Mark Singleton (yoga scholar)

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Mark Singleton
NationalityBritish
OccupationYoga scholar
Known for
Elizabeth De Michelis

Mark Singleton is a

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
.

Singleton was a senior research fellow at the

School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, working on the European Research Council-funded Hatha Yoga Project. As an editor of scholarly texts and essays on yoga, his works have been widely praised and well received by scholars. Gurus of Modern Yoga and Roots of Yoga
are both considered important contributions to the field of yoga.

Education and career

modern postural yoga in the 20th century.[1]

Practitioner

Further information: Yoga Body

Singleton spent three years in India in the 1990s learning yoga intensively, both physically and mentally, becoming a qualified teacher of

āsana
-based yoga had much more recent origins than was claimed for it.

Scholar

Returning to England, he attended

Elizabeth De Michelis.[2][4] He continued his study of Sanskrit to enable him to access medieval haṭha yoga texts.[5]

From 2006 to 2013 he taught at

Smithsonian exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, contributing also to the exhibition catalogue.[7]

After leaving the St John's College faculty, he went on to serve under

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from 2015 to 2020. At SOAS, he worked on the European Research Council-funded Hatha Yoga Project, researching and translating yoga practice texts from Sanskrit and other languages.[8] At the same time, he served as the co-chair for the American Academy of Religions group studying yoga in theory and practice.[9]

Major works and reception

In 2009, Singleton began editing scholarly collections on yoga.[10][11] His works have been considered valuable in the field of yoga.[12][13] One of his books, Yoga Body, has gained a wider readership despite its scholarly approach, attracting both praise and criticism.[13]

Yoga in the Modern World

Further information:
Scholar practitioner

The researcher

etic analysis. Burley and Liberman openly declare that, in addition to being established scholars, they also teach forms of modern yoga. For Nevrin, Smith, and Strauss, experiencing the practice of yoga is an inherent part of a rigorous anthropological understanding that acknowledges embodied experience."[12] In Newcombe's view, "rigorous academic reflection" on modern yoga is an "interesting" development, making the book a valuable overview of the field.[12][14]

Yoga Body

Main article:
Krishnamacharya had been influenced by the gymnastics culture of his time.[16]

In 2010 Singleton published a revised version of his PhD thesis on

Vishnudevananda, and by Krishnamacharya and his pupils Indra Devi, B. K. S. Iyengar, and K. Pattabhi Jois.[18][19]

Singleton notes that while some āsanas are undoubtedly ancient, traditional sources such as

Samakonasana in Thomas Dwight's "The Anatomy of a Contortionist", Scribner's Magazine
, April 1889

The book was widely read both by scholars and by practitioners, arousing sometimes strong reactions. The book was attacked from two sides: saffronising Hindu nationalists wanting to reclaim yoga as a single thing, distinctively Indian; and modern global yoga marketing wanting to wrap its product "in the mantle of antiquity"[14] to maximise sales.[14][23] In 2011, Mallinson pointed out that it had become a catalyst in arguments over "who owns yoga", despite the deep antisectarianism in the medieval texts; and that Yoga Body reiterated that yoga was always meant to be "a practical method of achieving liberation that was open to all, irrespective of philosophy or theology". Mallinson questioned Singleton's view that modern postural yoga was only lightly related to medieval haṭha yoga, giving examples of asanas with definite medieval origins.[24]

Harold Coward, reviewing Yoga Body for the

Gaiam, observes that the book agreed with the intuition that many āsanas were similar to those in martial arts, and that authenticity in yoga was not what it seemed.[26] The author Matthew Remski, writing in Yoga International, called the publication "a watershed moment in the history of global asana culture." He agrees that the book is "uncomfortable", gently deconstructing terms like "original" and "authentic", pointing instead to the student-teacher relationship. He finds the book strongly "yogic", weaving together "the cultural and the personal".[14]

He has written about his work in The New York Times and the Yoga Journal,[2][3] including a tribute to B. K. S. Iyengar, an Indian yoga teacher who brought yoga as exercise to Westerners.[27]

Gurus of Modern Yoga

Singleton's 2014 book Gurus of Modern Yoga covers leaders such as B. K. S. Iyengar, seen here with the president of India.
Main article: Gurus of Modern Yoga

In 2014, Singleton and Ellen Goldberg edited the collection Gurus of Modern Yoga.[11] Scholars reviewing the book found it an important and substantial addition, even "outstanding",[28] to the often limited scholarly analysis of modern yoga gurus, especially of female leaders, though some regretted the lack of a chapter comparing existing work, or an overall conclusion."[29] She finds its inclusion of women gurus "an important contribution".[29][30][31][32][33]

Roots of Yoga

Main article: Roots of Yoga

While working at SOAS, he co-authored

Avadhi, and Braj Bhasha, the last two being early forms of Hindi. Its eleven themed chapters cover many of the traditional practices of yoga (such as āsana, prāṇāyāma, mudrā, meditation, and mantra) as well as essential contexts for practising yoga (such as preliminaries to yoga practice, the yogic body, siddhi or special powers, and mokṣa, liberation).[34]
The book, published in 2017, has a main introduction summarizing the history of yoga and yoga scholarship, while each chapter has its own shorter contextual introduction and notes.

