Reclaiming the Spirit through the Body: The Nascent Spirituality of Modern Postural Yoga
Entangled Religions October 31, 2014 Stuart Ray Sarbacker 8 citations
Modern postural yoga contains an implicit spirituality that echoes its historical precursors in medieval haṭhayoga, even as its physicality links it to modern cosmopolitan disciplines like gymnastics and calisthenics. Key twentieth-century gurus such as B. K. S. Iyengar and K. Pattabhi Jois distinguished postural yoga from purely physical disciplines by claiming it possesses an inner dimension that other systems lack. Contemporary practitioners seek to make this inner dimension more transparent by appealing to traditional Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and adopting explicitly contemplative or spiritual practices.