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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Hinduism
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Inhaling Spirit - Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,985
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Inhaling Spirit - Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga (Hardcover)
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Recent scholarship has shown that modern postural yoga is the
outcome of a complex process of transcultural exchange and
syncretism. This book doubles down on those claims and digs even
deeper, looking to uncover the disparate but entangled roots of
modern yoga practice. Anya Foxen shows that some of what we call
yoga, especially in North America and Europe, is genealogically
only slightly related to pre-modern Indian yoga traditions. Rather,
it is equally, if not more so, grounded in Hellenistic theories of
the subtle body, Western esotericism and magic, pre-modern European
medicine, and late-nineteenth-century women's wellness programs.
The book begins by examining concepts arising out of Greek
philosophy and religion, including Pythagoreanism, Stoicism,
Neo-Platonism, Galenic medicine, theurgy, and other cultural
currents that have traditionally been categorized as "Western
esotericism," as well as the more recent examples which scholars of
American traditions have labeled "metaphysical religion."
Marshaling these under the umbrella category of "harmonialism,"
Foxen argues that they represent a history of practices that were
gradually subsumed into the language of yoga. Orientalism and
gender become important categories of analysis as this narrative
moves into the nineteenth century. Women considerably outnumber men
in all studies of yoga except those conducted in India, and modern
anglophone yoga exhibits important continuities with women's
physical culture, feminist reform, and white women's engagement
with Orientalism. Foxen's study allows us to recontextualize the
peculiarities of American yoga-its focus on aesthetic
representation, its privileging of bodily posture and unsystematic
incorporation of breathwork, and above all its overwhelmingly white
female demographic. In this context it addresses the ongoing
conversation about cultural appropriation within the yoga
community.
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