Yoga for women
Modern
The majority of yoga practitioners in the Western world are women. Yoga has been marketed to women as promoting health and beauty, and as something that could be continued into old age. It has created a substantial market for fashionable yoga clothing. Yoga is now encouraged also for pregnant women.
A gendered activity
The yoga author and teacher
The yoga scholar
Alongside the yoga brands, many teachers, for example in England, offer an unbranded "hatha yoga", often mainly to women, creating their own combinations of poses. These may be in flowing sequences (
Leading "yoginis" (named for the
History
Louise Morgan
In 1936, the journalist Louise Morgan interviewed the
Indra Devi
A pioneer of modern
The historian of modern yoga
Not all her clients were women, but all the same, much of the advice in her books was to women. For example, in Forever Young Forever Healthy, Devi advises her readers that "No
Marcia Moore
The American heiress (her father was the founder of
Britain
While Devi and Moore were spreading asana-based yoga on the other side of the Atlantic, women in Britain took up the practice from the 1960s, and yoga, in other words asana sessions, became a common option among
Yoga reached London's evening classes in 1967. The
Yoga classes grew beyond those of local education authorities when
India
Little is known of many of the women who helped to develop modern yoga in India, but one of Bishnu Charan Ghosh's pupils in Calcutta was Labanya Palit, who published a manual of 40 asanas, Shariram Adyam ("A Healthy Body"), in 1955, a work admired by the poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore.[30][31]
Health and beauty
Yoga has been marketed to women as something that made them look younger, and that they could carry on learning or teaching into old age, a message taught by books such as Nancy Phelan and Michael Volin's 1963 Yoga for Women: "Most yoga teachers know ... of women who have astonished everyone ... discarding stiffness and tension for suppleness, slimness, serenity and poise".
Clothing and accessories
Women's yoga has created a large market for fashionable yoga clothing. Major yoga clothing brands include
Pregnancy
In the 1960s,
Before 1980, few books considered whether yoga was relevant to pregnancy.[10] Since then, numerous books have addressed the subject,[36] including Geeta Iyengar's 2010 Iyengar Yoga for Motherhood,[37] Françoise Barbira Freedman's 2004 Yoga for Pregnancy, Birth, and Beyond,[38] and Leslie Lekos and Megan Westgate's 2014 Yoga For Pregnancy: Poses, Meditations, and Inspiration for Expectant and New Mothers.[39] According to the American Pregnancy Association, yoga increases strength and flexibility in pregnant women, helping them with breathing and relaxation techniques to assist labour.[40]
The practice of yoga asanas has sometimes been advised against during pregnancy, but that advice has been contested by a 2015 study which found no ill-effects from any of 26 asanas investigated. The study examined the effects of the set of asanas on 25 healthy women who were between 35 and 37 weeks pregnant. The authors noted that apart from their experimental findings, they had been unable to find any scientific evidence that supported the previously published concerns, and that on the contrary there was evidence including from systematic review that yoga was suitable for pregnant women, with a variety of possible benefits.[41][42]
Yoginis
Pioneering female teachers of modern yoga as exercise are sometimes described as yoginis, though the term principally denotes medieval tantric figures, whether goddesses or female practitioners, as recorded in tantric texts and the surviving yogini temples.[43] In her 2006 book Yogini,
Notes
- ^ In British usage, the middle class is relatively comfortable, above the working class, well-educated with well-paid jobs.[29]
References
- ^ Hodges 2007, pp. 65–66.
- ^ Mallinson & Singleton 2017, pp. 53–54.
- ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 160–162.
- ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 157, 160–162.
- ^ Pingatore 2016.
- ^ Murphy, Rosalie (8 July 2014). "Why Your Yoga Class Is So White". The Atlantic.
- ^ Singleton 2010, p. 152.
- ^ Cook, Jennifer (28 August 2007). "Find Your Match Among the Many Types of Yoga". Yoga Journal.
