By Fran Tolhurst
Alter, J. S. (2004). Yoga in Modern India. The Body between Science and Philosophy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
“... if there is one single thing that characterizes the literature on Yoga, it is repetition and redundancy in the guise of novelty and independent invention” (p.xviii).
It is through an ethnographic lens that Alter examines the way Yoga has been made sense of over the past century in India looking at the construction of the knowledge of Yoga in 20th century texts and late 20th century practice. His purpose, “to illustrate the genius of transnational imaginations grounded in India, making and remaking the body, society, and the world” (p. 15).
The first section of the text discusses the rather unlikely union between metaphysics and the physical body and the attempts that have been made to connect understandings about Yoga’s subtle body in an empirical sense with anatomy and physiology. Alter argues that this “confusion of one kind of science with other kinds of knowledge and experience ... the confusion of two realities ... two partial truths has created a powerful fiction” (p. 36). This ‘mistake,’ Alter believes is what has largely determined the practice of Yoga today as “a self-disciplinary regimen that produces good health and well-being, while always holding out the promise of final liberation” (p.36).
In the following section, Alter looks at the historical development and current practice of Yoga as medicine through three case studies. The first is based at the Kaivalyadhama Institute (Lonavala) established by Swami Kuvalayananda who was the first person to seriously subject practising yogin to empirical scientific study. His research, investigating the psychophysical effects of yoga consciousness, was an attempt to demystify Yoga which he believed had become shrouded in malpractice. Importantly, what he achieved was to show that there are “profoundly different ways of knowing” and “enabled Yoga to be understood, practiced and embodied as a profoundly important, but generically human behaviour” (p.102). Alter then looks at the rise of nature cure clinics in India and their connection to naturopathic yoga and Ayurvedic medicine. Originally envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi’s as a low-cost system of public health care for the poor, these clinics have become much more a privatised form of health-care with a fetishizing of the body that only the wealthy can afford.
In the last case study, Alter focuses on the convergence of physical education and Yoga, and its links to Indian (and Hindu) nationalistic ideals. He explores the work of two doctors who established Yoga therapy clinics: Sunderraj Yoga Darshan (Pune) established by Dr Karandikar, a long term student of BKS Iyengar, whose clinic is modelled on the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) and the Yoga Institute for Psycho-physical therapy (Delhi) established by Dr Pal. It is their emphasis in their work on “the purification of the body and development of human kind” that interests Alter and the relationship to the goals of purification and ‘man-making’ in Hindu nationalism through its representative organisation (RSS) and its goal “to purge the nation of all that makes it impure” (p171).
There are some very surprising moments in the text as Alter describes practices such as “yogic flying” (The Maharishi Effect) which believers claimed could “without equivocation save the world” (p. 15-16), experiments with rats in a headstand pose as part of a larger study investigating the management of stress through Yoga (p. 68- 69), and the practice of auto-urine therapy in Yoga and Ayurvedic medicine (Chapter 6). But these, along with his other case studies, are managed with humour and respect.
Alter’s work is complex and at times very theoretical but his research is absorbing as is his deep appreciation of Yoga. In his final chapter, he proposes that the universalising and inclusive philosophy of Yoga exists outside of cultural boundaries and cultural relativism so offers the means to transcend our samsaric rebirth and thus the means for all of us to live an ethical life. On a final note, one of his closing comments which I found most inspiring:
“... what is of critical importance is the way Patanjali, and his redactors from Vyasa up to Taimni, Iyengar, and Whicher, have conceptualised Yoga – against the trend of several thousand years of religious thinking - as the transcendence of Life itself ... as Life is experienced through the body by a person who practices Yoga.” (p.239).
De Michelis, E. (2004). A History of Modern Yoga. Patanjali and Western Esotericism. London: Continuum.
De Michelis traces the historical and intellectual roots of modern yoga from the late 18th century during the formative years of the Bengal Renaissance when British entry into India began impacting on traditional ways of life. This was a time of intense intellectual, religious and social change in India and the founding of the Brahmo Samaj (a theistic Hindu reform movement) became most influential in its push for social reforms. The movement was profoundly influenced by its founder Ram Mohun Roy, then later Denendranath Tagore and Keshub Chandra Sen. De Michelis proposes that it was during Sen’s leadership that modern yoga was first conceptualised but it was Vivekananda, who during his time in the United States (1893-1896), created Rajayoga which was to almost become synonymous with ‘classical Yoga’.
Although drawing heavily on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Vivekananda’s Raja yoga was created in a context impacted by growing secularisation, and the prioritising of rational and scientific enquiry. People were looking for practical, self-help techniques and Vivekananda responded offering the means to reaching self-realization and spiritual enlightenment. This fusion of ideas, De Michelis argues, has led to “a cognitive confusion which causes a typically esoteric variety of yoga (further occultized by Vivekananda and his followers) to be understood not only in terms of mainstream yoga but as the most important and universally applicable form of Yoga (p.179). This, the author argues, has undermined the vast and complex teachings of the Yoga Sutras as “within the conceptual universe of Modern Yoga, the Sutras find themselves demoted to representing only a very limited range of (usually occultized) hathayogic practices” (p.180).
