Reddit reviews Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice

I'm not a practicing Hindu, but I am working towards a doctorate in the history and philosophy of (among other things South Asia) Hinduism. What I can tell you for certain (well, certain to me at this point) is this:

Yoga as we see it today - we call it 'modern postural yoga' - is essentially a post-colonial phenomenon, whose postures are probably most clearly derived from earlier practices of Hatha yoga (which, as the yoga of 'force,' uses various postures to attempt to control the ebb and flow of life energies for health, longevity, and mental acquiescence). You'll be able to note if you look at Patanjali's Yoga Sutras - typically held up as the central text of Yoga philosophy - that there really isn't much about various postures (asanas) beyond a sitting meditation pose. The kind of stretching that Yoga now employs just isn't prominent at the supposed origins of yoga.

So what gives? Well, this doesn't mean that yoga wasn't a thing throughout much of the history of Hinduism, but rather that yoga has meant many, many things to the peoples of the subcontinent. This is likely a bit controversial - I can only point to Mark Singleton's excellent book Yoga Body on the subject.

If there is a through-line to all the transformations of what yoga is, I would say that it lies in the meaning of the word. Yoga derives from the verbal root *yuj, which means to yoke, as in yoking oxen to a plow, a horse to a chariot, or more simply, to join anything to anything else. This would include more spiritual notions like yoking yourself to the action of god (as in the Bhagavad Gita), yoking your mind to a pure contemplation of the self (as in Samkhya yoga), yoking and thereby controlling prana (as in Hatha yoga), etc.

The take-home (from my perspective) is this: the postures of modern yoga aren't in themselves spiritual. We 'yoke' ourselves through the yoga of attention to all kinds of things throughout every single day - reddit, work, etc. Right now I'm in the asana of the lazy couch cushion ;). But this isn't to trivialize it. When we yoke ourselves to an awareness of our own thought processes, or perhaps better to the silence within ourselves, we can quickly begin to see benefits in our daily lives, wherein we yoke ourselves to 'less noble' pursuits. We might be more patient with others, more calm in stressful situations, more open to loving interactions, or maybe just more aware of how giving something our time and attention can shape our existence. Finally, add to this that Hinduism is, or at least has been for the majority of its historical presence, essentially syncretistic. The many gods that have been brought under the umbrella of Hinduism are not so jealous. We should expect them to little mind when we 'yoke' ourselves without invoking their names.

Do some further research and don't worry about it so much.

This article makes a lot of assumptions and broad statements that are patently false and have been debunked by scholars who study yoga in an academic context.

CF:

Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195395344/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I15ODXHXN3JPB1&colid=2BW037KI8EIM1

AND

Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives ed by Mark Singleton and Jean Byrne https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Modern-World-Contemporary-Perspectives/dp/0415570867/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497454962&sr=1-1&keywords=yoga+in+the+modern+world

TL;DR: Contemporary asana practice is actually based on a calisthenic routine created by a Swedish body builder. The physical exercise was later incorporated into Indian yoga practice, but prior to the colonial period, yoga was a primarily spiritual practice not a physical one. Yoga as it exists today is a complicated mush of Indian spirituality, western physical culture, and lots of revisions and combinations thereof. The narrative that westerners 'stole' yoga from India is ill-informed and misleading.

An important thing to note though about bikram: the classic "84" postures is a misnomer and not at all accurate. If there is anything classic about it, it is that it has not incorporated as many moves from British naval exercise and gymnastics training that they brought to the indian subcontinent in the 19th century.

I agree doing some bikram yoga is a good way to get people to realize that yoga can be seriously challenging, even without a lot of vinyasa flowing.

Bikram yoga is very much still a western invention, as the entire method was developed to appeal to the Japanese and Americans when he started exporting a more vigorous form of postural yoga in the 60s and 70s.

Also, none of this stuff comes out of the yoga sutras of patanjali, it doesn't even really come out of the hatha yoga tradition or tantric traditions. Tantra is the overarching philosophical grouping that hatha grew out of, with heavy emphasis on the world being real and some sects believing that you could develop a perfect, or diamond, body on this world and thereby become enlightened while still alive and live forever on this plane of existence. The yoga sutras are so incredibly different from any aspect of hatha yoga, and hatha came from a completely different tradition, modern postural yoga in the west is even farther removed from these traditions. It doesn't make it any less beneficial physically, it's just that modern postural yoga it is not a special indian tradition going back thousands of years in india. For further reading check out Marking Singleton's book on all of this kind of stuff.

Source: I did Bikram yoga for 2 years prior to doing my teacher training and certification with what was once his primary disciple, Jimmy Barkan, and then taught yoga for 4 years through the end of college and grad school to pay them bills.
Also, I was the TA for Hindu Philosophy at Rutgers University for a couple of years, along with classes on the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Vedanta Sutras, etc. And I did a fair bit of research into a bunch of yoga related areas.
Plus, my ex-girlfriend is getting a PhD in religious studies specializing in Americanist Yoga traditions and how they have evolved.

Most people who study the origins of modern yoga acknowledge that it has more in common with early 20th century bodybuilding/calisthenics/gymnastics than it does with any archaic Indian tradition. It is very much a hybrid, and does not belong to any one culture.

