Modern yoga far stretch from ancient philosophy

— It’s amazing that yoga has a firm foothold in the West given the deep suspicion of the pursuit that existed for hundreds of years, up to the late 1960s.

Yoga is thriving, though. Two 2008 surveys, conducted by the National Sporting Goods Association and Yoga Journal, found that nearly 16 million Americans are doing yoga. About three-fourths of the participants are women.

In his book Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010), Mark Singleton traces yoga’s emergence in the West over the past two centuries and introduces some of the many practitioners responsible for its rehabilitation in recent decades.

However, Singleton’s primary thesis - and it’s a provocative one - is that modern yoga systems that focus heavily on asanas (exercises) bear little resemblance to the spiritual and philosophical system outlined by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras nearly 2,000 years ago or in other manuscripts over the following centuries.

Asana, or “postural” (Singleton’s term) yoga, in which participants move from one isometric-type pose to another, is a recent development in yoga and not part of an age-old tradition, Singleton contends.

The author suggests that the reader suspend his preconceived meaning of yoga and “consider the term ‘yoga’ as it refers to modern postural practice as a homonym, and not a synonym, of theyoga associated with the philosophical system of Patanjali, or the ‘yoga’ that forms an integral component of the Saiva Tantras, or the yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, and so on.”

He writes that “In all the systems of yoga mentioned here, not much emphasis is placed on the practice of asana.”

Before this completely unravels your karma, it must be stated that Singleton’s goal is not to debunk modern yoga. His book is not an examination of the benefits or claims of modern yoga practice but a scholarly study of how it took shape in the West.

Readers should be warned that Singleton writes like the academic that he is. Be prepared to battle words like “dialectical homology” and “proprioreceptive.” And like many academic writers he doesn’t always tackle his subject head-on but circles it in ever tightening loops until it dizzily falls to the ground and capitulates.

Singleton rarely fleshes out his references to various people and texts, but the generous bibliography and extensive chapter notes at the end of the book are a valuable resource to people interested in the history of yoga.

Yoga Body focuses mostly on India’s colonial period, part of which coincided with a late 19th-century, early 20th-century physical culture fad that roared through Western Europe and made its way East.

At the same time, the West was being introduced to Indian mysticism through reports of fakirs and contortionists who performed “flamboyant ascetic displays.” Some of these performers would appear in sideshows and carnivals (hence the term “carnival swami”) in the West, further cementing Western distrust of yoga and Eastern spiritualism in general.

These performers were often scorned by modern Hindus, who observed the misunderstanding and fear that they spread, Singleton says.

But a funny thing happened on India’s path to independence from Britain. Indian nationalists, intent on building stronger Indian men, began incorporating Western gymnastic exercises into army and school drills but merging them with traditional Indian regimens, some of which were yogic in nature.

Singleton’s last and longest chapter focuses on a yogin commissioned to teach at the Mysore Palace gymnasium in the early 1930s, T. Krishnamacharya.

Singleton contends that Krishnamacharya, who taught at the palace for two decades, developed a series of exercises designed to promote flexibility, strength and endurance in his young students, who would put on demonstrations throughout the Mysore region in southern India. Among his students was B.K.S. Iyengar, who went on to promulgate a physical Hatha yoga style in the West.

“During this period, Krishnamacharya elaborated a system whose central component was a rigorous (and oftentimes aerobic) series of asanas, joined by a repetitivelinking sequence. The highly fashionable Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga of Pattabhi Jois [also a Mysore student] is a direct development of this phase of Krishnamacharya’s teaching, and the various spin-off forms (like ‘power yoga,’ ‘vinyasa flow’ and ‘power vinyasa’) that have burgeoned, particularly in America, since the early 1990s derive often explicit inspiration from these forms.”

Yoga Body contains a wealth of photographs, some of which depict the European exercises that Singleton says influenced asana-based yoga. It also contains fascinating photos of fakirs, contortionists (from East and West) and Indian strongmen.

There’s nothing in Yoga Body that would lead a reader to abandon yoga - or deter someone from trying it. The beneficial effects are so accepted that many doctors routinely recommend it to patients for a variety of reasons. So if you feel your blood pressure rising, breathe deep, close your eyes and focus on the white diamond ....

ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 07/26/2010

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