Yoga Traveling: Bodily Practice in Transcultural PerspectiveBeatrix Hauser 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. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Reframing Yoga in the History of the Twentieth Century | 35 |
Inconsistent AssessmentsMeaning Production at the LocalGlobal Interface | 107 |
The Other ConsumersValues Mobility and Markets | 173 |
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Yoga Traveling: Bodily Practice in Transcultural Perspective Beatrix Hauser No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
a¯sana accessed anthropology Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga Ashtanga Yoga associated behavior Bikram Yoga bodily body capital concept consciousness contemporary yoga context Crowley discourses discussed economic esotericism experience forms Germany global guru gymnastics Hatha Yoga haṭhayoga Hindu Hinduism India Indian Iyengar Iyengar Yoga Kareen Krishnamacharya kun˙d˙alinı Kundalini Yoga LOHAS London magic Mark Singleton means meditation mental Michelis modern postural yoga modern yoga Mysore Nichter one’s Pattabhi Jois performance perspective physical culture popular pose posture practice practice of yoga practicing yoga Raja Yoga relaxation religion religious Schna¨bele schools social society specific Strauss Studies on Asia Swami techniques term today’s transcultural transcultural flows transformation transnational yoga transpersonal psychology twentieth century University Press Vivekananda Western yoga classes yoga postures yoga practice yoga practitioners yoga students yoga studios yoga teachers yoga tradition Yoga Traveling yoga’s Yogasu¯tra yogic yogis York