017 to the 30th of June 2022, he is the director-general of the Institut polytechnique des sciences avancées.
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.
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 teacher training is the training of teachers of yoga as exercise, consisting mainly of the practice of yoga asanas, leading to certification. Such training is accredited by the Yoga Alliance in America, by the British Wheel of Yoga in the United Kingdom, and by the European Union of Yoga across Europe. The Yoga Alliance sets standards for 200-hour and 500-hour Recognized Yoga Teacher levels, which are accepted in America and other countries.
Eva Ruchpaul is one of the first yoga teachers in Europe, a French yoga teacher trainer, and author of books on hatha yoga.
The European Union of Yoga(EUY) is an international non-profit organisation which co-ordinates a network of yoga teachers, training schools and yoga federations. It was founded in 1971, and has since 1973 held an annual congress at Zinal, Switzerland where yoga teachers and practitioners can meet in a multi-lingual, cross-cultural environment and hear from invited Indian yoga teachers.
Mr. Jois's first exposure to the West came in the form of a student from Belgium, André Van Lysebeth, whose 1967 book 'Yoga Self-Taught' highlighted Mr. Jois
