Modern yoga

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Modern yoga is a wide range of

devotional and tantra
-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.

The scholar

Elizabeth de Michelis proposed a 4-part typology of modern yoga in 2004, separating modern psychosomatic, denominational, postural, and meditational yogas. Other scholars have noted that her work stimulated research into the history, sociology, and anthropology
of modern yoga, but have not all accepted her typology. They have variously emphasised modern yoga's international nature with its intercultural exchanges; its variety of beliefs and practices; its degree of continuity with older traditions, such as ancient Indian philosophy and medieval Hatha yoga; its relationship to Hinduism; its claims to provide health and fitness; and its tensions between the physical and the spiritual, or between the esoteric and the scientific.

Origins

Early modern yoga

Main article: Early modern yoga

In the early years of British colonialism in India, the elites from the United States, Europe, and India rejected the concept of hatha yoga and perceived it as unsociable.

new thought movement, again explicitly rejecting the practice of asanas and hatha yoga.[5]

Yoga as exercise

Main article: Yoga as exercise

A few decades later, a very different form of yoga, the prevailing

with America and Britain.[5]

Popularization

The popularity of modern yoga increased as travel became more feasible, allowing exposure to different teachings and practices. Immigration restrictions were relaxed from India to the USA and some parts of Europe around the 1960s. And, spiritual gurus began to offer what they referred to as solutions to the problems of modern life. As new-age high profile individuals, such as the Beatles, tried out yoga, the practice became more visible and desirable as a means to improve life.[1]

De Michelis's four types

The idea of yoga as "modern" was current before any definition of it was provided; for example, the philosopher

Vivekananda's 1896 Raja Yoga as its starting point, her typology of yoga forms as seen in the West, explicitly excluding forms seen only in India, proposed four subtypes.[9]

De Michelis type[9] De Michelis definition[9] Example given by De Michelis
of "relatively pure contemporary types"[9]		 Image of example guru
named by De Michelis[9]
"Modern Psychosomatic Yoga" Body-Mind-Spirit training
Emphasises practical experience
Little restriction on doctrine
Practised in a privatised setting
Himalayan Institute (Swami Rama
, 1971)
Yogendra, c. 1920
"Modern Denominational Yoga" Neo-Hindu gurus
Emphasis on each school's own teachings
Own belief system and authorities
Cultic environment, sometimes sectarian
May use all other forms of Modern Yoga
Rajneeshism (Rajneesh, c. 1964)
Late Transcendental Meditation
Nirmala Srivastava, 1994
"Modern Postural Yoga" Emphasises asanas (yoga postures)
and pranayama
Pattabhi Jois
, c. 1948)
Pattabhi Jois
, 2006
"Modern Meditational Yoga" Emphasises mental techniques
of concentration and meditation		 Early
Buddhist organisations[a]
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1978

From the 1970s, modern yoga spread across many countries of the world, changing as it did so, and in De Michelis's view becoming "an integral part of (primarily) urban cultures worldwide", to the extent that the word yoga in the Western world now means the practice of asanas, typically in a class.[b][10]

Other viewpoints

Endless variety

Mark Singleton, a scholar of yoga's history and practices, states that De Michelis's typology provides categories useful as a way into the study of yoga in the modern age, but that it is not a "good starting point for history insofar as it subsumes detail, variation, and exception".[11] Singleton does not subscribe to De Michelis's interpretative framework, instead considering "modern yoga" to be a descriptive name for "yoga in the modern age".[11] He questions the De Michelis typology as follows:

Can we really refer to an entity called Modern Yoga and assume that we are talking about a discrete and identifiable category of beliefs and practices? Does Modern Yoga, as some seem to assume, differ in ontological status (and hence intrinsic value) from "traditional yoga"? Does it represent a rupture in terms of tradition rather than a continuity? And in the plethora of experiments, adaptations, and innovations that make up the field of transnational yoga today, should we be thinking of all these manifestations as belonging to Modern Yoga in any typological sense?

— Mark Singleton[11]
postural yoga in Mysore, 1930s[13]

Modern yoga is derived in part from

Andrea Jain calls modern yoga "a variety of systems that developed as early as the 19th century as a [response to] capitalist production, colonial and industrial endeavors, global developments in areas ranging from metaphysics to fitness, and modern ideas and values."[7] In contemporary practice, modern yoga is prescribed as a part of self-development and is believed to provide "increased beauty, strength, and flexibility as well as decreased stress".[7]

Modern yoga is variously viewed through "cultural prisms" including New Age religion, psychology, sports science, medicine,[16] photography,[17] and fashion.[18] Jain states that although "hatha yoga is traditionally believed to be the ur-system of modern postural yoga, equating them does not account for the historical sources". According to her, asanas "only became prominent in modern yoga in the early twentieth century as a result of the dialogical exchanges between Indian reformers and nationalists and Americans and Europeans interested in health and fitness".[19] In short, Jain writes, "modern yoga systems ... bear little resemblance to the yoga systems that preceded them. This is because [both] ... are specific to their own social contexts."[20]

Leadership

Further information: Modern yoga gurus

Modern yoga has been led by

Swami Ramdev. Through the work of these gurus, yoga has been widely disseminated across the western world, and radically transformed in the process. Health benefits have been claimed; yoga has been brought to a "spiritual marketplace", different gurus competing for followers; and widely differing approaches have claimed ancient roots in Indian tradition.[21] The result has been to transform yoga from "a hidden, weird thing"[22] to "yoga studios on almost very corner",[22] in a "massive transition from spiritual practice to focusing on health and fitness".[23] The trend away from authority is continued in post-lineage yoga, which is practised outside any major school or guru's lineage.[24]

