Modern yoga

In the early years of British colonialism in India, the elites from the United States, Europe, and India rejected the concept of hatha yoga and perceived it as unsociable.[1] By the late 19th century, yoga was presented to the Western world in different forms such as by Vivekananda and Madame Blavatsky. It embodied the period's distaste for yoga postures and hatha yoga more generally, as practised by the despised Nath yogins, by not mentioning them.[2] Blavatsky helped to pave the way for the spread of yoga in the West by encouraging interest in occult and esoteric doctrines and a vision of the "mystical East".[3] She had travelled to India in 1852-3, and became greatly interested in yoga in general, while despising and distrusting hatha yoga.[4] In the 1890s, Vivekananda taught a mixture of yoga breathwork (pranayama), meditation, and positive thinking, derived from the new thought movement, again explicitly rejecting the practice of asanas and hatha yoga.[5]

A few decades later, a very different form of yoga, the prevailing yoga as exercise, was created by Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya, starting in the 1920s. It was predominantly physical, consisting mainly or entirely of asanas, postures derived from those of hatha yoga, but with a contribution from western gymnastics. They advocated this form of exercise under the guise of the supposed specific medical benefits of particular postures, quietly dropping its religious connotations, encouraged by the prevailing Indian nationalism which needed something to build an image of a strong and energetic nation. The yoga that they created, however, was taken up predominantly in the English-speaking world, starting with America and Britain.[5]

The popularity of modern yoga increased as travel became more feasible, allowing exposure to different teachings and practices. Immigration restrictions were relaxed from India to the USA and some parts of Europe around the 1960s. And, spiritual gurus began to offer what they referred to as solutions to the problems of modern life. As new-age high profile individuals, such as the Beatles, tried out yoga, the practice became more visible and desirable as a means to improve life.[1]

Mark Singleton, a scholar of yoga's history and practices, states that De Michelis's typology provides categories useful as a way into the study of yoga in the modern age, but that it is not a "good starting point for history insofar as it subsumes detail, variation, and exception".[11] Singleton does not subscribe to De Michelis's interpretative framework, instead considering "modern yoga" to be a descriptive name for "yoga in the modern age".[11] He questions the De Michelis typology as follows:

Can we really refer to an entity called Modern Yoga and assume that we are talking about a discrete and identifiable category of beliefs and practices? Does Modern Yoga, as some seem to assume, differ in ontological status (and hence intrinsic value) from "traditional yoga"? Does it represent a rupture in terms of tradition rather than a continuity? And in the plethora of experiments, adaptations, and innovations that make up the field of transnational yoga today, should we be thinking of all these manifestations as belonging to Modern Yoga in any typological sense?

— Mark Singleton[11]

"The father of modern yoga"[12] Krishnamacharya teaching postural yoga in Mysore, 1930s[13]

Modern yoga is derived in part from Haṭha yoga (one aspect of traditional yoga),[14] with innovative practices that have taken the Indian heritage, experimented with techniques from non-Indic cultures, and radically evolved it into local forms worldwide.[15][13] The scholar of religion Andrea Jain calls modern yoga "a variety of systems that developed as early as the 19th century as a [response to] capitalist production, colonial and industrial endeavors, global developments in areas ranging from metaphysics to fitness, and modern ideas and values."[7] In contemporary practice, modern yoga is prescribed as a part of self-development and is believed to provide "increased beauty, strength, and flexibility as well as decreased stress".[7]

Modern yoga is variously viewed through "cultural prisms" including New Age religion, psychology, sports science, medicine,[16] photography,[17] and fashion.[18] Jain states that although "hatha yoga is traditionally believed to be the ur-system of modern postural yoga, equating them does not account for the historical sources". According to her, asanas "only became prominent in modern yoga in the early twentieth century as a result of the dialogical exchanges between Indian reformers and nationalists and Americans and Europeans interested in health and fitness".[19] In short, Jain writes, "modern yoga systems ... bear little resemblance to the yoga systems that preceded them. This is because [both] ... are specific to their own social contexts."[20]

