Introduction: Transcultural Yoga(s). Analyzing a Traveling Subject

Hauser, Beatrix

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00315-3_1

Beatrix Hauser²

Part of the book series: Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context ((TRANSCULT))

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5 Citations

Abstract

This book focuses on yoga’s transcultural dissemination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course of this process, the term “yoga” has been associated with various distinctive blends of mental and physical exercises performed to achieve improvement in terms of esotericism, fitness, self-actualization, body aesthetics, or health care. This introductionary chapter surveys the development of modern yoga studies as a new field of academic inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. It shows how the emergence and diversity of today’s postural yoga provides rich source material for understanding the process of cultural diffusion and knowledge transfer. With a cursory glance at the sources and approaches in the historical and philological study of Indian yoga the chapter then argues that yoga never constituted a monolithic or homogenious entity. The remaining section explores how recent ways of theorizing global spaces, transnational flows, and cultural interactions can inspire and facilitate the analysis of present-day yoga and its dynamics and thus provide a provisional outline for the notion of transculturality in relation to the study of yoga’s global circulation. This leads to a brief synopsis of the following chapters.

There are more flavors of Hatha Yoga in the West than ice cream. Choudhury 2000, xiii

There is probably no tradition that has been construed as more timeless, more intrinsically authentic, more inherently Indian than yoga. Alter 2004, 14

