A history of yoga's transformation from sacred discipline to exercise
program to embodied spiritual practice
- Identifies the origin of exercise yoga as India's response to the
mania for exercise sweeping the West in the early 20th century
- Examines yoga's transformations through the lives and accomplishments
of 11 key figures, including Sri Yogendra, K. V. Iyer, Louise Morgan,
Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, Indra Devi, and B. K. S. Iyengar
- Draws on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources and
includes 99 illustrations
In The Path of Modern Yoga, Elliott Goldberg shows how yoga was
transformed from a sacred practice into a health and fitness regime for
middle-class Indians in the early 20th century and then gradually
transformed over the course of the 20th century into an embodied
spiritual practice--a yoga for our times.
Drawing on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources as
well as recent scholarship, Goldberg tells the sweeping story of modern
yoga through the remarkable lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures:
six Indian yogis (Sri Yogendra, Swami Kuvalayananda, S. Sundaram, T.
Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, and B. K. S. Iyengar), an Indian
bodybuilder (K. V. Iyer), a rajah (Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi), an
American-born journalist (Louise Morgan), an Indian diplomat (Apa Pant),
and a Russian-born yogi trained in India (Indra Devi). The author places
their achievements within the context of such Western trends as the
physical culture movement, the commodification of exercise, militant
nationalism, jazz age popular entertainment, the quest for youth and
beauty, and 19th-century New Age religion.
In chronicling how the transformation of yoga from sacred discipline to
exercise program allowed for the creation of an embodied spiritual
practice, Goldberg presents an original, authoritative, provocative, and
illuminating interpretation of the history of modern yoga.
