Bourgeois Bodies: How Yoga was Made Modern and Middle Class

• In Event: 365 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Cultivation and Status

Abstract

Yoga is and has always been manifold, and the record from which we form our impressions of its history is scratched and warped. Thus all histories of yoga are partial ones. Yet there is something unitary about this diverse body of practices that allows us to group them under the same label. Yoga, to me, is a set of techniques designed to get you out of your own way. Patanjali in his foundational Yoga Sutras (300 B.C.E.) provided step-by-step instructions on how to do this. You should study scripture, stay celibate, and abstain from harm. But most of all, you should meditate. And this will relieve you of yourself. Precisely what happens next – after the self is transcended – is indescribable and can only be hinted at. In the medieval period, the notion of joining yourself to the absolute—yoga means to yoke—was sometimes understood to mean acquiring supernatural power and becoming like a god yourself, occasionally for material ends as yogis earned their keep as mercenaries, medicine men, and magicians. Modernity offered its own, more homely interpretation of yoga’s aims in both India and the West. It became less about self-divination or transcendence and more about self-improvement. Yoga adjusted to the zeitgeist and was made bourgeois in the original mercantile, penny-pinching sense of word. You did yoga not to escape yourself or to return yourself to the divine, but to make yourself better. Contemporary developments continued these trends and rendered yoga a kind of therapy for body and soul.

Author

• Shehzad Nadeem, City University of New York-Lehman College