A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism

by Elizabeth De Michelis

A History of Modern Yoga traces the roots of Modern Yoga back to the spread of western esoteric ideas in 18th century Bengal's intellectual circles. In due course Raja Yoga, published by Vivekananda in 1896, became the seminal text of Modern Yoga largely because, the author shows, it reconfigured the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali along the lines of a then emerging New Age occultistic style of secularised and individualistically oriented religiosity.

With regard to 20th century developments, this book proposes a four-fold typology of Modern Yoga comprising Modern Psychosomatic, Modern Meditational, Modern Postural and Modern Denominational forms. Iyengar Yoga, one of the most influential schools of Modern Postural Yoga, is then analyzed in the light of this framework, while the conclusion shows how a typical Modern Postural Yoga session may be interpreted to reveal the forms and contents of a healing ritual of secular religion.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of yogic thought and religious traditions. Only giving 4 stars because of some readability issues because of the use of highly academic terms. However, the book is written from a comparative religions perspective and makes learning about some of the history of history of modern postural yoga interesting.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm somewhat ambivalent about this book. On the one hand, I think it is a useful exploration of the roots of Modern Yoga, but on the other it's a dry and confusing read that does little to make the topic accessible to all but the determined reader. That said, the second section is much better than the first, and makes the book worth persevering with.

[Carole · Rating 2 out of 5]

A more comprehensive index and a glossary would have made this book more accessible and easier to read. The first half of the book suffered from bad editing while the second half, primarily about Hatha yoga and Iyengar was worth picking up the book. My suggestion: read the second half first.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting theory I havent factchecked the book completely, but it seems largely true. The title is a bit overly specific given the content though. This is essentially an account of the development of what is sometimes called modern "neo-hinduism" or "neo-vedanta." This book will *really bother* anyone in the middle class Hindu diaspora, or anyone who follows the most modern, relatively unified system of Hinduism which exists in India, who is dogmatically attached to the notion that their version of Hinduism is an unchanged version of what existed prior to Colonial influence. I saw some sections which seemed to exaggerate the role played by the Brahmo Samaj, or identified old Upanishadic ideas as being Brahmo innovations, but these were few and far between. But because of those, and the controversial nature of the subject, I'm not going to endorse this book fully until I examine it much more closely. I think its a pretty good documentation of the encounter between the ancient Hindu past, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, theosophy, and other colonial ideas, which created modern Yoga and Hinduism. If you are a Hindu open to hearing about some of the most recent changes in your historical belief system, this would be a good place to start.

[Ancillar Bradingus · Rating 3 out of 5]

this would've been a 4.5 or so, but the book was particularly terribly written, which is too bad, because it's got quite a bit of useful, genuine scholarship which can't be found anywhere else.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

cool read.