Worth A Listen: Perspectives on Yoga's Complicated History
What is yoga, really? Is it, as we often hear, a timeless practice handed down to us, intact and unchanging, from teacher to teacher, over thousands of years? A growing body of research reframes yoga as a living practice, evolving from its very beginnings, with a rich and deeply nuanced history of adaptation and creative innovation across time and geography. Does this view diminish its authenticity? To my mind, not at all - the twists, turns, and nuances of yoga’s complex history just make it all the more fascinating and powerful. If you’re interested to hear a few perspectives on this topic, you may enjoy these two radio interviews.
First up: in the BBC radio’s 2016 program, The Secret History of Yoga, host Mukti Jain Campion interviews scholars Mark Singleton and James Mallinson and finds “an extraordinary multicultural history in which early 20th century European ideas of health, fitness and the cult of the Body Beautiful became intertwined with Indian nationalism and the revival of Indian interest in its own traditions of physical culture.” As Campion continues, “Out of this heady mix emerged a new generation of yoga innovators who transformed an obsolete and frowned-upon practice of Indian holy men into something that would appeal to masses of ordinary people.”
Another good listen, with a similarly iconoclastic perspective, is this 2015 Fresh Air interview with journalist and writer Michelle Goldberg, author of the The Goddess Pose: the Audacious Life of Indra Devi. As Goldberg tells Terry Gross, “probably the greatest myth is when you do these poses . . . that there's some sort of continuity to what yogis were doing 3,000 years ago on the banks of the Ganges, and that's just not true.”