Modern Yoga

THE YOGA TRADITION OF THE MYSORE PALACE

YOGA UNVEILED: THE EVOLUTION AND ESSENCE OF A

SPIRITUAL TRADITION

By N. E. Sjoman
2nd ed., New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1999
Pp. 124 + 20 color plates. $30.00, ISBN-13
978-8170173892.

By Gita and Mukesh Desai

2 DVD set. three hours, fteen minutes
http://www.yogaunveiled.com 2004, $36.99.
REVIEWER :

YOGA IN MODERN INDIA: THE BODY BETWEEN SCIENCE

AND PHILOSOPHY

Christopher Key Chapple

Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA 90045

By Joseph S. Alter
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004
Pp. xxiii + 326. $24.95, ISBN-10 0-691-11873-6.
Since my review of studies of classical Yoga (Four Recent
Books on Yoga, RSR Vol. 27, No. 3, 2001, 239-42), several
new books of a scholarly nature have been published that
document the rise of popular or modern Yoga in contemporary western and Asian cultures. In this review I will highlight insights from these studies. I will also suggest that this
new eld of study holds great promise for interdisciplinary
research and reveals not only the exibility and adaptability
of this ancient Indic tradition, but also its ability to meet the
special needs of modern and postmodern individuals.
Yoga, practiced regularly by an estimated fteen million
Americans, originated in India more than 2,500 years ago,
with images of Yoga poses dating as early as the cities of
Mohenjodaro and Harappa (ca. 2500 BCE). Textual mention
of Yoga appears in the Buddhist and Upanisadic traditions

starting around 500 BCE and full explanations of Hatha
Yoga, replete with multiple complex poses and breathing
exercises, date from the early medieval period (ca. 1000 CE).
By the time of the Muslim incursion and the later British
period, Yoga was well known. It was embraced by Sus and
free-thinking Britons, including leaders of the Theosophical
movement, who arranged the publication of early translations of the Yoga Su tra and other texts.
As Yoga became known in the Western world through
the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and eventually Swami
Vivekananda and Paramahamsa Yogananda, some early pioneers ventured forth to encounter and learn the tradition
from adepts in India. In addition to the teachings brought
back from India and written about by Americans and Europeans, the lecture tour, aptly depicted by the author Henry
James in his novel The Bostonians, proved to be an effective
means for the dissemination of information about Yoga more
than a hundred years ago. In 1955 the rst studio dedicated
to Hatha Yoga was opened in San Francisco by Walt and
Magana Baptiste. In the 1960s centers for the practice of

POSITIONING YOGA: BALANCING ACTS ACROSS

CULTURES

By Sarah Strauss
Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005
Pp. xx + 185. $34.95, ISBN-13 9781859737392.

A HISTORY OF MODERN YOGA: PATANJALI AND

WESTERN ESOTERICISM

By Elizabeth de Michelis
London and New York: Continuum, 2004
Pp. xvii + 282. $44.95, ISBN-10 0826487726, ISBN-13:
978-0826487728.

HATHA YOGA: ITS CONTEXT, THEORY AND PRACTICE

By Mikel Burley
New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000
Pp. xviii + 321. $28.50, ISBN 81-208-1705-2.

YOGA BENEATH THE SURFACE: AN AMERICAN

STUDENT AND HIS INDIAN TEACHER DISCUSS YOGA
PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE

By Srivatsa Ramaswami and David Hurvitz

New York: Marlowe & Company, 2006
Pp. xxxii + 256. $10.85, ISBN-10 1569242941,
ISBN-13: 978-1569242940.

ASIAN MEDICINE, TRADITION AND MODERNITY:

SPECIAL YOGA ISSUE

Edited by Mark Singleton

Koninklujke Brill NV, Leiden. Vol. 3, No. 1, 2007
Online: http://www.brill.nl/asme, ISSN 1573-420X.
Religious Studies Review, Vol. 34 No. 2, June 2008
2008 Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, Inc.