[Mark Singleton wrote a book on this called "Yoga Body"] (https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Body-Origins-Posture-Practice/dp/0195395344)

Hatha yoga (yoga based on physicality; postures, kriya, mudra) isn't actually based on Patanjalic yoga. It started as reaction against that high-minded asceticism. Have you read the Hatha Yoga Pradipika? Maybe you would find more agreement with the aims stated there.

Futhermore, the modern regime that you are no doubt doing is a melange of the few sitting asansa as described in the Hathapradipika, Harmonial and Scandinavian gymnastics, British military calisthenics, and 20th century Indian body building and wrestling techniques.

In other words, yoga (as we know it now) is already a cherry-picked form of many influences, east and west, spiritual and physical. Don't worry about those sutras, they are tangential at best.

I had similar hang-ups a few years ago after 4 or so years of practice. A lot of teachers and practitioners are ignorant of the true origins of our practice and will try to cram all manner of hooey down your throat. Ignore them.

I would also recommend Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Body-Origins-Posture-Practice/dp/0195395344). Its a bit dry and academic, but I think it would be right up your alley and help you to answer some of your questions. It was certainly revelatory to me, as someone who loved the forms, discipline and breath-work, but wasn't so keen on some of the dogma.

Yes, we all pick and choose, even if we don't realize it. Enjoy your practice, its a beautiful thing!

It's kind of difficult to answer that question with a simple answer as there are many forms of yoga.
I think the first thing to do is to get a good idea of what yoga is and isn't. The vast majority of today's forms of yoga were plain and simply born in the 19th and 20th century. That doesn't discard them as being real yogas as the word "yoga" was in fact used across centuries to characterize a vast variety of practices.
To better understand what yoga is and isn't I strongly recommend reading those two books which are based on thorough and recent research :
https://www.amazon.fr/Roots-Yoga-Sir-James-Mallinson/dp/0241253047

https://www.amazon.fr/Yoga-Body-Origins-Posture-Practice/dp/0195395344
Beware, you might end up having to completely change your understanding of yoga !

For Ashtanga, I agree, David Swenson's book is indeed excellent !
All the other forms of "physical yoga" are modern innovations which, without saying they have no use, could be effectively replaced with western physical therapy practices.

For pranayama this book is as precise and step by step as TMI :
https://www.amazon.fr/Pranayama-Breath-Yoga-Gregor-Maehle/dp/0977512622

If you're more interested into the energetic side of yoga you should find a ton of precise ressources and a great community at https://www.aypsite.org/
Some of the practices found in the site are very powerful and you should be pay attention as to how those influence your TMI practice.

Yoga Body by Mark Singleton & Sinister Yogis by David Gordon White are two books which explore this topic in greater detail

> Very sound, but I want to add that the lotus postures found in very ancient Indian (Harappan) suggest that perhaps what we know of as yoga, and to a degree martial arts, may actually pre-date written history.

One of the problems with working with static images is that a LOT can be read into them. When hyroglphys of individuals in similiar postures were found in Egypt, people made the equally problematic claim that Yoga was really an Egyptian export. Similiar unsound arguments have been made that Egypt was the cradle of all martial arts.

The reality is that what we "know" as yoga (postural flow) is less than 200 years old and has as much (if not more) to do with the European Gymnastics movement as it has to do with ancient India.

Mark Singleton's book "The Yoga Body" (https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Body-Origins-Posture-Practice/dp/0195395344) is an incredibly well researched history of this. Or you can look at this survey article for a well cited exploration of the topic:

http://www.academia.edu/638083/The_Development_of_Modern_Yoga_A_Survey_of_the_Field

Here's something else, if you like. I haven't read this book but the Amazon review alone concurs with my knowledge of the history of yoga as we tend to know it, which is less based on religion than English, military calisthenics.

An interesting book on the topic.

> 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.

Sorry but this is bullshit.

First of all most Power Yoga branded classes are just a way of labeling a particular class to say it will focus on building strength endurance. Plenty of teachers from many different 'traditions' (e.g. Ashtanga, Iyengar,...) label some of their classes this way.

Furthermore any yoga with a big focus on asna, like most hatha schools and derivatives, are relatively modern inventions. A style like Ashtanga is not more nor less authentic than many similar variations appearing in the West. Why are the primary series more authentic than some other variation?


FinalIy I highly recommend you to read Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. The author's thesis is that most modern asna practise (modern as in Hatha based styles, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, and friends) resulted from European influence in India.

> 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.

Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton

"Mark Singleton's Yoga Body is a cultural history of asana practice, concentrating on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "

Maybe it steps on a few toes, depending on your inclinations, but I found Yoga Body helped me cut through a lot of overly-mystifying statements I'd come across in my practice and teacher training.

i'm amused at her reaction. Please have her read Mark Singleton's book yoga body and get back to you with what yoga really is. here's a link:
http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Body-Origins-Posture-Practice/dp/0195395344

short answer: what we call yoga in the west, and modern hatha yoga in general is as much descended from homeless dudes doing contortions for spare change as it is from the YMCA's 19th century fitness programs as it is from the western yogis cultural imperialism.

I also find is somewhat interesting that a western yoga teacher is negatively judging a cultural tradition that she's currently engaged in ripping off.