This introductory chapter will first sketch out “embodied reception” as a heuristic concept by discussing some of the assumptions and challenges that its two terminological components—embodiment and reception—entail. It will then position the volume with regard to previous research on bodily practices in South Asia and their modern global globalization. Two aspects of embodied reception that emerge from reading the contributions together will then receive closer attention. The first aspect is the construction of lineages and origins that appears to be crucial for turning bodily practices into a reception of something, be it a textual source, a guru, or a diffuse idea of Indian tradition. The second aspect concerns the performativity and affectivity of bodily practices. Here, the contributions show that while a bodily practice does not have a universal intrinsic meaning, it works on practitioners’ bodies and interrelates with their meaning-making processes. Finally, the individual chapters that make up the four parts of the volume will be presented.

Since the cultural turn, the embodiment of practices is an axiom. But what does “embodiment” mean? And how can embodied knowledge, embodied practices, and embodied reception be operationalized and related to specific contexts instead of just claiming embodiment as a matter of fact? What difference does an account of the embodiment of practices make regarding theoretical stances that take other dimensions into account, like semiotics or power structures? We will sketch the relevance of the philosophy of mind for embodiment because embodiment touches the very base of science: epistemology and the conception of the subject/agent. Against this backdrop, body knowledge and training knowledge will be introduced, which prepares us for a bundle of further subcategories appropriate for analyzing the dynamics of cultural reception, especially of embodied practices.

The status of researcher as insider or outsider to the communities they study has long been of debate. Within long-term ethnographic research into cultural practices, a world of nuance arises in the possible relationships between researcher and researched. We are engaged in complex processes of reconciliation between the under-represented communities whose stories we aim to tell, and the power an academic position confers to “define reality for others.” Besides the issue of positionality, the study of practices of movement and interoception confer distinct embodied skillsets. As a long-term practitioner of yoga who researches contemporary practice, my experience and analysis will be different from non-practicing scholars in the field. In this chapter I will build on insights from dance studies and yoga studies to discuss the methodological frameworks it was necessary to develop for my own doctoral research. I will describe co-practice as a method, notation as an analytic tool, and the concept of methodology as an experimental process, guided by the ideal of research as seva: research as a service freely dedicated to both academic rigor and the untold stories of our communities of practice. From this, I hope to offer space for an open and intellectually invigorating conversation about new methods and frameworks, so that we may break new ground together, in the ethnographic study of bodily practices.

The chapter explores interconnected instances of cultural transfer from India to Europe of elements pertaining to the Trika school of Śaivism and tantric goddess traditions. The first instance concerns the translation and reception of a Trika text (the Parātrīśikā) and its commentary (Abhinavagupta’s Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa) by a group of therapeutic practitioners based in Northern Germany, as well as its application in transpersonal psychotherapeutic and psychosomatic practice. The second case addresses the establishment of a yoginī temple by one of these therapists, after having visited sites dedicated to yoginī worship in Hirapur and Bheraghat. The chapter discusses the selective approach to Kashmirian Śaiva teachings in the process of their therapeutic application, as well as the transfer and reception of tantric traditions by Western practitioners.

While historical, philological, and socio-cultural research on (modern) yoga saw an immense boom in the last two decades, the biomedical dimension of body practices associated with yoga has seldom been taken into account in cultural studies. This chapter proposes an approach to an interdisciplinary exchange between methods and theories in the social sciences combined with the insights of neuroscience and cognitive psychology on yoga. The chapter’s topic itself, the contemporary reception of the Yogasūtra, an old Indian text, bridges textual exegesis and bodily practices: Combining fieldwork in an advanced Ashtanga Yoga teacher training in Germany with theories in aesthetics of religion, my research approach shows that the practitioner’s understanding of the text is substantively related to the somatic techniques they practice and the experiential dimensions that emerge from their practices. In what I call “contemporary yoga philosophy,” the exegesis of the Yogasūtra and modern body practices interact with one another and (re-)define each other. Therefore, I argue that such “philosophical” contemporary discourses cannot be adequately investigated without considering the physical practices and their effects with the help of an interdisciplinary approach. The chapter presents six aspects of contemporary yoga philosophy and introduces key body knowledge categories which enable a cultural-scientific analysis of body practices. It concludes with two examples, “touch” and “eutony,” that show how contemporary religious practices that are intertwined with physical practices can be analyzed.