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Kaustub Desikachar in Chennai, B. K. S. Iyengar in Pune,

Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, Srivatsa Ramaswami in Chennai,
and others.
The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace provides a translation of a small but important section of the Srtattvanidhi, a
midnineteenth century manuscript from the Mysore Palace
(the greater part of which has now been published by the
Oriental Research Institute in Mysore). It includes 121 illustrations of yoga postures with accompanying numbered
verses. In the Introduction, Sjoman presents a somewhat
staccato, truncated version of the history of Yoga. He cites
three early translations of Patanjalis Yoga Su tra (James
Haughton Woods, Bengali Baba, and Hariharananda
Aranya), claiming that only the last has any relation to
actual practice (37). He also mentions the standard
medieval texts of the Hatha Yoga tradition, the
Hat hayogaprad pika , the Siva Sam hita , the Ghera nd a



Sam hita , and the Gorak s asataka (ca. 1400-1800 CE). Aside


from the text that he presents and translates, Sjoman claims
that no serious books on the practice of Yoga could be found
for nearly eighty years until Theos Bernards Hatha Yoga,
which documents his learning that took place sometime in
the 1940s (38). The next widely disseminated books on
Yoga appear in the 1960s, The Complete Illustrated Book of
Yoga by Swami Vishnudevananda (1960) and the rst
edition of Light on Yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar (1966). Sjomans
book suggests that much more research needs to be done on
the presence of yoga training in courts of Indias many small
regional kingdoms. Sjoman notes, There are a number of
private libraries under the aegis of ascetic movements where
yoga was practiced . . . There has been no systematic attempt
to use the various royal archives as a reference to trace these
traditions (59-60). Sjomans work begins to address this
lacuna, presenting an excellent translation of an important
courtly text on Yoga. The book also includes several helpful
indices that compare and provide references to names of
Yoga postures from several texts.
J. Alter, noted for his earlier study of the culture of
Indian wrestling, probes early twentieth century gures who
contributed to the modernization of Yoga in Yoga in Modern
India: The Body between Science and Philosophy. The rst
gure, Swami Kuvalayananda (1883-1966), attempted to
show how science afrms the benecial effects of Yoga
practice. He established Kaivalyadhama Yoga Ashram in
Lonavala (between Pune and Bombay) in 1924, where he
conducted laboratory experiments to establish the efcacy of
Yoga. Several American scientists conducted research into
Yoga at his center, including K. T. Behanan of Yale University. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter,
Indira Gandhi, visited the ashram in 1958. The ashrams
early studies attempted to measure air volume and oxygen
content in relation to breathing exercises. Studies in the

Hatha Yoga were established throughout the United States

by disciples of Swami Sivananda (who had trained Mircea
Eliade in the 1930s), including Swamis Satchidananda and
Vishnudevananda. Other networks of Yoga centers were
opened by Swami Rama, Yogi Bhajan, and many others.
Today, in Los Angeles alone, more than 300 studios can be
found, each of which traces its core practice back to one of
several root teachers or guru lineages. Many of these centers
are solely interested in the physical culture of Yoga. Others
maintain direct and pronounced links with the spiritual
aspects of the tradition.
In the several recent books and media presentations
listed above, sociologists, anthropologists, and documentary
lmmakers have turned their attention to the contemporary
phenomenon of Yoga. Some of the books deal exclusively
with the Indian origins of modern Yoga, while others, including the documentary Yoga Unveiled, chronicle the spread of
Yoga to the West.
N. E. Sjomans The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace
documents one of the most widely known traditions of physical Yoga, established by Krishnamacarya (1888-1989) in
South India starting in the 1920s. Krishnamacarya had allegedly traveled to Tibet and throughout India, studying with a
variety of teachers from Vaishnava, Saiva, and Buddhist traditions. According to this narrative (which for reasons
beyond the scope of this article is now open to question),
while on retreat in caves and other remote locations, he
perfected a sequence of yoga postures or a sanas that he then
taught at the Mysore Palace, where he received patronage
from the Maharaja, Krishnarajendra Wodeyar IV. Mysore,
one of the many kingdoms that did not come under direct
British administration, has long prided itself as a repository
for Indias rich cultural heritage, and, with earnings from
rich agricultural and manufacturing endeavors, the Maharaja maintained a magnicent research library and university. Within this environment, Krishnamacarya taught
several Indians who continue to teach in this tradition, and
he also taught one notable western woman, Indra Devi
(1899-2002), who was born in Latvia. Sjoman points out that
life in the Mysore Palace was not isolated, and that the texts
on Yoga found in the library there indicate inuence from
British gymnastics. Sjoman comments: In the case of the
yoga asana tradition we can see that it is a dynamic traditions that has drawn on many sourcestraditional yoga
texts, indigenous exercises, western gymnastics, therapeutics, and even perhaps the military training exercises of a
foreign dominating power (60). Sjoman suggests that ropes,
which became part of the Mysore Yoga tradition, may have
been used for practice in scaling walls of forts which must
have constituted a part of British military training (58).
Krishnamacaryas most prominent disciples who are teaching today are his son and grandson, T. K. V. Desikachar and

