Yoga Body : The Origins of Modern Posture Practice

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim?In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (a__sana__) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented __asana__ practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today.Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore __asana__ revival, __Yoga Body__ turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head. Introduction An outline of the project Sources, methods and demarcations Transnational anglophone yoga Primary and secondary sources Orientalism Representations of yoga : methodological considerations The academic study of modern yoga Postwar developments in transnational yoga 1 : a brief overview of yoga in the Indian traditions Yoga in traditional Hinduism Hatha yoga Transnational "hatha" yoga Fakirs, yogins, Europeans Early European encounters fighting yogins and bhakti ascendancy Nineteenth century scholarship Hatha yoga in translation S.C. Vasu and the sacred books of the Hindus Vasu and the hatha yogin Basu, Dayananda, Paul : the roots of modern medical hatha yoga Popular portrayals of the yogi The topos of the performing yogi "The most stoopendous marvel of the age" : Yogi Bava Lachman Dass The posture master and European contortionism The yogi-fakir as magician Anti-hatha sentiment in Vivekananda Vivekananda and Müller Fakir's avenue : Blavatsky and hatha yoga Anti-hatha tendencies in early popular yoga primers India and the international physical culture movement The dawn of nationalist physical culture Scandinavian gymnastics Ling and yoga Sandow and bodybuilding Young Men's Christian Association Modern Indian physical culture : degeneracy and experimentation Physical culture as eugenics Nationalist physical culture Hatha yoga and feats of strength Other early syntheses Yoga as physical culture I : strength and vigour Contexts of physical culture as yoga Kuvalayananda Yogendra and the domestication of yoga Iyer, Sundaram, Balsekar : yoga body beautiful The new thought yogis New thought and the body Yogi Gherwal West Coast yogis : Wassan, Hari Rama, Bhagwan Gyanee Yoga as physical culture II : harmonial gymnastics and esoteric dance Genevieve Stebbins and American delsartism Glands for God : Cajzoran Ali Harmonial gymnastics in Britain German gymnastik and the Somatics movement Yoga in mainstream western physical culture Women's stretching regimes Gendered yogas The medium and the message : visual reproduction and the Asana revival Tradition and modernity in Indian art The pictorial postural yoga manual T. Krishnamacharya and the Mysore Asana revival The Maharaja and the Mysore Physical Culture movement Suryanamaskar and palace physical education yoga Kurunta and the origins of Ashtanga Vinyasa skillful means : pragmatism in Krishnamacharya's yoga demonstrations : yoga as spectacle Dissent Gymnastics Indian and foreign : the derivation of the Mysore style foreign Indian Modernity in tradition.
Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim?

In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (?sana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented ?sana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today.

Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore ?sana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head.

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim?In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today.Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head. Annotation Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim? In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga ( ?sana ) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented ?sana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today. Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore ?sana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim? In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (a sana ) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today. Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head. "Yoga Body charts the rise of postural yoga (āsana) in popular imagination and practice from the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War. This period saw the forging of a postural canon that gave shape to what is today popularly accepted as the practical substance of "yoga." Prior to these modern innovations, yoga was rarely (if ever) conceived primarily in these terms. How did this situation come about? How did yoga become the health- and fitness-oriented phenomenon we see today? This book offers explanations of the genesis, status and function of yoga in the modern world. This history has remained largely hidden in popular and scholastic accounts, but the phenomenally successful yoga forms we see in the world today simply cannot be understood without it. Drawing on rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the United States, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly actors in the 1920s and thirties postural yoga renaissance, the book investigates the predecessors of today's āsana systems. It also presents fresh evidence for the origins of the twenty-first century's most popular forms, including material from two hitherto untranslated texts on āsana by the "godfather" of modern postural yoga, T. Krishnamacharya"--Publisher's description This Volume Examines The Roots And Early Development Of Modern Hatha (postural) Yoga. The Author Concentrates On The Transition From The Classical Conception Of Yoga As A Philosophical System To The Version We Recognize Today. He Argues That The Popularly Practiced Yoga Of Today Owes A Greater Debt To Modern Indian Nationalism And, Even More Surprisingly, To The Spiritual Aspirations Of European Bodybuilding And Early 20th-century Women's Gymnastics Movements Of Europe And America, Than It Does To Any Ancient Indian Yoga Tradition. Introduction -- A Brief Overview Of Yoga In The Indian Tradition -- Fakirs, Yogins, Europeans -- Popular Portrayals Of The Yogin -- India And The International Physical Culture Movement -- Modern Indian Physical Culture : Degeneracy And Experimentation -- Yoga As Physical Culture I : Strength And Vigor -- Yoga As Physical Culture Ii : Harmonial Gymnastics And Esoteric Dance -- The Medium And The Message : Visual Reproduction And The āsana Revival -- T. Krishnamacharya And The Mysore āsana Revival. Mark Singleton. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.