Where does yoga come from? A book review on Yoga Body by Mark Singleton
In his book Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, scholar Mark Singleton explores the evolution of posture-based yoga. His work is particularly important for us, Christians who practice yoga, because he brings clarity to a muddled topic. One of the common fears of Christians is this: if I do these poses, will I be worshipping Hindu gods? Singleton’s research would say, “no.”
Here’s the book’s thesis: “Posture-based yoga as we know it today,” Singleton explains in the introduction, “is the result of a dialogical exchange between para-religious, modern body culture techniques developed in the West and the various discourses of ‘modern’ Hindu yoga that emerged from the time of Vivekananda onward.” Essentially, he’s saying that posture-based yoga today evolved from a back-and-forth exchange of ideas between the East and the West.
Singleton dates this evolution from “the time of Vivekananda.” Swami Vivekananda came to the United States around the turn of the 20th century, attending the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. He is a good benchmark for this discussion because the yoga he taught downplayed postural yoga, even discouraging it. And while he did teach some exercise for health, it was not integrated into his practice of yoga. For him, asana, or pose, mostly meant sitting. While Vivekananda was integral in the East-West exchange of ideas about yoga, the evolution of posture-based yoga came after him.
As teachers do with content in new settings, Vivekananda modified the yoga philosophy that he taught for his American audience. Both Singleton and his colleague Elizabeth de Michelis describe other teachers who also influenced modern Hindu philosophy and yoga. This evolving philosophy (on both continents) became part of the Eastern side of the exchange.
In Yoga Body, Singleton differentiates yoga today from traditional yoga because the modern version is posture-based. In their books, de Michelis first coins the description “Modern Postural Yoga,” and then Singleton researches more of the origins of the poses. In the early 1900s, yoga increasingly emphasized asana—movement and poses. So we can make a distinction between the tradition and philosophy of Yoga and the modern postural yoga commonly practiced in North America today.
The emphasis on asana grew out of the Western side of the “dialogical exchange” between cultures. The turn of the 20th century saw an increase in body-building culture: for instance, the first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Athens in 1896. Western culture—and Christianity, too—began placing more emphasis on keeping both the mind and body fit and healthy. An important example: the Young Men’s Christian Association—YMCA—promoted “healthy spirit, mind and body.”
In Scandinavia, the Swedish developed “medical gymnastics” based on the methods of Pehr Henrik Ling. Singleton describes Ling’s method as “primarily therapeutic, aiming at the conquest of disease through movement” (84). The method involved repetitive drills, which are common now. The Ling method and similar forms of exercise at the time also worked with the “whole person.” Here, we can see the seeds of ideas that are popular in yoga today, like “Yoga for Arthritis” or “Yoga for Back Pain,” etc.
YMCAs, learning of Ling’s methods, promoted these kinds of whole person, repetition-based, exercises. Through British rule, YMCAs were spread throughout India, and they became locations where Indian and Western cultures would mix. Here is where the Swedish exercises fused with hatha yoga. Singleton writes, “Gymnastics in the Lingian and post-Lingian paradigm provided a convenient and intelligible explanation of the function and form of āsana, which to some extent circumvented the need to engage with the complexities of ha[t]ha yoga theory. Instead, yogāsanas were reconfigured as ancient forms of movement cure, with individual postures prescribed for specific diseases.”
Even as the Swedish exercises became popular, Indians sought for independence and increased their national identity. One of the methods for developing national identity was to promote the practice of yoga, specifically in its hatha forms. Even as British colonists spread an emphasis in physical fitness, the Indians then made it their own, eventually integrating some of the exercises into their own understanding of yoga. In some areas, the local yoga classes became training grounds for Indian military fitness. So even as Gandhi promoted nonviolence—also one of the tenets of yoga—there were a few nationalist branches and incidents that were violent.
Essentially, though, promoting yoga as a piece of Indian identity reinforced national pride in the struggle for independence from Britain. Some teachers were employed by the Maharaja to promote yoga—one of whom was T. Krishnamacharya, who then taught K. Pattabhi Jois, B.K.S. Iyengar, Indra Devi, and T.K.V. Desikachar—all of whom had incredible influence over how schools of yoga developed in the West.