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Deleuze, he avers to Nietzsches concern with the nonbinary transmutation of negation into active creative afrmation (227). He hints that Yoga, as a form of fetishism,
provides a path beyond relativism, antirelativism, or antiantirelativism by enabling a perspective that is trenchantly
critical of what appears to be real, without proclaiming,
simply, that there are multiple meaningful realities (227).
In addition to references to Quine and multisided ethnoscapes, Alter turns to the traditional interpreters of Yoga,
noting that Yoga embodies the whole organic universe
(237), and that Yoga recognizes the human person as a
beast with cultural credentials. Almost sounding like
Nietzsche himself, Alter proclaims There is no agency in
Yoga other than that of atman. There is no theology. No
ritual. Gods are disembodied and therefore powerless. The
possibility of transcendence is dependent on Life itself, as
Life is experienced through the body by a person who practices Yoga (239). In a search for meaning, the anthropologist nds a home through Yoga in the body.
While Alter investigates teachers whose inuence has
been largely limited to an Indian context, S. Strauss provides
a narrative and often rst person account of her experiences
of Yoga in India, Europe and America in her book Positioning
Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. This book provides a
close study of the global spread of Yoga by tracing the
history of the Divine Life Society. This organization was
established by the now-legendary Sivananda (1887-1963), a
practicing physician by the original name of Dr. Kuppuswami Iyer who moved to the Himalayas from his native
Tamil Nadu, after practicing western-style allopathic medicine successfully for ten years in Malaysia.
Inspired by the writings of Swami Vivekananda, he
eventually settled in Rishikesh, in northern India, taking the
vows of renunciation and a new name, Swami Sivananda.
Because he knew little Hindi, his primary language of communication in his adopted home was English. He eventually
published several dozen books on Yoga in English, starting
in 1929. Students ocked to receive his teachings from all
parts of India and the rest of the world, including the father
of the modern academic discipline of the history of religions,
M. Eliade, who spent six months studying with him on the
banks of the Ganges. Eliades doctoral dissertation, which
launched an illustrious career, was eventually published
under the title Yoga: Immortality and Freedom and remains a
classic in the eld.
Many of the forerunners of the worldwide Yoga movement trained at Sivanandas Divine Light Society, including
Swami Chidananda (b. 1916he trained L. Folan, who popularized Yoga on American television in the 1970s), Swami
Vishnudevananda (1927-93, who established centers worldwide and helped promote dialogue between western and
eastern Europe before the collapse of the Soviet Union),

1970s and 1980s focused on asthma, obesity, cancer, diabetes, sinusitis, and emotional disorders. Alter notes, Yoga
was not simply modernized by Kuvalayananda; Yoga was
analyzed in such a way that it has come to harmonize with
the modernity manifest in science to create an alternative.
And to a large extent it is this harmonic hybridity that has
enabled Yoga to colonize the West (106). Alter notes other
medical linkages with Yoga, such as the work of Swami
Sivananda, a South Indian physician whose work is fully
discussed by S. Strauss (see further discussion), and the
work of K. N. Udupa, who wrote Stress and Its Management
by Yoga (1980). This book blends technical terms from traditional Indian physiology and contemporary biochemistry.
Some of the experiments conducted to establish the efcacy
of Yoga by Dr. Udupa are clearly bizarre, such as holding
mice in test tubes in unnatural inverted postures to demonstrate the health effects of the shoulder stand and handstand.
Although these experiments were part of an overall project
to measure acetylcholine, cholinesterase, diamineoxidase,
and catecholamine levels of ones biochemistry (67), Alter
suggests, rather provocatively, that such research constitutes a complex kind of mythmaking. He even suggests
that modern Science is a kind of pseudo-Yoga insofar as it
seeks endless progress and perfect knowledge (69).
Alter also notes the role that Yoga plays in the development and maintenance of national identity, while simultaneously commenting that due to the globalization of Yoga, it
can no longer be owned by a single culture or national
identity. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), established by Dr. K. B. Hedgewar in the 1920s, hoped to promote
a muscular Hinduism and adapted several Yoga postures
as part of a tness regimen for its members. One of Alters
informants, Dr. K. Pal, was afliated with the Bharatiya Yoga
Sansthan (BYS), which later gave birth to the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad (VHP) and helped to develop the nationalist rhetoric that undergirds the Bharatiya Janata Parishad (BJP)
political party that held power in India during the late 1990s
and early 2000s. However, Dr. Pal, like many others,
eschewed any links between Yoga and politics or even religion, claming that the basic philosophy of the RSS was
incompatible with Yoga, since Yoga is universal and not
limited to Hinduism (167) and Yogas denition of universal truth is simply beyond belief, and the embodiment of
what is beyond belief . . . does not make sense as a nationalist project (171). Alter himself seems to agree with this
assessment. He states, As a cultural system Yoga does not
present a threat to the integrity of any other cultural system
(211-12).
In his concluding remarks, Alter cites anthropological
theory, with a focus on A. Appadurai and M. Taussig. He
discusses mimetic skepticism and mimetic excess as valid
conceptual categories for understanding Yoga. Citing

