The White Yoga

 

"Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice" by Mark Singleton (published in 2010) is a scholarly work on a topic I´m almost completely uninterested in: modern yoga. For that reason, and perhaps also due to its scholarly bent, it was a difficult and boring read. I obtained it mostly due to its connection to another book on modern Hinduism, "A History of Modern Yoga" by Elizabeth de Michelis, which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Another book in the same genre is "The Making of Buddhist Modernism" by David L McMahan. 

What genre? I suppose we could call it Ex Occidente Lux, or something to that effect. Much of what we think of as Hinduism, Buddhism, meditation practice or indeed yoga isn´t "Indian" or "Eastern" at all, but actually very Western, either by being heavily adapted to Western modes of thought, or by actually being Western (albeit dressed up in Hindu-Buddhist garb to look sexier or more exotic). This is true even of teachings developed and dissiminated by authentic Asian teachers, such as the famous Swami Vivekananda. Both de Michelis and Singleton (a former student of hers) believe that Vivekananda´s Neo-Vedanta was heavily influenced by New Thought, Transcendentalism and more generally by modern Western "esotericism", which explains his stunning success in the United States. The Hindu swami was simply preaching the New Thought message to New Thought supporters! 

Singleton believes that modern yoga is likewise heavily indebted to Western models. While he is at pains not to attack modern forms of yoga outright (such as Iyengar Yoga and Bikram Yoga), I think "debunkers" might find his thesis *very* interesting, at least as long as yoga teachers and their students consider "lineage" and "authentic Indian origins" to be important. If they instead adopt the more sensible attitude "if it works, who cares where it comes from" (which I think may be Singleton´s intention), they won´t feel particularly threatened by this work. However, everything from Indian national pride to romantic Western notions of "the Orient" may militate against such a conclusion being drawn... 

The original "hatha yoga" was a mystical practice, probably connected to Tantrism and frequently very bizarre, so bizarre that some prudish 19th century translations of hatha yoga texts left out the juiciest parts! The goal of hatha yoga was physical immortality and the attainment of supernatural siddhi powers (compare Taoism). Nor were the really existing hatha yogins of British colonial India particularly popular, neither among the British, other Western visitors, nor the Hindu elites. The yogins (often confused or conflated with Muslim fakirs) were seen as degenerate, despicable vaudeville entertainers or con men. And before the 19th century, the ascetics had been considered dangerous - not without good reason - since armed bands of yogins controlled the trade routes, creating considerable trouble for both the British East India Company and Hindu elite groups. It´s therefore hardly surprising that Vivekananda (yes, he turns up in this book, as well) would reject hatha yoga in favor of a strictly "spiritual" approach to yoga. And then, maybe not entirely...

While traditional hatha yoga with its bizarre body postures was rejected by both Westerners and modernizing Indians, other forms of physical exercises were gradually accepted. *These physical exercises were imported to India from the West, and very often resemble what we today would consider yoga*. This isn´t surprising if you think about it: why does "modern anglophone yoga" (the author´s term) resemble gymnastics, body building or strongman feats? If Singleton is right, the reason is very simple: the "yoga" many Westerners practice today, in the belief that they are emulating an ancient Indian tradition, *really is* gymnastics or body building *the origins of which are ultimately European or American*. While Singleton says that he doesn´t want to trace the origins of each individual "asana" (body posture), his book contains photos from various sources which in my mind conclusively shows that Iyengar Yoga and similar modern yoga forms borrowed many of their exercises from Western sources. A more charitable interpretation is that modern yoga arose in a "dialogue" between the West and the East, as Indian fitness teachers about a century ago combined Western gymnastics or calisthenics with *some* traditional hatha yoga postures and a lot of free improvisation. 

But even then, the hatha yoga asanas were reinterpreted according to quite modern ideological matrixes. One of them was Indian nationalism. The anti-hathayoga Vivekananda, for whom real "raja yoga" was spiritual, nevertheless also wanted Indians to train their bodies and become physically strong, and this tendency towards "muscular Hinduism" was even more pronounced among the militant nationalists. The purpose wasn´t simply to train resistance fighters. There was also an ideological purpose: to combat the Western (British) view that Indians were effete, indolent, "peaceful", and so on. While Indian or Hindu nationalism is, of course, Indian or Hindu, note that the very idea of nationalism is in itself Western. Like Western technology, Western ideological concepts were used by the colonized and turned against the West itself. Part and parcel of Indian-Hindu nationalism was the claim that modern yoga is really very ancient and comes from India, not from some YMCA school in West Bengal. Another distinctly Western preoccupation exported to India and fused with body building was eugenics. In India, it could be combined with the claim that Hindus must fight their effiminacy and hence racial degeneration.

Another line of inquiry followed by Singleton is that *physical training itself was seen as a spiritual exercise*, the physical training in question being Western. Unknown to many (including myself), New Thought wasn´t just about mental techniques (recast as "raja yoga" by Vivekananda), but also about physical fitness, alternative health concerns, grace and beauty. There was no contradiction: New Thought texts explicitly talk about mental "auto-suggestion" which would make the body follow the directives of the mind. Exotic or difficult body postures and strongman feats could therefore be incorporated into a spiritual-esoteric worldview. (So was dance: the author never mentions eurythmy, but clearly Steiner´s strange esoteric dance is part of this context, too.) While some postures may have been derived from hatha yoga, most were known in the West before the arrival of Hindu teachers on American soil, and all of them were interpreted according to the New Thought model of health and modern spirituality, far removed from magic Tantric practices. 

One thing I found amusing was that Paramahamsa Yogananda, who is always cast today as a meditating Jesus-like super-spiritual figure ("spiritual" as in pure spirit) was actually a classical strongman who performed all the usual feats when touring the United States (including in DC where he met President Coolidge). Another fun fact was that the Hindu teachers of modern yoga claim authority from secret scriptures nobody has ever seen! A bit like Madame Blavatsky´s "Book of Dzyan", or Joseph Smith´s "Book of Mormon"?

In summary then, modern yoga looks breath-takingly (pun intended) modern and Western because, well, it really is modern and (mostly) Western. With that higher realization, we can go on to other pursuits...