Transcript Propagation of Yoga

Propagation of Yoga
• Example of an effort by educated middleclasses across the world to:
– promote an alternative modernity,
transcending its dichotomies.
– reduce stress and maintain health and
freedom.
Ways in which yoga is seen to
achieve these goals differ in India
and in the West
American and German contexts:
• Yoga achieves freedom and health by
– Integrating the self (connecting body and
mind).
– Providing a “natural” strategy to reduce stress
inherent to modern, urban, industrial life.
India
• Yoga is seen as a “scientific” method that
eliminates the physiological stress
response.
• India reclaims yoga as a traditional,
ancient, national response to stress whose
value predates the scientific rationale.
• Yoga is a tool against colonial institutions
The ecology connection
• Yoga is seen by many as a tool to improve
the status of the entire planet.
• Yoga and the ecology movement
– use the language of health and illness
– use holistic approaches
– Feature universality, spirituality, link between
the person and the cosmos, praxis orientation
With a partner, discuss
Strauss’s insights into:
1) The links between the “new age”
movement, yoga and ecology (in India
and in the West) in terms of:
-
Commonality of values and methods
Effectiveness and pragmatic use in changing
global processes
2) Yoga as a practice fitting into modernity’s
features of:
- reflexivity
- individualization / self-actualization
- global interdependence
(page 134).