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body-cosmos continuum mediated through the breath or life

force (pra n a), Vivekananda sought to establish the healing

powers and transcendent possibilities of Yoga practice.
Modern Yoga, according to De Michelis, developed into two
primary forms: Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) and Modern
Meditational Yoga (MMY). In the former category, she lists
Iyengar Yoga, and in the latter, Transcendental Meditation
(TM) and many modern Buddhist groups. She identies
three primary phases in the development of this movement:
popularization (1950s to mid-1970s), consolidation (mid1970s to late 1980s), and acculturation (late 1980s to date).
In this latest phase, self-regulating guilds arose that standardized the practice of Yoga, and some styles of Yoga, most
notably Iyengar, rose to prominence. Citing the history and
development of Iyengar Yoga through his three well known
books (Light on Yoga, 1966; Light on Pramanayama, 1981;
Light on the Yoga Su tras of Patajali, 1993), she tracks the
emergence of Yoga as an accepted, global, cultural form. She
characterizes Modern Postural Yoga as a healing ritual of
secular religion. Following Victor Turner, she suggests
that a Yoga a sana class allows one to separate from the
humdrum of daily life, transition into a state of serenity, and
then incorporate the benets of this relaxing experience into
ones lifestyle. To account for the success of Yoga, De Michelis writes, in a vein similar to that of Strauss, that it offers
some solace, physical, psychological or spiritual, in a world
where solace and reassurance are sometimes elusive (260).
M. Burleys Hatha-Yoga: Its Context, Theory and Practice
straddles many of the methodological issues that undergird
the studies cited earlier. Burley, himself a Yoga adept as
illustrated in Appendix A of his book, attempts a comprehensive historical and textual analysis of the Yoga tradition. He
begins with a somewhat undernuanced assertion that the
Aryan invasion did not occur, and appropriately links the
practice of Yoga to the early Upanis ads and depictions of

Siva. He presents a competent summary of the textual traditions of Yoga, and shows the integral relationship between
Patajalis Yoga Su tra and the later Hat ha Yoga materials.

He provides a useful summary of modern Yoga history and
surveys the scientic studies mentioned previously by Alter
and includes additional material, including the Menninger
Foundation studies of Swami Rama and Harvard Medical
School research into the Tibetan Yoga tradition of heat generation (tummo). He cites one study by K. S. Gopal that
compared a group who had practiced hatha-yoga for six
months with a group who had no yoga experience but
engaged regularly in other forms of light exercise, and found
the basal breath rate of the former group to be 10 breaths per
minute as opposed to 23 per minute in the latter (228).
Clearly a scholar-advocate of Yoga, Burley incorporates both
scientic research and the textual studies on Yoga. He refers
to the groundbreaking work of Ian Whicher, which I

