Yoga in the United States
The history of
The practice of yoga as consisting mainly of physical postures began in 1919 when the pioneer of asana-based yoga,
Early pioneers
Long before yoga arrived in the United States, pioneering thinkers began to assimilate Indian thought.
Another pioneer was
Arrival
In 1893,
Another controversial figure,
Yoga as asanas
Between the wars
Yoga asanas were brought to the United States in 1919 by Yogendra, sometimes called "the Father of the Modern Yoga Renaissance",[20] his system influenced by the physical culture of Max Müller; his Yoga Institute of America in Harriman, New York, operated for a few years.[20] The following year, the Hindu spiritual leader Paramahansa Yogananda spoke about Kriya Yoga in Boston, and in 1925 he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, where he taught yoga, including asanas, breathing, chanting and meditation, to tens of thousands of Americans, as described in his classic 1946 book Autobiography of a Yogi.[9][21][22][23]
Yoga and meditation appear in
After the Second World War
In 1948,
In 1966, another of Krishnamacharya's pupils, his brother-in-law
Yet another of Krishnamacharya's pupils,
Yoga as spiritual practice
From 1918, Pierre Bernard and his wife Blanche DeVries ran
American yoga again took a turn towards the spiritual in the 1960s.
In 1975, the yoga teacher
Cosmopolitan yoga
By 2016, according to an Ipsos study, 36.7 million Americans were practising yoga, making the business of classes, clothing such as yoga pants, and equipment including yoga mats worth $16 billion, compared to $10 billion in 2012. Some 72 percent of practitioners were women.[62]
The historian Jared Farmer noted that if the yoga-practising population were a religious group, they would easily exceed the number of American Hindus, Muslims, atheists, Mormons, and Jews put together.[63] Farmer identifies 12 general trends in yoga's history in the United States from the 1890s to the 21st century:
peripheral to central; local to global; male to (predominantly) female; spiritual to (mostly)
Considering all these trends, Farmer stated that modern yoga as exercise belonged to Srinivas Aravamudan's category of the "global popular",[64] which Farmer glossed as "a postcolonial realm of religious cosmopolitanism."[64]
In Lasater's view, American yoga in the 21st century has lost "the gentleness, consistency, and direction of the practice",[66] replaced by ambition. Lasater believes that many Americans "have conflated asana with yoga."[66] Schrank, reviewing the literature in 2014, noted that the journalist William Broad's The Science of Yoga, "lambasted mercilessly by the American yoga community",[67] however took yoga seriously as therapy for mind, body, and spirit.[67] Schrank describes the situation of yoga in the United States as "a complicated dynamic between transnational history, cultural appropriation, and therapeutic science". Schrank notes that none of the books she reviewed addressed the feminist, class, or racial aspects of American yoga, even though most practitioners are women and few are from minority ethnic groups.[65]
See also
References
- ^ Farmer 2012.
- ^ Goldberg 2013, pp. 26–46.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 11–14, 20–25.
- ^ Syman 2010, p. 13.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 11–14.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 26–36.
- ^ a b Syman 2010, pp. 62–63.
- ^ a b Goldberg 2013, pp. 47–66.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hammond 2018.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 37–61.
- ^ Goldberg 2013, pp. 67–86.
- ^ Singleton 2018.
- ^ Jain 2015, pp. 22–25.
- ^ a b Syman 2010, pp. 80–115.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 80–83.
- ^ Syman 2010, p. 84.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 85–86.
- ^ a b Jain 2015, pp. 25–26.
- ^ Syman 2010, p. 87.
- ^ a b Mishra 2016.
- ^ Ricci 2007.
- ^ Singleton 2010, pp. 131–132.
- ^ Yogananda 1971.
- ^ Agniel 1931.
- ^ Routledge 2014.
- ^ Schrank 2016, pp. 159–160.
- ^ Veenhof 2011.
- ^ Devi 1953.
- ^ Vishnudevananda 1988.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 179–197.
- ^ a b Syman 2010, pp. 246–247.
- ^ Hyams 1961.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 247–248.
- ^ Schneider 2003, pp. 10–15.
- ^ Iyengar 1991.
- ^ Schneider 2003, pp. 50–54.
- ^ Kripalu 2019.
- ^ Pizer 2019.
- ^ a b Syman 2010, pp. 272–277.
- ^ Ashtanga 2011.
- ^ YJ Ashtanga 2019.
- ^ Pizer b 2019.
- ^ Singleton 2010, p. 176.
- ^ YJ Power 2019.
- ^ Birch 1995.
- ^ Jois 1995.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 268–272.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 276–278.
- ^ Gershon 2018.
- ^ Laycock 2013.
- ^ Love 2010.
- ^ Goldberg 2013, pp. 151–175.
- ^ Goldberg 2013, pp. 197–209.
- ^ Goldberg 2013, pp. 219–235.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 244–245, 248–249.
- ^ Schneider 2003, p. 88.
- ^ Syman 2010, pp. 264–267, 281–283.
- ^ a b Miller 2009.
- ^ Albanese 2007, p. 347.
- ^ Syman 2010, p. 291.
- ^ Farmer 2012, p. 156.
- ^ Ipsos 2016.
- ^ Farmer 2012, p. 145.
- ^ a b c Farmer 2012, p. 157.
- ^ a b Schrank 2014, pp. 169–182.
- ^ a b Schneider 2003, p. 89.
- ^ a b Schrank 2014, p. 173.
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