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A history of modern yoga

Patañjali and Western esotericism

By Michelis, Elizabeth De & De Michelis, Elizabeth

Publishers Summary:
"In recent years yoga and meditation have become mass market pursuits in the West. A History of Modern Yoga traces this phenomenon back to its ideological roots in the esoteric circles of late eighteenth-century Bengal, and follows some of its main developments to date. Fully-fledged Modern Yoga, the author argues, started with the publication of Swami Vivekananda's seminal Raja Yoga (1896), in which Patanjali's Yoga Sutras were reconfigured along the lines of a then emerging New Age style of secularized and individualistically oriented religiosity.". "In order to map this unknown territory, this book offers a four-fold typology of Modern Yoga Comprising Modern Psychosomatic, Modern Meditational, Modern Postural and Modern Denominational forms. Special attention is then given to Modern Postural Yoga as practised today in the USA, Britain and other English-speaking countries and milieus. The theory and practicce of Iyengar Yoga - one of the most influential schools of Modern Postural Yoga - are analysed in this context, while the conclusion shows how a typical Modern Postural Yoga session may be interpreted to reveal the forms and contents of a healing ritual of secular religion."--BOOK JACKET.

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ISBN

978-0-82648-772-8

Publisher

London ; Continuum, 2004.