Full Description
This groundbreaking study approaches contemporary yoga through a cultural and social anthropological lens, explicitly weaving together historical perspectives with lived practice. Moving beyond reductionist interpretations, such as Silvia Ceccomori's influential but limiting account on haṭha yoga, this book challenges dominant narratives in the French historiography of yoga. Drawing on rich ethnographic research, the author vividly documents the lives and practices of two renowned haṭha yoga teachers in Paris. Their stories illuminate the diverse ways yoga has been reinterpreted, embodied, and transmitted in modern France, offering fresh insights into the varieties of contemporary yoga. Rejecting the confines of the "classical" Indianist framework, this work situates yoga within a broader global context, where body techniques and religious beliefs intersect and adapt through processes of acculturation. The result is a nuanced account that both critiques earlier approaches and contributes an original perspective to the growing field of yoga studies. This book is an essential read for researchers, scholars, and students of anthropology, religious studies, body culture, and modern yoga, this book offers the first sustained ethnographic exploration of haṭha yoga practice in France, an innovative contribution to understanding yoga as a lived, global phenomenon.
Contents
Introduction.- Part - I Yoga and Religion.- Yoga in brief.- Religion, yoga, god and dharma.- Yoga as a mind-body technique.- Part - II The Practice within French culture.- Eva Ruchpaul and Dorothea Hirsch.- Tradition and transmission.- The rise of the practice - Part I.- Part - III A French believing of Indic lineage.- The rise of the practice - Part II.- The elective fraternity of Ramana Maharshi.- The parampārā, a demand-offer chain and a cure.