This chapter presents some of the practices of the Kāpil Math monastic institution founded in the early twentieth century that subscribes to the teaching of the Yoga and Sāmkhya systems of religious thought with Pātañjalayogaśāstra and Sāmkhyakārikā as the foundational texts. The chapter argues that their practices are based on an understanding that all is suffering, which is stated prominently not only in the Yogasūtra but also in the Sāmkhyakārikā. Suffering is caused by a basic disharmony at the foundation of the material creation (prakrti) and the avoidance of pain means the avoidance of the uniting of the subject (purusa) and the object (prakrti) (Yogasūtra 2.17) and when this union ends, the cycle of rebirth also ends. The followers of the Kāpil Math realize that it will take many lifetimes to attain this. What is attainable in this life is the improvement of their karmāśaya and vāsanās. In the Kāpil Math one important way of influencing the vāsanās is repeating the teaching of Sāmkhyayoga every day in ritual recitation of stotras that state the teaching and goals of Sāmkhyayoga. This recitation creates a state of mind and an embodied experience that leaves an impression, a samskāra, and forms a behavioral tendency, a vāsanā, and prepares for a Sāmkhyayoga practice that will continue over many lives. This understanding that no practice of Sāmkhyayoga is lost but shapes tendencies over many lives is an essential aspect of the yoga tradition of the Kāpil Math. The teaching of Sāmkhyayoga is here closely connected to conceptions of rebirth and does not make sense without the doctrine of repeated embodiment.

Using the creation of B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Prānāyāma (1981) as a case study, this chapter challenges two common assumptions about how embodied traditions are transmitted, suggesting that embodied traditions should be understood as dialogical processes in both creation and transmission. In contrast to the often-assumed “legitimate” transmission of a South Asian tradition within a guru-śisya paramparā (student-teacher transmission lineage), Iyengar’s development of prānāyāma demonstrates that his practice developed primarily from an ideomotor exploration of his own embodied experiences. Records around the publication of Light on Prānāyāma show that Iyengar drew upon surreptitious observation of Krishnamacharya’s practice, as well as ideas introduced by Krishnamācārya, Krishnamurti and Yehudi Menuhin filtered through his own rigorous, interoceptive sensory explorations. Light on Prānāyāma can be understood as a roadmap for the reader’s own inner ideomotor explorations, an intense and psychologically demanding interoceptive process. Secondly, in transmitting the results of his embodied knowledge in the text of Light on Prānāyāma , it becomes clear that effective transmission on the part of the guru is a complex dialogical process at the point of transmission, as well as being an interpretive experience in reception. To make the later point, this chapter explores the hidden labor of Iyengar’s editor Gerald Yorke, as well as several (uncredited) women, especially Mary Stewart and Beatrice Harthan, as being essential to the eventual publication of Light on Prānāyāma . Light on Prānāyāma was only published after Iyengar’s articulations were tested against others’ experiences and a process of clarifying his written instructions with experienced practitioners as well as non-practitioners and experts in other fields.

This chapter examines Acem’s philosophy and practice of yoga as taught by Acem School of Yoga (Norsk Yoga-skole). Acem was founded as a part of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement in 1966, but disagreements led to an organizational rupture in 1972. Acem’s discursive framing has changed significantly since the rupture with the TM movement. Maharishi was inspired by Advaita Vedānta philosophy and referred to the Vedas for legitimation; Acem promotes its activities as secular and scientifically based. This chapter argues that Acem represents a selective understanding of yoga that is typical of bodily practices on the move from their original context to a Western setting. Acem claims to transmit a “classical” version of yoga in line with Patañjali’s Yogasūtra , but free from the religious frames of reference found in the Indian tradition. At the same time, the organization implicitly builds upon other forms of modern postural yoga. There is a strong emphasis on personal growth and existential acknowledgment in Acem, which can be traced back to the existential philosophy and humanistic psychology of the 1970s, and which reflects “the therapeutic culture” that permeates contemporary Western societies. The result is an invented tradition labelled as “classical, meditative yoga,” which can be used as a point of departure for a secularized and individual-oriented spirituality.