If you are browsing through a yoga studio's brochure of classes and the yoga offered is simply described as 'hatha,' chances are the teacher is offering an eclectic blend of two or more of the styles described above.
- ^ Beirne, Geraldine (10 January 2014). "Yoga: A Beginner's Guide to the Different Styles". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
- ^ a b c d e f g Newcombe 2007.
- ^ Pingatore 2015; Pingatore 2016.
- ^ Hodges 2007, pp. 66–67.
- ^ Strauss 2005, p. 78.
- ^ a b Hodges 2007, p. 70.
- passim.
- ^ Friedman, Jennifer D'Angelo (12 April 2017). "Sadie Nardini's Empowering Yoga Sequence for Women in Honor of V-Day". Yoga Journal. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 275–276.
- ^ a b c Goldberg 2016, p. 291.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 343.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 346.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (30 April 2002). "Indra Devi, 102, Dies – Taught Yoga to Stars and Leaders". The New York Times.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 348, 350.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 350.
- ^ a b Goldberg 2016, p. 352.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 322.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 323.
- ^ a b c Goldberg 2016, p. 324.
- ^ Newcombe 2007; Newcombe 2019.
- ^ "Middle Class". Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
- ^ "The Women of Yoga". Ghosh Yoga. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
- ^ Rao, Soumya (31 July 2019). "Filling a gap in history: Who were the Indian women who popularised yoga?". Scroll.in.
- ^ a b DiBlasio, Natalie (30 December 2014). "Retailers Rush to Tap Millennial 'Athleisure' Market". USA Today. McLean, Virginia.
- ^ Newcombe 2007; Phelan & Volin 1979, p. 16.
- ^ Loffredi, Julie. "Stylish Athleticwear and Workout Clothes for Women". Forbes. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- ^ Hodges 2007, p. 71.
- ^ "5 Outstanding Prenatal Yoga Books". Our Family World. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- ^ Iyengar, Keller & Khattab 2010.
- ^ Barbira Freedman 2004.
- ^ Lekos & Westgate 2014.
- ^ "Prenatal Yoga". American Pregnancy Association. Irving, Texas. 28 August 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- S2CID 205467344.
All 26 yoga postures were well-tolerated with no acute adverse maternal physiologic or fetal heart rate changes.
- PMID 22927881.
- ^ Hatley, Shaman (2007). The Brahmayāmalatantra and Early Śaiva Cult of Yoginīs. University of Pennsylvania (PhD Thesis, UMI Number: 3292099). pp. 12–21.
- ^ Gates 2006, pp. whole book (a chapter to each of these women).
Sources
- Barbira Freedman, Françoise (2004). Yoga for Pregnancy, Birth, and Beyond. London: ISBN 978-1-4053-0056-8.
- ISBN 978-1-932771-88-6.
- ISBN 978-1-62055-567-5.
- Hodges, Julie (2007). The Practice of Iyengar Yoga by Mid-Aged Women: An Ancient Tradition in a Modern Life (PDF) (PhD thesis). Newcastle, New South Wales: Newcastle University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2019. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
- ISBN 978-1-4027-2689-7.
- Lekos, Leslie; Westgate, Megan (2014). Yoga for Pregnancy: Poses, Meditations, and Inspiration for Expectant and New Mothers. New York: Helios Press. ISBN 978-1-62914-362-0.
- ISBN 978-0-241-25304-5.
- .
- ISBN 978-1-78179-661-0.
- Phelan, Nancy; Volin, Michael (1979) [1963]. Yoga for Women. London: ISBN 978-0-09-916990-1.
- Pingatore, Kimberley J. (2015). Bodies Bending Boundaries: Religious, Spiritual, and Secular Identities of Modern Postural Yoga in the Ozarks (MA thesis). Springfield, Missouri: Missouri State University.
- ——— (2016). "Review of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture, by Andrea R. Jain". Religion. 46 (3): 458–461. S2CID 147571747.
- ISBN 978-0-19-539534-1.
- OCLC 290552174.