The author and yoga teacher

Sivananda, Indra Devi, and Iyengar.[26][27]

Cultural exchange and syncretism

Further information: Yoga and cultural appropriation
Buddha position" by John de Mirjian to illustrate her view that modern yoga involves both cultural exchange and syncretism.[28]

Suzanne Newcombe, a scholar of modern yoga, especially in Britain, writes that modern yoga's development included "a long history of transnational intercultural exchange", including between India and countries in the western world, whether or not it is an "outgrowth of Neo-Hinduism". It is seemingly torn between being a secular physical fitness activity sometimes called "hatha yoga" (not the similarly named the medieval practice of Haṭha yoga), and a spiritual practice with historical roots in India. She noted that the historical, sociological, and anthropological aspects of modern yoga were starting to be researched.[29]

The scholar of religion Anya Foxen writes that "modern postural yoga",

especially in America, was created through a complicated process involving both cultural exchange and syncretism of disparate approaches. Among the many ingredients are the subtle body and various strands of Greek philosophy, Western esotericism, and wellness programs for women based on such things as the teaching system of François Delsarte and the harmonial gymnastics of Genevieve Stebbins.[28]

A contested relationship to Hinduism

James Mallinson, a scholar of Sanskrit manuscripts and yoga, writes that modern yoga's relationship to Hinduism is complex and contested; some Christians have challenged its inclusion in school curricula on the grounds that it is covertly Hindu, while the "Take Back Yoga" campaign of the Hindu American Foundation has challenged attempts to "airbrush the Hindu roots of yoga" from modern manifestations. Modern yoga, he writes, uses techniques from "a wide range of traditions, many of which are clearly not Hindu at all".[30] While yoga was integrated with Vedantic philosophy, "the first text to teach hathayoga says that it will work even for atheists, who ... did not believe in karma and rebirth".[30]

Notes

  1. ^ On page 73, De Michelis refers readers to Gombrich & Obeyesekere 1988 and Sharf 1995 for more on Buddhist contexts.
  2. De Michelis notes that to speakers of Indic languages, yoga has a "quite different" semantic range, including meditation, prayer, ritual and devotional practices, ethical behaviour, and "secret esoteric techniques" that average English speakers would not consider to be yoga.[10]
  3. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace
    in 1996.
  4. Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy in History of Religions in 2004.[25]
  5. Mark Singleton wrote Yoga Body: the origins of modern posture practice
    in 2010.
  6. ^ Elliott Goldberg wrote The Path of Modern Yoga in 2016.

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-934037-8
  2. ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 4–7.
  3. ^ Meade 1980, p. 8.
  4. ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 76–77.
  5. ^ a b Singleton, Mark (16 April 2018). "The Ancient & Modern Roots of Yoga". Yoga Journal.
  6. ^ Wood 2015.
  7. ^
    ISBN 9780199340378
    .
  8. S2CID 72900651
    .
  9. ^ a b c d e De Michelis 2004, pp. 187–189.
  10. ^
    doi:10.1163/157342107X207182
    .
  11. ^ a b c Singleton 2010, pp. 18–19.
  12. ^ Mohan, A. G.; Mohan, Ganesh (29 November 2009). "Memories of a Master". Yoga Journal. Archived from the original on 6 March 2010.
  13. ^ a b Singleton, Mark (4 February 2011). "The Ancient & Modern Roots of Yoga". Yoga Journal.
  14. Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original
    on January 30, 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2019. The yoga widely known in the West is based on hatha yoga, which forms one aspect of the ancient Hindu system of religious and ascetic observance and meditation, the highest form of which is raja yoga and the ultimate aim of which is spiritual purification and self-understanding leading to samadhi or union with the divine
  15. ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 32–33.
  16. ^ Mallinson & Singleton 2017, p. ix.
  17. ^ Mastalia 2017.
  18. ^ Thompson, Derek (28 October 2018). "Everything You Wear Is Athleisure: Yoga pants, tennis shoes, and the 100-year history of how sports changed the way Americans dress". The Atlantic. Lululemon has sparked a global fashion revolution, sometimes called 'athleisure' or 'activewear,' which has injected prodigious quantities of spandex into modern dress and blurred the lines between yoga-and-spin-class attire and normal street clothes.
  19. doi:10.7825/2164-6279.1510
    .
  20. ^ Jain 2015, p. 19.
  21. ISBN 978-0199938728
    .
  22. ^ a b Gibson, Krysta. "The Path of Modern Yoga". New Spirit Journal. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  23. ^ Barclay, Axie (12 December 2016). "The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice". San Francisco Book Review. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  24. ISBN 978-0-520-37695-3
    .
  25. ^ Alter 2004.
  26. ^ Goldberg 2016.
  27. ^ Remski, Matthew (4 August 2016). "Elliott Goldberg Rides the Elephant: An In-Depth Review of The Path of Modern Yoga". Matthew Remski. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  28. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-008274-1
    .
  29. ISSN 1749-8171
    .
  30. ^ a b Mallinson, James (2013). "Yoga and Religion". Heythrop College: A Seminar on Modern Yoga, London. UK Hindu Christian Foundation. Retrieved 13 July 2021.

Sources

External links

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