Pattabhi Jois developed Ashtanga Yoga, characterized by a repeated sequence of poses that Krishnamacharya taught early in his career to Indian male teenagers (Jois was 18 at the time). Krishnamacharya brought the Sun Salutation into yoga, and Jois codified it with Ashtanga Yoga.
B.K.S. Iyengar, Krishnamacharya’s brother-in-law, developed Iyengar Yoga, characterized by intense attention to alignment in each pose, helping to correct past habits or wounds that pull the body out of alignment. To aid these alignments in the body, Iyengar began using props like blocks and straps—which is another major addition to yoga in the west.
Indra Devi popularized yoga in Hollywood, teaching yoga to the stars.
T.K.V. Desikachar, Krishnamacharya’s son, developed Viniyoga, which adapts yoga to the practitioner’s individualized needs. He learned yoga later in Krishnamacharya’s career, which explains the difference in his teaching from Jois’s more formulaic Ashtanga Yoga.
Because of Krishnamacharya’s influence on these four students—as well as the diversity of their schools of yoga—scholars have studied Krishnamacharya’s career in depth. Singleton sees Krishnamacharya’s yoga as “a powerful synthesis of Western and Indian modes of physical culture.”
These four students-turned-yoga teachers, along with others, increased attention to asana and postures in yoga all over the world. Their innovations have turned into what we see on the cover of Yoga Journal and in yoga studios today.
This summary is a bit reductionist of Singleton’s book. Yoga Body grew out of his dissertation, and the book is incredibly detailed, containing descriptions of other influences as well. But this overview should give you the picture: posture-oriented yoga classes are barely 150 years old. What you practice in most yoga studios in North America will almost invariably look very different from traditional Yoga.
There have been criticisms of Singleton’s work—not his logic, but how his findings have been received and interpreted. About the reception: some Indian practitioners of yoga have been insulted by a white male academic coming in and trying to explain the origins of their practice. Many people understand the origins of yoga differently--probably because there are so many versions of yoga.
There is also a common misconception of Singleton’s contributions here: it’s tempting to say that the poses are simply not part of traditional Yoga, so we can completely separate them from their context. This reduction of Singleton’s work is NOT accurate: the story of Modern Postural Yoga is much more nuanced and intricate, a back-and-forth combined effort between East and West. As he studied yoga both on the mat and in libraries all over the States, Britain, and India (the story is great--see this article Singleton published in Yoga Journal about his journey), Singleton had “something like a crisis of faith” over the dissonance:
“Over time,” Singleton writes, “it occurred to me that asking whether modern asana traditions were authentic was probably the wrong question. [...] One way out of this false debate, I reasoned, was to consider certain modern practices as simply the latest grafts onto the tree of yoga.”
Yoga, like most every other tradition, evolves with time and exposure to different contexts. Scholar Andrea Jain expounds on yoga’s ability to adapt in her book Selling Yoga, which we will also review on our site. The 20th century emphasis on postures in yoga has invited an industrialized, fast-paced society to slow down and find stillness inside. For that, I suspect that all of us who practice yoga are thankful.
While Yoga Body has been influential in my own understanding of the origins of yoga and how to practice yoga as a Christian, I do not recommend it to anyone other than academics studying modern postural yoga. This book is a hard (somewhat dull at times) read: it took me several times through just to get the gist, and there’s no way that I’ve retained all the details. Yoga Body is a key text to the growing canon of literature regarding Modern Postural Yoga, which is what the majority of Christians in North America actually mean when they use the word “yoga.”
So, rather than you reading his book, here are some takeaways from Singleton’s contribution to the research:
The key takeaway here is that yoga is a dynamic practice that changes over time. It is not a static thing that looks the same now as it did 500 or 5,000 years ago. It, like everything else (think of how Christianity has changed through the ages!), changes, grows, evolves, and is a living thing. Scholar Andrea Jain explains that yoga is incredibly adaptable to its context. And that is how and why Christians can authentically practice yoga—especially posture-based yoga.
Another key takeaway here—especially for Christians with our bloody history of colonialism—is this: be respectful. We are guests to this practice. Swami Vivekananda and others did, indeed, invite us into it. The transculturation of cultures can be a great gift. But that doesn’t give us license to do whatever we want with it. Learn from yoga. Really study yoga—and study with yogis who are different from you. Respect their practice, and be respectful as you creatively integrate it into your own spiritual practice.
