The Path Of Modern Yoga (the History Of An Embodied Spiritual Practice)

Description

By (author) Goldberg Elliott

Short /annotation:
A history of yoga’s transformation from sacred discipline to exercise program to embodied spiritual practice

:
In The Path of Modern Yoga, Elliott Goldberg shows how yoga was transformed from a sacred practice into a health and fitness regime for middle-class Indians in the early 20th century and then gradually transformed over the course of the 20th century into an embodied spiritual practice–a yoga for our times.
Drawing on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources as well as recent scholarship, Goldberg tells the sweeping story of modern yoga through the remarkable lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures: six Indian yogis (Sri Yogendra, Swami Kuvalayananda, S. Sundaram, T. Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, and B. K. S. Iyengar), an Indian bodybuilder (K. V. Iyer), a rajah (Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi), an American-born journalist (Louise Morgan), an Indian diplomat (Apa Pant), and a Russian-born yogi trained in India (Indra Devi). The author places their achievements within the context of such Western trends as the physical culture movement, the commodification of exercise, militant nationalism, jazz age popular entertainment, the quest for youth and beauty, and 19th-century New Age religion.
In chronicling how the transformation of yoga from sacred discipline to exercise program allowed for the creation of an embodied spiritual practice, Goldberg presents an original, authoritative, provocative, and illuminating interpretation of the history of modern yoga.

Table of contents:

Foreword by Karl Baier, Ph.D.

Acknowledgments

Part I
Divesting Yoga of the Sacred
Yogic Physical Culture and Health Cure

1 Shri Yogendra
Rejecting the Role of Yoga Guru

2 Shri Yogendra
Creating the Profession of Yoga Teacher: The Yoga Class

3 Shri Yogendra
Making Yoga into Calisthenics

4 Shri Yogendra
Taking Practical Yoga to the New World: Hatha Yoga in America

5 Shri Yogendra
Making Yoga Gentle

6 Swami Kuvalayananda
Claiming Yoga Is Science

7 Swami Kuvalayananda
Promoting Yoga as Health Cure: A Yoga Journal and Yoga Institute

8 Swami Kuvalayananda
Investigating the Yogic Phenomena: Yoga Research

9 Swami Kuvalayananda
Standing Up Straight: Yoga and Good Posture

10 Swami Kuvalayananda
Youthifying the Spine: Yoga and Chiropractic

11 K. V. Iyer
Mixing Bodybuilding and Yoga

12 S. Sundaram
Publishing a Yoga Manual

13 S. Sundaram
Meditating on the Body in Yoga

Part II
Making Yoga Dynamic
The Sun Salutations as Yogic Exercise

14 Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi
Reviving Surya Namaskar

15 Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi
Promoting Surya Namaskar as Health Cure and Strengthening Exercise

16 Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi
Making Surya Namaskar a Part of Physical Education: Mass Exercise

17 T. Krishnamacharya
Keeping the Flame: Yoga at the Palace

18 T. Krishnamacharya
Incorporating Contortion into Yoga

19 T. Krishnamacharya
Infusing Yoga with Surya Namaskar: Yoga as Performance

20 K. V. Iyer
Mixing Bodybuilding and Yoga at the Palace

21 K. V. Iyer
Presenting Surya Namaskar as Stretching Exercise

22 Louise Morgan
Making Surya Namaskar into an Elixir for Western Women

23 Louise Morgan
Pointing the Way to Health through Surya Namaskar

24