The goal of self-realisation and Vivekananda’s premise that people’s true nature is essentially spiritual have remained largely unquestioned in modern yoga practices and are mostly linked to personal growth models, New Age healing, and “[come] to be described more and more as an inward privatised form of religion” (p.183). De Michelis argues that these practices evolved from early 20th century Yoga schools which were dedicated to ‘mind-body-spirit training’ and characterised by a strong focus on practice. These, the author refers to as Modern Psychosomatic Yoga which she divides into two strands: Modern Postural Yoga with its stronger focus on performance of asana and pranayama (inclusive of Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga), and Modern Meditational Yoga reliant on techniques of concentration and meditation (inclusive of some Buddhist yogic practices and Transcendental Meditation). In her final chapter, the author’s focus turns to the development of Iyengar Yoga analysing the theory and practice of the School along with the key texts written by BKS Iyengar. De Michelis proposes that Iyengar’s teaching remained true to the social and ethical interpretation of Vedantic beliefs of his predecessors and that while he himself remained strongly theistic and devotional in his interpretation of Yoga, he never forced his convictions on his students.
De Michelis’ account of Modern Yoga is well-researched and provides significant insight into how the many variations of Modern Yoga came to be and why these often seem very remote to classical texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. De Michelis, as an historian of religion, offers the perspective that “... religious practices and beliefs are moulded by the human beings through which they are transmitted, the transmitter in turn being moulded by specific historical and cultural circumstances” (p210). It is this perspective that gives the reader a sense that the author’s intention is never to judge the authenticity or relevance of Modern Yoga for practitioners today.
Singleton, M. (2010). Yoga Body. The Origins of Modern Yoga Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Singleton, formerly a PhD student of De Michelis, explores the factors that have given shape to the practice of yoga today. His focus on the 20th century explores the cultural contexts which gave rise to the prominence of asana, a focus that Vivekananda and most of his contemporaries largely shunned as they saw Hathayoga and its associations to “mercenary yogi terror and the risible contortions of the mendicant fakir ...” (p. 78) as something that had no place in the ‘Yoga renaissance’ of the early 1900s. “Hatha yoga had to be appropriated from the yogin, and one of the ways this occurred was through appeals to modern science and medicine” (p.49).
Although the medicalisation of Yoga is said to have started much earlier than the 1920s, Singleton argues that it came into its own during the 1920s and 1930s through the work of Sri Yogendra and Swami Kuvalayananda. It was also during this period that the relationship of Yoga to health and fitness flourished. The author proposes that experimentation with physical culture programs in India had much to do with Indian nationalism and was at least partly in response to the denigration of the Indian male body by their colonial masters during British rule of India (p.97). He also argues that some accounts show that the practice of Yoga, “became an alibi for training in violent, militant resistance” against British rule (p.103).
Importantly, Singleton seeks to show how the elevation of the body as sacred in the practice of Yoga today began much earlier in hathayoga practices but flowed into body building, and early 20th century women’s gymnastics which “began to establish themselves as a contemporary expression of the hatha tradition” (p.113). It was also during this period that the work of Yogendra and Kuvalayananda did much to promote asana as a therapeutic tool for body and mind. Singleton attributes much of the rapid growth of postural yoga transnationally to the use of photography which “laid the [male] yoga body out for objective scrutiny and emulation” (p.167) making it easily knowable and thus shifting the practice of Yoga from the private to the public sphere.
In his final chapter, Singleton’s discussion turns to Mysore Palace, where BKS Iyengar first studied under T. Krishnamacharya. At that time, Mysore Palace was credited as place where physical cultivation of the body was promoted and where hathayoga was taught alongside of Indigenous systems of body building. While there are many competing claims about Krishnamacharya’s style of teaching and focus, Singleton argues his influence over modern forms of Yoga is indisputable particularly in the growth of the Ashtanga Vinyasa system.
Like De Michelis, Singleton has succeeded in showing that Yoga has evolved in social and cultural contexts which are constantly changing. However, despite his claim that his intention is not to judge the authenticity of any practice, his less than flattering view of modern yoga marketing practices is very unsubtle.
“Today, the yoga body has become the centrepiece of a transnational tableau of personalized well-being and quotidian redemption, relentlessly embellished on the pages of glossy publications like Yoga Journal. The locus of yoga is no longer at the centre of an invisible ground of being, hidden from the gaze of all but the elite initiate or mystic; instead the lucent skin of the yoga model become the ubiquitous signifier of spiritual possibility ...” (p.174).
While much of what Singleton argues may be interpreted as somewhat controversial, this is to be expected as it is a defence of his PhD thesis. His work is well-written, interesting and scholarly, and based on a thorough and wide-ranging exploration of relevant literature as well as interviews with three original Mysore students of Krishnamacharya, and A.G. Mohan who studied under Krishnamacharya in his later years. This is definitely a book well-worth reading.