“You Are Not the Body”: (Re)Interpreting the Body in and through Integral Yoga
Policy Press eBooks July 28, 2023 Erin F. Johnston
Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and enactive immersion, the author argues that becoming an Integral Yoga practitioner involves a cognitive and perceptual reframing of the body, marked by cultivating a sense of separation or 'bodily detachment.' The chapter identifies key areas where this detachment is cultivated, attending to both somatic/practical and symbolic/discursive realms and tracing their dynamic interplay. It highlights the importance of examining talk and discourse in situ to understand how religious practices and discourses become personally meaningful.