Yoga as a Way of Life: Authenticity through Identity Management

• In Event: 1447 - Constructions of Identity: Religious and Secular

Abstract

This chapter examines how authenticity is constructed, negotiated, and performed among yoga practitioners in the contemporary American context. Drawing on 15-months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at an Integral Yoga Institute in the New York metropolitan area and a secondary analysis of existing literature, this chapter disentangles two “levels” at which authenticity is negotiated within the field of “Modern Postural Yoga” (De Michelis 2005): at the level of practice (What is yoga?), on the one hand, and at the level of practitioners (Who is a yogi?), on the other. I start by reviewing existing literature on authenticity in yoga, outlining the most common features used to evaluate authentic forms of practice in the contemporary cultural context. In the empirical section of the chapter, I take up the second level of analysis, describing how practitioners at the Integral Yoga Institute where I conducted my fieldwork articulate what it means to be a “yogi.” I highlight four key avenues through which the authenticity of individual practitioners is defined, evaluated, and enacted in this community: authenticity through motivation, through embodied character, through commitment, and through identity management. in the discussion, I reflect on how these two “levels” of authenticity (What is yoga? Who is a yogi?) intersect and where they diverge and highlight avenues for future research.

Author

• Erin F. Johnston, Stanford University