Swami Satchidananda (1914-2002, founder of Integral Yoga

and teacher of Dr. D. Ornish, prominent health advocate),
Swami Chinmayananda (1916-93, cofounder of the Vishva
Hindu Parishad, a forerunner of the global Hindutva movement), Swami Satyananda (b. 1924, founder of the Bihar
School of Yoga) and many others. From this location in the
upper Ganges Valley, Sivananda launched a template for the
practice of Yoga that has spread worldwide.
Strausss research methodology combines historical
information interspersed with her journal entries as a participant observer. She studied Yoga at various locations in
Rishikesh, and at Sivananda-inspired classes in Germany
and suburban Washington, DC. She documents Swami
Satchidanandas contribution to the Parliament of World
Religions held in Chicago in 1993, on the centenary of the
original gathering that launched the career of Swami Vivekananda as a global spokesperson for Yoga and Indian
culture. She explains Yogas contemporary importance in
developing shared communities of practice and writes
about the emergence of Eco-Yoga. She notes the importance
of computer-enhanced communication for the Yoga movement and, while acknowledging the political difculties that
sometimes arise in the establishment and maintenance of
organizations dedicated to the study and practice of Yoga,
she paints a positive picture of Yoga as a way of bringing a
measure of calm to our harried lives (143).
E. De Michelis provides an excellent historical introduction to the practice of Yoga as it moved from its classical,
primarily Hindu context onto the world stage. Her book, A
History of Modern Yoga, begins with a denition of esotericism, noting that this somewhat elusive tradition includes
the promotion of correspondences with the natural world,
the development of imagination, and self-transformation
through practice. In India, the Neo-Hindu and Neo-Vedanta
movements articulated these core ideas and experiences in a
manner that could be communicated beyond the standard
gurudisciple relationship to a broader public. Rammohan
Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Keshubchandra Sen all
played important roles in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in communicating core religious truths outside the
normal connes of religious institutions. With the added
inspiration of the ecstatic mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1835-86),
the terrain was set for the emergence of Swami Vivekananda
(1864-1903) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century as the harbinger of a new way of being spiritual that
entailed practices of Yoga, not adherence to religious orthodoxy or orthopraxy. Like Kuvalayananda, Vivekananda
sought to establish Yoga as a science and achieve widespread
acceptance of its principles and practices.
Against this backdrop, De Michelis highlights Vivekanandas Raja Yoga as providing the frame upon which
Modern Yoga became woven. By emphasizing an integrated

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lead articles by two authors, E. De Michelis and J. Alter,

whose books have been proled in this essay. As with the
books reviewed earlier, their articles cover similar material
employing a methodology rooted in social history and
sociology. Similarly, S. Newcombes article, Stretching for
Health and Well-Being: Yoga and Women in Britain 19601980, explores the appeal of Yoga to women after World
War II. Sparked by Richard Hittlemans American television
series that was broadcast in Britain and a variety of popular
publications, many middle-class women adapted practices of
Yoga to enhance their youthfulness and escape from the
drudgery of the housewifes lifestyle.
Singletons article, Suggestive Therapeutics: New
Thoughts Relationship to Modern Yoga, similarly traces
American inuence on Yoga, highlighting the work of P. P.
Quimby and its inuence on Yoga. His New Thought movement inspired Mary Baker Eddy to establish Christian
Science and gured prominently in the writing of W. Jamess
Varieties of Religious Experience. Singleton documents
how the language of New Thought inuenced Swami Vivekananda, Paramhamsa Yogananda, and William Walter
Atkins (a.k.a. Yogi Ramacharaka). Interestingly, this essay
does not discuss Sri Krishnamurti or the contemporaneous
Theosophical movement.
The balance of this issue explores traditional Asian
systems of Yoga with expert articles by F. Smith on
Ayurveda in the Mahabharata, L. Kohn on Daoist Yoga, M. A.
Chaoul on Tibetan Yoga, and an illustrated article by G.
Buhnemann on a nineteenth-century Hatha Yoga manuscript. The range of materials and diverse methods employed
in this volume indicate the rich diversity of research being
done in the eld of Yoga.
The nal resource that I wish to consider in this review
is, appropriately for the media age, not a book, but a DVD:
Yoga Unveiled: The Evolution and Essence of a Spiritual Tradition, by Gita and M. Desai. This remarkable documentary
narrates the history of Yoga and includes interviews with
practitioner-scholars such as Georg Feuerstein. It includes
footage of senior teachers such as B. K. S. Iyengar, Patabhi
Jois, and Indra Devi, as well as contemporary teachers
Rodney Yee and Patricia Walden. In the second part, it
updates the quest begun by Swami Kuvalayananda by citing
studies and interviewing physicians and scholars who have
continued to afrm the salubrious benets of yoga and meditation. These include Drs. Dean Ornish, Mehmet Oz, and Jon
Kabat-Zinn. Ideally suited for classroom use, this digital
recording allows students to witness variations on Krishnamacaryas now-famous sequence of yoga postures and
hear scientic testimony about the health benets of a Yoga
practice.
The books and video reviewed here convey a sense of
why Yoga has become so popular throughout the world.