Modern yoga has been led by disparate gurus for over a century, ranging from Vivekananda with his Vedanta-based yoga philosophy to Krishnamacharya with his gymnastic approach, his pupils including the influential Pattabhi Jois teaching asanas linked by flowing vinyasa movements and B. K. S. Iyengar teaching precisely-positioned asanas, often using props. The gurus' approaches to yoga span the tantra-based Kripalu Yoga of Swami Kripalvananda and the Siddha Yoga of Muktananda; the Bhaktiyoga of Svaminarayana, as of Sathya Sai Baba; the "inner technology" of Jaggi Vasudev's Isha Yoga and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's "Art of Living"; and finally the Hindu nation-building approaches of Eknath Ranade and of Swami Ramdev. Through the work of these gurus, yoga has been widely disseminated across the western world, and radically transformed in the process. Health benefits have been claimed; yoga has been brought to a "spiritual marketplace", different gurus competing for followers; and widely differing approaches have claimed ancient roots in Indian tradition.[21] The result has been to transform yoga from "a hidden, weird thing"[22] to "yoga studios on almost very corner",[22] in a "massive transition from spiritual practice to focusing on health and fitness".[23] The trend away from authority is continued in post-lineage yoga, which is practised outside any major school or guru's lineage.[24]

The author and yoga teacher Matthew Remski writes that Norman Sjoman[lower-alpha 3] considered modern yoga to have been influenced by South Indian wrestling exercises; Joseph Alter[lower-alpha 4] found it torn between esoteric and scientific; Mark Singleton[lower-alpha 5] discovered a collision of Western physical culture with Indian spirituality; while Elliott Goldberg[lower-alpha 6] depicted "a modern spirituality, written through richly realized characters" including Krishnamacharya, Sivananda, Indra Devi, and Iyengar.[26][27]

• 
  Vivekananda,
  Vedanta-based, 1893
• 
  Sathya Sai Baba,
  Tantra-based, 1996
• 
  Jaggi Vasudev,
  "inner technology", 2013
• 
  B. K. S. Iyengar
  precise asanas, 2004

Anya Foxen uses this c. 1928 photograph of the actress and dancer Marguerite Agniel in "Buddha position" by John de Mirjian to illustrate her view that modern yoga involves both cultural exchange and syncretism.[28]

Suzanne Newcombe, a scholar of modern yoga, especially in Britain, writes that modern yoga's development included "a long history of transnational intercultural exchange", including between India and countries in the western world, whether or not it is an "outgrowth of Neo-Hinduism". It is seemingly torn between being a secular physical fitness activity sometimes called "hatha yoga" (not the similarly named the medieval practice of Haṭha yoga), and a spiritual practice with historical roots in India. She noted that the historical, sociological, and anthropological aspects of modern yoga were starting to be researched.[29]

The scholar of religion Anya Foxen writes that "modern postural yoga", especially in America, was created through a complicated process involving both cultural exchange and syncretism of disparate approaches. Among the many ingredients are the subtle body and various strands of Greek philosophy, Western esotericism, and wellness programs for women based on such things as the teaching system of François Delsarte and the harmonial gymnastics of Genevieve Stebbins.[28]

James Mallinson, a scholar of Sanskrit manuscripts and yoga, writes that modern yoga's relationship to Hinduism is complex and contested; some Christians have challenged its inclusion in school curricula on the grounds that it is covertly Hindu, while the "Take Back Yoga" campaign of the Hindu American Foundation has challenged attempts to "airbrush the Hindu roots of yoga" from modern manifestations. Modern yoga, he writes, uses techniques from "a wide range of traditions, many of which are clearly not Hindu at all".[30] While yoga was integrated with Vedantic philosophy, "the first text to teach hathayoga says that it will work even for atheists, who ... did not believe in karma and rebirth".[30]