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Yogi Calisthenics: What the “non-Yoga” Yogic Practice of Paramahansa Yogananda Can Tell Us about Religion

2016; Oxford University Press; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jaarel/lfw077

1477-4585

Anya Foxen,

Martial Arts: Techniques, Psychology, and Education

Postural yoga, due to its rising cultural and economic capital, has been adopted as a fundamental aspect of Hindu religious identity and touted as India’s universal gift to the world. This article interrogates the implications of accepting a partially foreign—or at least syncretized—and even secular practice as effecting the ritual teleology of an existing religious system. More broadly, it asks under what circumstances might a physical fitness program become religious practice. To answer these questions, it examines the calisthenic system propagated in pre-World War II America by Paramahansa Yogananda, which despite not being called yoga or resembling the asanas of today was in its function identical both to the modern postural forms practiced in yoga studios across the world and to the energetic rituals of medieval Indian hatha yoga.