reviewed earlier, and emphasizes the practical applications

of Yoga for the purpose of self-transformation and purication. His bibliography of primary and secondary sources,
although not exhaustive, will guide the careful reader on a
path of further study.
Yoga Beneath the Surface exemplies the previously
mentioned acculturation phase of Yoga. David Hurwitz, a
Yoga practitioner, interviews Srivatsa Ramaswami. Having
studied in Chennai with Krishnamacarya for over thirty
years, Ramaswami holds a great deal of knowledge and experience in regard to the Yoga tradition. Though this book is
written for a Yoga audience and not intended for the scholarly reader, the depth of the questions and responses shows
that serious students of Yoga have indeed become de facto
scholars of Yoga. In the opening section on Yoga Philosophy,
the categories include no less than twenty-two technical Sanskrit terms, such as vaira gya (nonattachment), purus a (pure

consciousness), maitr (compassion), and tanma tra (subtle
elements). Similarly, dozens of technical Sanskrit terms are
sana, Pra na ya ma, Meditation, and
used in the sections on A

Yoga Therapy. The serious student of Modern Yoga not only
achieves exibility of body, but also can be exposed to and
required to use or become familiar with a signicant Sanskrit vocabulary and gain an understanding of Indian physiology and cosmology. The twenty-ve tattvas of Sa m khya

philosophy, once relegated to textbooks and appendices on
Indian thought, have taken on new life in the Yoga studios of
the world.
Ramaswami and Hurvitz converse on a number of
topics, including ethical practices (yama and niyama), the
nature of the afictions (kleshas), the constitution of the
subtle body, and the role of mantra and prayer in Yoga
practice. Ramaswami gives insightful interpretations of
several Yoga a sanas and breathing exercises, with stories
of the life of his teacher, Sri Krishnamacharya. Moving
beyond the strictly technical, anatomical approach,
Ramaswamis characterizations of Yoga poses border on the
poetic: Sarvangasana is benecial to all parts of the body,
including the internal organs . . . daily practice will help
move the organs . . . to their original place. Sarvangasana
also helps to relax the muscles of the lower extremities. . . . It helps the heart to rest snugly in the chest cavity
(206). This book includes practical advice on such universal
concerns as sleep, hunger, and death, and demonstrates the
integrated approach now common in the purveyance of
Yoga instruction.
A recent issue of a new journal, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity published by Brill is dedicated to the topic
of Yoga in its modern form. It is edited by M. Singleton, who
completed his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University
on The Body and the Centre: Contexts of Postural Yoga in
the Modern Age (2007). This issue of the journal features

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context. It is also interesting that the methodology has

tended toward thick description rather than interpretation,
with the exception of Alters attempt to view Yoga through
the prism of fetishism, an emerging technical term from
the eld of anthropology. In the future we can anticipate
studies that examine Yoga through phenomenological,
postmodern, deconstructive, feminist, and neofundamentalist hermeneutical approaches.
Yoga has a long history on the world stage and interest
in Yoga shows no sign of slowing down. Like the American
action movie, Yoga is well suited for export: it offers a visceral experience, emphasizes movement more than words,
and can be interpreted in different ways by different audiences. These books and video can help us understand the
enduring allure of Yoga and, as noted earlier, invite many
avenues for future research.

Yoga provides a way for the modern person, unwilling to

commit to a xed ideology, yet in need of solace and
meaning in a turbulent world, to engage body and mind
in a practice that brings relief from the onslaught of everyday busyness and stress. These books do not address in a
signicant way some of the shadow side that has been
associated with Yoga, including the Vatican critiques, the
occasional scandalous guru, the slide into corporatization
that has resulted in the consolidation of many private Yoga
studios, and the trivialization of Yoga through media marketing. Other books, such as H. Coxs Turning East (1977),
A. Storrs Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen (1996),
J. Kramer and D. Alstands The Guru Papers (1993), and G.
Feursteins Holy Madness (1991, 2006), address some of
these issues and would help round out a course syllabus to
provide critical thinking and discussion in a classroom

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