This book is a refreshingly original, multi-sited ethnography of transnational yoga that obliges us to look beyond postural practice (āsana) in modern yoga research. It will be a valuable resource for Religious Studies, Anthropology, and South Asian Religions.

This dissertation presents a multi-sited ethnographic research project conducted within three coastal yoga communities: Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville, New York (chapter 2); Polestar Gardens in Puna District, Hawaii (chapter 3); and Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute in Lonavala, Maharashtra (chapter 4). As the introductory chapter (chapter 1) indicates, I follow the understudied somatic practices of yogic diet, breathwork, and music through each of these field sites while utilizing an ethnographic methodology that considers somatic practice as a primary source of data. Drawing on the mobilities paradigm from the social sciences as well as theoretical scholarship concerned with embodiment and embodied practice, I argue that the practices of yogic diet, breathwork, and music reveal portable “engaged alchemies” that have been extensively deployed by contemporary disseminators of yoga. I use the term “engaged alchemy” throughout this dissertation to specifically refer to the ways by which practitioners of yoga transnationally have collectively adapted yogic diet, breathwork, and music practices within contemporaneous worlds of yoga practice which are intended to produce site-specific, embodied instantiations of yoga. The concluding chapter (chapter 5) highlights key trends concerning transnational yoga observed across the field sites considered in the current study while suggesting opportunities for future research in the field of modern yoga studies.

Embodying Transnational Yoga is a refreshingly original, multi-sited ethnography of transnational yoga that obliges us to look beyond postural practice (āsana) in modern yoga research. The book introduces readers to three alternative, understudied categories of transnational yoga practice which include food, music, and breathing. Studying these categories of embodied practice using interdisciplinary methods reveals transformative “engaged alchemies” that have been extensively deployed by contemporary disseminators of yoga. Readers will encounter how South Asian dietary regimens, musical practices, and breathing techniques have been adapted into contemporaneous worlds of yoga practice both within, but also beyond, the Indian Ocean rim. The book brings the field of Modern Yoga Studies into productive dialogue with the fields of Indian Ocean Studies, Embodiment Studies, Food Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Pollution Studies. It will also be a valuable resource for both scholarly work and for teaching in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, and South Asian Religions.

This is the first book to address the social organisation of modern yoga practice as a primary focus of investigation and to undertake a comparative analysis to explore why certain styles of yoga have successfully transcended geographical boundaries and endured over time, whilst others have dwindled and failed. Using fresh empirical data of the different ways in which posture practice was disseminated transnationally by Krishnamacharya, Sivananda and their leading disciples, the book provides an original perspective. The author draws upon extensive archival research and numerous fieldwork interviews in India and the UK to consider how the field of yoga we experience today was shaped by historic decisions about how it was transmitted. The book examines the specific ways in which a small group of yogis organised their practices and practitioners to popularise their styles of yoga to mainstream audiences outside of India. It suggests that one of the most overlooked contributions has been that of Sivananda Saraswati (1887-1963) for whom this study finds his early example acted as a cornerstone for the growth of posture practice. Outlining how yoga practice is organised today on the world stage, how leading brands fit into the wider field of modern yoga practice and how historical developments led to a mainstream globalised practice, this book will be of interest to researchers in the field of Yoga Studies, Religious Studies, Hindu Studies, South Asian History, Sociology and Organisational Studies.

Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a transnational yoga institution and about yoga practitioners and spiritual tourists who visualize peace through yoga. Practitioners’ aspirations for peace situate them at the heart of an international movement that has captured the imagination of cosmopolitans the world over, with its purported benefits to mind, body, and spirit. Yoga is thought to offer health, vitality, and relief from depression through control of body and breath. Yet, the vision of peace in this institution is a partial vision that obscures the important but seemingly peripheral others of its self-conception. Through in-depth ethnographic analysis, this book explores the processes through which global spiritual movements can have peace front and center in their vision and yet condone and perpetuate cycles of injustice and social inequality that form the critical and problematic foundations of our global economy. The book privileges the experiences and hardships faced by Indian wageworkers—most of them women —but it also offers a sympathetic portrayal of international yoga practitioners and of the complex patterns of work and worship central to a global mission. For more information, check out A conversation with Laura E. Klepinger, author of Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots

Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change is the first collection to gather together prominent scholars on yoga and the body. Using an intersectional lens, the essays examine yoga in the United States as a complex cultural phenomenon that reveals racial, economic, gendered, and sexual politics of the body. From discussions of the stereotypical yoga body to analyses of pivotal court cases, Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change examines the sociopolitical tensions of contemporary yoga. Because so many yogic spaces reflect the oppressive nature of many other public spheres, the essays in this collection also examine what needs to change in order for yoga to truly live up to its liberatory potential, from the blogosphere around Black women’s health to the creation of queer and trans yoga classes to the healing potential of yoga for people living with chronic illness or trauma. While many of these conversations are emerging in the broader public sphere, few have made their way into academic scholarship. This book changes all that. The essays in this anthology interrogate yoga as it is portrayed in the media, yoga spaces, and yoga as it is integrated in education, the law, and concepts of health to examine who is included and who is excluded from yoga in the West. The result is a thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and the limitations of yoga for feminist social transformation.

"This book presents a ground-breaking model for scholars to understand the contemporary teaching and practice of yoga"--