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Notes

1.
This introduction has greatly benefited from Suzanne Newcombe’s and Anne Koch’s critical reading and feedback of an early draft. My sincere thanks go also to the two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.
2.
The 2008 Yoga in America market study surveyed 5,050 respondents and was conducted on behalf of the Yoga Journal. Whereas the number of yoga practitioners (15.8 million) had stabilized vis-à-vis the journal’s previous 2004 survey, the expenditure on equipment, clothing, vacations, and media had almost doubled (www.yogajournal.com/advertise/press_releases/10, accessed 17 January 2011). On the growth and marketing of yoga in the United States see Syman (2010); also Philp’s book Yoga Inc. (2009), which is based on journalistic research.
3.
The Indian government promotes yoga as a “tourism product” along with Ayurveda and medical treatments (e.g., surgery, transplantation, dental care) on its website at http://www.incredibleindia.org; see also http://indiameditourism.com (accessed 17 January 2011); and see Nichter’s contribution (chapter “The Social Life of Yoga: Exploring Transcultural Flows in India”).
4.
This is convincingly argued by De Michelis (2004).
5.
As with other early Indic sources, it is difficult to date the Yogasūtra. In this case estimates range from the fourth to the second century BCE, to as late as 150–500 CE. According to Whicher (1998, 41–42), Michaels (2004, 267) and Gharote et al. (2006, xxvi) current evidence suggests that the Yogasūtra as a collection was compiled between the second/third century CE and only in retrospect ascribed to Patañjali.
6.
Singleton (2010, Chap. 2) and White (2009, 2012a, 15).
7.
See also Singleton’s contribution in this volume (chapter “Transnational Exchange and the Genesis of Modern Postural Yoga”).
8.
Singleton (2010, Chaps. 4, 5, and 6).
9.
On science as a hegemonic force producing asymmetries between Western and non-Western approaches to the world see Alter (2004, 17, 28–31).
10.
Alter (2004, 77).
11.
See Sjoman (1996, 53–58), Alter (2004, 28), and Singleton (2010, 198–206). On various Indian forms of exercises see Alter (1992, Chap. 5); on the sun salutation see Goldberg (2006), Bühnemann (2007, 32–33), and Alter (2004, 23).
12.
Sjoman (1996).
13.
I owe the term “Neo-Hatha Yoga” to De Michelis (2004).
14.
Singleton (2005, 2007).
15.
Singleton (2010, 5). The phrase haṭhayoga originated from medieval tantric sources, e.g., the fourteenth-century treatise Haṭhayogapradīpikā.
16.
Special thanks to Pirkko Markula (University of Alberta) and Klas Nevrin (Stockholm University) for their substantial contributions to the conference’s debates and outcome. I am very happy that Mark Singleton joined this book project to present his recent research, unpublished at the time of the Heidelberg conference.
17.
See Fish (2006, 192) who relies on David Orr’s article in The Telegraph, dated 20 September 2005 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/3324013/India-adopts-fighting-position-to-hold-on-to-ancient-yoga-poses.html, accessed 1 March 2011). Unfortunately, Orr neither provides the source of his data nor over which time span it is based. According to R. Saha and Sangeeta Nagar at the Patent Facilitating Centre in Delhi, devices for yoga practice (rather than yogic exercises) have been patented in the United States since 1978 (http://www.indianpatents.org.in/yogic_june06.htm, accessed 15 May 2012).
18.
The TKDL is intended to protect various kinds of cultural knowledge and houses several projects. The initiative to register yoga postures is a collaborative project run by the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Department of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy) and the Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga (MDNIY) in Delhi; see http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/Abouttkdl.asp?GL=Eng (accessed 22 February 2011).
19.
See Meera Nanda on “‘Owning’ Yoga.” in Himāl (www.himalmag.com/component/content/article/3550-owning-yoga.html, accessed 1 March 2011).
20.
For helpful overviews on the growing number of historical, sociological, and anthropological studies on modern yoga see De Michelis (2007), Newcombe (2009).
21.
De Michelis (2004, 2); in Chap. 6 she gives a detailed account of her taxonomic divisions.
22.
Examples of the latter category (MDY) are the Brahma Kumaris and Sahaja Yoga.
23.
According to De Michelis, Iyengar Yoga is a paradigmatic form of MPY, whereas the yoga of Chinmoy can be classified as MMY.
24.
Alter (1997, 92).
25.
White (2012a, 7).
26.
Alter (1992, 92).
27.
For the concept of embodiment see Csordas (1990, 1993).
28.
In search of a descriptive model to map coexisting and partly overlapping forms of modern yoga, one might more appropriately view the “spiritual” and the “physical” as the x and the y axis in a coordinate system, charting each variant of yoga along these axes.
29.
The emergence and glorification of self-care in post-traditional societies has been explored by Ziguras (2004). The assumption of a particular Hindu view, however, recalls the difficulties in defining Hinduism (see Lipner 2004; Malinar 2009).
30.
De Michelis (2004, 189). In 2008 De Michelis suggests a fifth category: the “Neo-Hindu style of Modern Yoga” (2008, 22) including, for instance, mass yoga camps in a Hindu-nationalist spirit (Alter 2008).
31.
De Michelis (2004, 7).
32.
See Fuchs (1990, 2006), cf. Schnäbele (2010), De Michelis (2004), Newcombe (2007, 2008), Ceccomori (2001), and Syman (2010).
33.
Fuchs (1990, slightly extended in 2006) uses the German terms: Konsolidierung, Institutionalisierung, Organisation, Professionalisierung.
34.
De Michelis (2004).
35.
In the 1960s, yoga in Germany was mainly Sivananda Yoga, whereas in Britain Iyengar Yoga dominated.
