Richard J. Severson

I took my first Yoga class ten years ago, hoping that it would help me get over a strange softening in the upper portion of my right femur called transient osteoporosis of the hip.  The theory was that in holding poses such as Warrior Two, the muscles of my upper leg would squeeze the gammy bone and thereby strengthen it.  I think it worked, and along the way I fell in love with the practice of Yoga.  It’s a great place to make friends, second only to dog walking in my experience.  Also, the calisthenic rigor of the exercise appeals to my weekend warrior spirit, not to mention the undeniable meditative (churchly) atmosphere that nearly resuscitated my rusty Catholic soul.  (It’s more fun than the old fashioned clasped-hands-in-prayer-while-kneeling-on-sore-knees routine of my youth.)    

Since that first class, I have been exposed to the different teaching philosophies of more than a dozen instructors.  Based on that admittedly limited sample size, I suspect there are two basic perspectives toward Yoga from the American instructor’s point of view (with some blending in between).  On one end of the spectrum, there are those who view Yoga strictly as a form of exercise, good for stretching, strengthening the core, etc.  I imagine these instructors tend to come from science backgrounds, such as physical therapy or exercise physiology.  On the other end of the spectrum, there are those instructors who view Yoga as a kind of spiritual practice, good for inspiring us to become better humans—uplifting the soul—in addition to toning up the body.    

Can you practice Yoga seriously without absorbing at least some of the cultural underpinnings of the ancient Vedic texts of India?  My tentative answer to that question is no, you can’t take the Vedic/Dharmic elements out of the Sanskrit terminology, or the meditative breathwork, or even the modern (New Age) asanas of this very ancient practice in the art of escaping karma.  How is that possible?

I wonder if, in the long ebb and flow of civilizations, sometimes it becomes necessary to revisit other civilizations far, far away in order to revitalize themselves.  Human history, I suspect, is never a strictly linear march through time.  There are always ahistorical encounters that can and do bring the distant past into the present moment.  How else to explain the fascination with “Game of Thrones” and other popular dystopian stories that bring different eras of time into a dramatized human survival saga?  The subtext of such narratives, I suspect, is the dawning suspicion that our own civilization is on life support.  A shift in time to the past, even if it is the past of some other civilization, can breathe new life into different times and places. 

Or, if you prefer, Yoga is simply a form of exercise with little to no cultural significance. 

References:

Elizabeth Bucar, Stealing My Religion (Harvard University Press, 2022). 

Sarah Schrank, American Yoga: The Shaping of Modern Body Culture in the United States (American Studies 53, 1 [2014], 169-81.