Scholars reviewing Roots of Yoga universally welcomed the wealth of sources, from ancient times to the 19th century, made available for the first time in English in the book, and admired the editors' lack of partisanship. Reviewers noted that the collection would be useful to scholars, yoga teachers, and practitioners. They admired the concise and erudite introduction to the texts, and that it would quickly become a classic.[35][13][36][37][38]

Other works

Articles

Book chapters

Translations

References

  1. ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 198–205.
  2. ^ a b c "Sharing Knowledge". Retrieved 25 February 2022.
  3. ^ a b c Singleton, Mark (4 February 2011). "The Ancient & Modern Roots of Yoga". Yoga Journal. Archived from the original on 25 April 2017.
  4. ^ "Dr Mark Singleton: Staff: SOAS University of London". SOAS. Archived from the original on 27 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  5. ^ Singleton, Mark (2015). "Preface to the Serbian edition of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice Mark Singleton Translated by Nikola Pešić (Belgrade: Neopress Publishing, 2015)". Academia.edu. Archived from the original on 17 February 2022.
  6. ^ "Why Review Standards?". Yoga Alliance Standards Review Project. 7 November 2017. Archived from the original on 13 August 2021. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  7. Smithsonian. 2013. Archived
    from the original on 5 May 2017. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  8. ^ "The Hatha Yoga Project". SOAS. Retrieved 17 May 2019.
  9. ^ "Mark Singleton". Yoga Campus. Archived from the original on 15 December 2021.
  10. ^ Singleton & Byrne 2009.
  11. ^ a b Singleton & Goldberg 2014.
  12. ^ a b c Newcombe, Suzanne (2009). "Review of 'Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives' Mark Singleton & Jean Byrne, eds". The Journal of Contemporary Religion. 24 (3): 368–370.
  13. ^ a b c Remski, Matthew (12 April 2017). "10 Things We Didn't Know About Yoga Until This New Must-Read Dropped". Yoga Journal. Archived from the original on 18 January 2020. Retrieved 2019-05-21.
  14. ^ a b c d Remski, Matthew. "Mark Singleton Responds to Critics Who Didn't Want to Understand His Book". Matthew Remski. Archived from the original on 17 February 2022. Retrieved 16 February 2019.
  15. ISBN 978-1-4465-2735-1
    .
  16. ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 161, 200–203.
  17. ^ Singleton 2010, pp. whole book, esp. 198-205.
  18. OCLC 1089012347
    .
  19. OCLC 456171421
    .
  20. ^ Appiah, Kwame Anthony (4 September 2018). "From Yoga to Rap, Cultural Borrowing is Great; The Problem is Disrespect". The Wire. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  21. ^ Goldberg, Michelle (23 August 2014). "Iyengar and the Invention of Yoga". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 15 January 2022. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  22. ^ "Yoga in the West". ABC Radio National. 21 June 2020. Archived from the original on 27 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  23. ^ a b Burgin, Timothy (28 June 2010). "Yoga Body by Mark Singleton". Yoga Basics. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  24. ^ Mallinson, James (9 December 2011). "A Response to Mark Singleton's Yoga Body by James Mallinson". Academia.edu. Archived from the original on 3 February 2022. Retrieved 18 May 2019. This is a revised version of a paper given at the American Academy of Religions conference in San Francisco on 19 November 2011
  25. doi:10.7825/2164-6279.1469
    .
  26. ^ Miller, Jill. "Are Yoga Poses Ancient History?". Gaiam. Archived from the original on 5 October 2021. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  27. ^ Singleton, Mark (6 October 2014). "Honoring B.K.S. Iyengar: Yoga Luminary". Yoga Journal. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  28. ISSN 0319-485X
    .
  29. ^
    S2CID 143327933
    .
  30. ISSN 0029-5973
    .
  31. doi:10.18874/ae.75.1.13. Archived
    (PDF) from the original on 16 August 2021.
  32. S2CID 146932091
    .
  33. doi:10.1525/nr.2018.21.3.103
    .
  34. ^ Mallinson & Singleton 2017.
  35. ^ Sims, Neil (30 December 2017). "Book Review of Roots of Yoga, Translated and Edited by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton". The Indian Philosophy Blog. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  36. doi:10.24201/eaa.v53i1.2337
    .
  37. ^ Rosen, Richard (15 May 2017). "The Roots of Yoga". You and the Mat. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  38. ^ "Roots of Yoga | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". Penguin Random House. Retrieved 2019-05-21.

Books

External links
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