36.
On the concept of pilgrimage in this context see Burger (2006).
37.
Strauss (2005, 116).
38.
Hoyez (2005).
39.
Hoyez (2007).
40.
For further readings see Whicher (1998), Whicher and Carpenter (2003), Jacobsen (2005), Samuel (2008), and White (2012b), to mention only a few recent publications.
41.
Jacobsen (2005, 17), Whicher and Carpenter (2003, 1), Singleton and Byrne (2008b, 5), Samuel (2008, 178), and White (2012a, 2).
42.
In popular yoga literature the simplified genealogical tree is commonly used: see Tietke (2007) in his “5000 years” [sic] of yoga. Recently, Lipner (2004), 24 employed the banyan metaphor to explain Hinduism(s).
43.
White (2012a, 2). In the following I shall focus on semantics relevant to grasp the development of modern Hatha Yoga. For lack of space I do not elaborate on interlinked concepts such as bhaktiyoga, jñanayoga, karmayoga, rājayoga and others whose meanings were subject of several classical and medieval Indian texts.
44.
Ibid.
45.
Ibid; for a present-day lexicon entry “yoga” and its diverse meanings see Alter (2004, 11).
46.
Singleton (2010, 15).
47.
On the Yogasūtra and its interpretation see Whicher (1998); for other foundational and “classical” yoga texts see White (2012b).
48.
Sjoman 1996; some Indologists assume that what came to be known as the tantric tradition was antedated by the practices of renouncers between 900 and 1200 (see overview by Newcombe 2009, 987), or as early as the sixth century CE (Whicher and Carpenter 2003, 8).
49.
For a profound discussion of the term haṭhayoga see Birch (2011); compare the translations by Alter (2004, 24), Bühnemann (2007, 11), Staal (1993, 71), and White (2012a, 15).
50.
The date of the Indian source is disputed (see footnote 5). Here I follow Alter (2004, 21) although Bühnemann (2007, 7) assumes that the Haṭhayogapradīpikā was composed in the fifteenth/sixteenth century CE.
51.
Jacobson (2005, 4).
52.
See Malinar (2009, 254–256), Jacobson (2005, 9), and Schreiner (2009).
53.
On Islamic thought in relation to yoga see Jacobsen (2005, 19) and White (2012b, Chaps. 7 and 15).
54.
Alter (2004, 20).
55.
Whicher and Carpenter (2003).
56.
See Sjoman (1996, 56) for Dayananda Sarasvati’s account on yogis destroying manuscripts of the latter category; cf. Wujastyk (2009, 200–203).
57.
See Sjoman (1996, 37 and 40), Whicher and Carpenter (2003, 6), Bühnemann (2007, 20–21), White (2009, 246–247), Singleton (2010, 5).
58.
On the discrepancy between image and textual description see Gharote 2006, xxxii. An example of a changed posture is kūrmāsana (tortoise pose): its present-day performance clearly differs from its textual counterpart in the Haṭhayogapradīpikā.
59.
Bühnemann (2007).
60.
Sjoman (1996), Bühnemann (2007), and Singleton (2010, 29). According to White (2012a, 10, 17) there was reference neither to postures nor controlled breathing in sources antedating the ninth century CE.
61.
Bühneman (2007, 143–145).
62.
Sjoman (1996).
63.
Both yoga gurus published tutorials that were translated into several languages: Yoga and Health (Yesudian and Haich 1953, Hungarian original from 1941), and Light on Yoga (Iyengar 1966). Since the publication of the latter, Iyengar has continued to develop and vary exercises.
64.
In June 2010, the TKDL had reportedly registered more than 900 postures (see Emily Wax, “The Great Yoga Crackdown,” in The Washington Post, 23 August 2010; download at http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/PressCoverage.asp, accessed 12 January 2012). Unfortunately, the TKDL did not provide information in regards to its method of data collection or evaluation. However, on its homepage it lists 38 seemingly authoritative books as “sources of information,” all of which are authored, translated, and published by Indians (between 1920 and 2008) and include both historical and modern texts. (http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/SourceInfo.asp?GL=Eng, accessed 12 January 2012).
This extraordinarily high number of yoga postures is substantiated by the Lonavla Yoga Institute in Pune, India: on behalf of the institute, and subsidized by the Indian government, Manohar Laxman Gharote et al. (2006) compiled an Encyclopedia of Traditional Asanas with about 900 entries, including up to 100 different applications of a particular āsana and then several entries without any description of the content or technique. This reference book is methodologically problematic because it does not differentiate between āsana names used in primary sources, in secondary literature, and in popular twentieth-century books about yoga. For instance, it describes a version of unmukha-pīṭha suitable “for the pregnant woman” (Gharote 2006, 326), although before independence women were excluded from learning postural yoga. Elsewhere Gharote (2006, xxxvii) refers to “asanas” from Celtic, Egyptian, and Mexican civilization.
Cf. Bühnemann (2007, 179–290). In her study on yoga postures mentioned in Indian manuscripts between 1625 and 2003, she discovered a total of 351 different āsana names, several of which refer to similar postures. Admittedly some positions described in early texts are absent in modern yoga curricula, e.g., tapakāsana, hanging upside down by feet tied on a rope see Bühnemann 2007, 51, 151).
65.
Bühnemann (2007, 17) and Gharote et al. (2006, xxvii).
66.
Bühnemann (2007, 17) and Sjoman (1996, 45).
67.
Eliade’s view has been taken up in several popular books on yoga, see Tietke (2007). On the meanings and postures associated with tāḍāsana see Bühnemann (2007, 162). On the problem of defining a yoga posture vis-à-vis a similar general pose see Singleton’s contribution in this volume (chapter “Transnational Exchange and the Genesis of Modern Postural Yoga”).
68.
White (2009, 244).
