Propagation of Yoga

1
Propagation of Yoga

• Example of an effort by educated middle-classes
  across the world to
• promote an alternative modernity, transcending
  its dichotomies.
• reduce stress and maintain health and freedom.

2
Ways in which yoga is seen to achieve these goals
differ in India and in the West
3
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.

4
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

5
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

6
With a partner, discuss Strausss insights into

• 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

7

• 2) Yoga as a practice fitting into modernitys
  features of
• - reflexivity
• - individualization / self-actualization
• - global interdependence
• (page 134).