This workshop will present the history of yoga in the last 200 years and tease out key trends and critical issues in contemporary yoga. We will explore ideas of Orientalism, Western Esotericism, Vivekandanda’s Raja Yoga, and the predominance of physical yoga postures.
Blog: Lost in the past, finding the present
I’ve been jotting down some notes for this workshop and it’s just so exciting. The intention is to offer a clear historical timeframe for the main developments in yoga in the last 200 years, illuminate the sometimes-hidden context of the contemporary practice of yoga, and provide a space for discussion of the critical issues buzzing around Yoga World.
I listed some ‘sometimes-hidden assumptions of our era’ and out zip the predominance of āsana, capitalism, science and psychology. The contrast between the next two items tickle me, ideas which we often oscillate between – ‘Lamentations of Decline for a By-Gone Golden Era’ coupled with ‘Messianic Belief in Self-Improvement Culminating in Universal Consciousness’. Which camp are you in?
Questions I would love discussed in this workshop include –
If, like me, you try not to talk about yoga too much to your ‘normal’ friends, lose hours in the yoga art history aisle of the library, and crave enough bandwidth to click around Suzanne Newcombe’s timeline (http://ayuryog.org/timeline) then come along and geek out with me.
The eleventh century Amṛtasiddhi teaches, for the first time, bodily practices that become central to haṭha yoga. The startling teachings are explained systematically, in terms of the nature of the body, the practices, and the results of the practice in this tantric Buddhist source text. In this course we will read the Sanskrit and discuss in English the section on ‘the body’ as set out in the first four chapters of the Amṛtasiddhi. The course comprises four online sessions and one in-person workshop in London.