Yogalands: In Search of Practice on the Mat and in the World

by Paul Bramadat

Millions of people practise yoga, attracted to the mat by its promise of physical and mental benefits, social connection, and spiritual nourishment. Promoted as a way of healing the body and mind from wounds inflicted by the world, modern yoga may be a critique of the social order – an “anti-world” to which practitioners escape. Yet yoga can never free itself entirely from the compromises and contradictions of the real world.

In *Yogalands *Paul Bramadat wrestles with his position as a skeptical scholar who is also a devoted yoga practitioner. Drawing from his own experience, and from conversations with hundreds of yoga teachers and students in the United States and Canada, he seeks to understand what yoga means for people in the modern West. In doing so, he addresses issues that often sit beneath the surface in why yoga’s religious dimensions are rarely mentioned in classes; how the relationship between yoga and trauma might be reconsidered; and how yoga seems to have survived debates around nationalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual misconduct.

Yogalands encourages practitioners and critics to be more curious about yoga. For insiders, this can deepen their practice, and for observers, this approach is an inspiring and unsettling model for engaging with other passionate commitments.

Genres: Nonfiction

294 pages, Paperback

Published April 8, 2025

Reviews

[Dee Reddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved and hated this book. It was difficult to read, too dry, too scholarly… but as someone who was born and grew up in India - and has now spent longer in Australia than at ‘home’, - and who is now a yoga teacher - this book and the topics it explored certainly raised some very interesting questions for me and a lot of food for thought… I’d love to sit down with Paul for a good ole chinwag over a cup of tea…