69.
White (2012a, 15).
70.
In the late nineteenth century, the Hindu reformer Dayananda Sarasvati spent nine years wandering the Himalayas in search of “true” yogis, and finding none (Sjoman 1996, 55).
71.
Jacobsen (2005, 23).
72.
On the performance of khecarī mudrā see Mallison (2005, 108); on sadhus who proudly perform their yogic prowess see Hausner (2007, 165–166).
73.
I hesitate to generalize today’s yoga in terms of an “invented tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) or as “neo-traditionalism” (Pordié 2008) since both concepts presuppose a contrast to an assumed continuity and invariability of tradition. Moreover, some schools of present-day yoga explicitly advance hybrid forms.
74.
See, for instance, Singleton and Byrne (2008a, 6–7).
75.
See Bruno Latour’s famous argument that We Have Never Been Modern (1993) and Shmuel Eisenstadt’s postulation for Multiple Modernities (2002).
76.
Singleton (2010, 9–10, 18).
77.
See Alter (2004, xix). At the beginning of the twentieth century, several Indian authors sought to explain Indian concepts of the body in modern medical terminology, see Wujastyk (2009).
78.
Singleton et al. (2012).
79.
Alter (2004, 21). According to Alter, this development was antedated by Orientalist studies on yoga, published from 1851 to 1930 (ibid. 6).
80.
Sanskrit is primarily a liturgical language that has many loanwords in present-day Indian vernaculars. Strictly speaking, the names of several postures can reference both Sanskrit and Hindi, among others. Both languages are written in Devanagari script, yet pronunciation differs. This distinction is reproduced in transliteration: yoga (Sanskrit)/yog (Hindi); āsana (Sanskrit)/āsan (Hindi); yet guru (Sanskrit)/guru (Hindi), etc. In the case of Hatha Yoga it is generally assumed that Indian names derive from Sanskrit, and therefore several books provide a Sanskrit glossary. This use of Sanskrit is in line with religious conventions, yet also reflects a modern Indian practice that is analogous to the Western use of technical terms from Latin.
81.
Based upon the āsana compilations by Sjoman (1996), Gharote et al. (2006), and Bühnemann (2007), there is no evidence of this posture in earlier yoga sources.
82.
Appadurai’s notion of imaginary landscapes (1996, 31) follows Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” (1983), which was developed in the late 1960s.
83.
Appadurai (1996, 33).
84.
Kearny (1995, 553).
85.
Strauss (2005), Hoyez (2005, 2007).
86.
Initially, the term “deterritorialization” was introduced by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1980) to address a resolution of chains of associations, and in particular the issue of displaced (rather than deconstructed) significations. For example, a clearly recognizable form (“assemblage”) that occupies a certain discursive terrain can be decentered (i.e., deterritorialized) and relinked with another set of relations (i.e., “reterritorialized”). Thus Deleuze’s and Guattari’s notion of territory is highly abstract rather than geographical.
87.
On anthropological debates related to the concept of culture see Gupta and Ferguson (1992), Hannerz (1992) and Hastrup and Olwig (1997); for a summary account see Kearny (1995, 556–557). A sociological perspective on culture theory has been offered by Reckwitz (2005); for a philosophical statement in favor of transculturality see Welsch (1999).
88.
There are diverse opinions as to the analytic role and impact of embodiment (implicit, corporeal knowledge) and as to the role of practice as a mode or negotiating cultural difference (see Csordas 1990; Rao 2005). If “knowledge” is understood to include embodied routines and tacit assumptions (as I do), epistemic communities result from shared social practice and vice versa.
89.
Schneider (2003, 224).
90.
Taussig (1993), see also Hahn (2011).
91.
For a genealogy of the term “flow” see Rockefeller (2011, 566).
92.
Appadurai (2010); on the epistemological difficulties associated with the term “context” see also Dilger and Hadolt (2010, 19–22).
93.
I agree with Stuart Rockefeller (2011) in his critique that academic studies on cultural flows often concentrate solely on a “managerial perspective” and thus raise several problems as to the authority of a scholar.
94.
Marcus (1995, 106–110).
95.
See Singleton and Byrne (2008a, 5), c.f. White (2012a).
96.
Mayūrāsana was already mentioned in the Haṭhayogapradīpika. To perform this āsana the yoga practitioner must balance the body like a horizontal stick while holding its weight on both elbows and forearms.
97.
Marcus (1995, 106–110).
98.
See Hauser, chapter “Touching the Limits, Assessing Pain: On Language Performativity, Health, and Well-Being in Yoga Classes”.
99.
According to the Indologist Frits Staal (1993, 69) the popular notion that in Asian thought “mind and body are one” is a contemporary Western trope rather than a reflection of Indian theories.

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Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65-67, Klagenfurt, 9020, Austria
Beatrix Hauser

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Institut für Kultur-, Literatur- und, Musikwissenschaften, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65-67, Klagenfurt, 9020, Austria
Beatrix Hauser

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Hauser, B. (2013). Introduction: Transcultural Yoga(s). Analyzing a Traveling Subject. In: Hauser, B. (eds) Yoga Traveling. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00315-3_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00315-3_1
Published: 10 April 2013
Publisher Name: Springer, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-00314-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-00315-3
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