Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies

“Scholar–Practitioners”, Reflexivity and the Illusio of the Field: Ethnography, Yoga Studies and the Social Scientific Study of Religion

“…In other words, I finally understood Mooji's teachings as the outcome of very specific historical and sociocultural conditions and their translation and adaptation in the West (as yoga scholars have poignantly argued, contemporary forms of yoga, including Mooji's teachings, are the outcome of transnational and transcultural practical-discursive constructions-at the intersection of biomedicine, esotericism, Hinduism, para-psychology and different physical cultures, among other cultural forces-where adherence to tradition, innovation and reinvention have had, and continue to have, a pivotal role in defining the specific pedagogical repertoires that characterize modern forms of yoga today. See De Michelis [26], Singleton [27] and Newcombe and O'Brien-Kop [28]for more details), or, as Bourdieu might say [1,3,20], as disguising very specific forms of domination and symbolic violence under their spiritual and religious framings. This represented a drastic shift from my previous adherence to the legitimate discourse of self-realization promoted in the ashram, which posits enlightenment as an ahistorical and universal category that eludes rational scrutiny, to a critical understanding of this as a "mere" cultural construct.…”

Різноманіття Визначень Медитації: Підходи, Виклики І Перспективи

“…Це відзначав Едвард Конзе ще у 1956 р. у праці «Буддійська медитація» [2]. Аналогічні труднощі з цим поняттям можна побачити у застосуванні також до індійських практик, до йоги, зокрема [10].…”

Spiritualities of the Body: Yoga, Spirituality and Health in Italy

“…Scholars belonging to the by now established discipline of yoga studies have so far explored the textual roots of modern forms of yoga (Birch 2019;Birch and Singleton 2019;Mallinson and Singleton 2017), their birth and development starting from the British colonial ruling of India (Alter 2004;De Michelis 2004;Singleton 2010) and their processes of transnational diffusion and transformation in the subsequent decades of the nineteenth century up to this day (Foxen 2020;Newcombe 2019;Newcombe and O'Brien-Kop 2021). The core insights of these studies, characterized by a socio-historical approach (Di Placido 2021) and an anti-essentialist stance (Jain 2014), postulate that modern forms of yoga are first and foremost the result of transcultural encounters and that they are continuously practiced, appropriated and reinvented by different individuals and social groups and for a plurality of purposes in different times and contexts (Newcombe 2018;White 2009;Samuel 2008).…”