Kal.arippayarr is a martial art with an allied medical system that originated in South India in what is now the modern state of Kerala. Its long and complex history includes a revival from near-extinction in the early twentieth century, whose features parallel the creation of modern yoga in the same period. While still a niche activity, kalarippayarr’s visibility has increased in recent years. I argue that an important factor in the dissemination of kalarippayarr beyond Kerala and its historical quasi-temple environment is its adoption by contemporary dancers in India in the last half of the twentieth century, both in their training and in performance. This chapter examines the imbrications between kalarippayarr’s home context of the kalari-temple and the fertile ground of the Indian contemporary dance scene. My research focuses on the CVN lineage, part of “northern style” or “Malabar” kalaris, so-called because they originate in the Malabar region of northern Kerala. I draw on my relationship with CVN Kalari Sangham in Thiruvananthapuram which began in 2002, and has, since 2010, included eight extended periods of intensive study and training. My first encounter with this kalari was among dance artists at an international choreographic laboratory in Bengaluru, and so this chapter contains autoethnographic as well as more conventional ethnographic elements.

This chapter discusses how contemporary performances of mind–body techniques relate to the authoritative figures and institutions that lay claim to them. The case under investigation is OSHO Dynamic Meditation, the most famous meditation technique created by the controversial guru Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) that has been practiced from the early days of the Neo-Sannyas Movement in the 1970s until today. Dynamic Meditation has five characteristic stages leading meditators from chaotic breathing, cathartic explosion, and complete exhaustion to stillness and celebration. Both sannyasins and scholars have referred to the technique as a “microcosm” of Osho’s teaching and method. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews from Osho-related meditation centers in Scandinavia, Germany, and India, the chapter scrutinizes this claim and enquires in what ways performing Dynamic Meditation can be understood as an embodied reception of Osho’s work. A stable communicative form in an otherwise dispersed and diverse field, Dynamic Meditation has a specific affective dramaturgy tailored to induce experiences in need of interpretation. How meditators make sense of their experience varies according to contextual factors and can be detached from Osho’s authority. Still, the communities under investigation share discourses around therapy and meditation that are reproduced and legitimized through bodily techniques (such as Dynamic Meditation) that again socialize newcomers into the communicative milieu of the Sannyas scene.

Alongside modern yoga, mindfulness meditation is considered to be a driving force for “revolutionizing” body–mind practices in Western societies. The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, developed in the late 1970s by the MIT-educated scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, is of great importance here. MBSR positions itself predominantly within scientific and therapeutic discourses, while at the same time universalizing the method of mindfulness meditation. This chapter investigates what it means to be present in modern mindfulness and MBSR. Focus is laid upon the group setting and interaction in which mindfulness as an embodied practice of being present is enacted and cultivated. It is shown how discourses of authenticity are linked to embodied performances of “being here fully.” The chapter is based on (auto-)ethnographic accounts, produced by the author as a practitioner and trained teacher of MBSR/mindfulness and sociologist in one person.

Modernized forms of the philosophical system Advaita (“nondual”) Vedānta, usually referred to as Neo-Advaita or Modern Advaita, constitute an integral part of the range of South Asian spiritualities that are being taught and practiced globally today. This chapter explores the embodied dimensions of Modern Advaitic satsangs, a form of dialogical lectures in which Modern Advaitic teachings are being disseminated. Based on ethnographic material from satsangs held in Rishikesh, a northern Indian pilgrimage town and center for international spiritual tourism, the chapter discusses the importance ascribed to the process of turning abstract concepts of the nondual Self into experiential, and hence embodied knowledge in these contexts. This was a process that not only involved discourses but equally much the presence of the guru and other fellow satsang participants. A focus on experience, I suggest, provides valuable insights into the embodied reception of Advaita in partly new social, cultural, spatial, and temporal contexts. The emphasis put on personal experience in Modern Advaitic satsangs serves as an illustration of the adaptations of these types of events, as it reflects a synthesis of Advaitic tenets and a form of subjective “self-spirituality.”

This chapter argues that modern postural yoga—and the spiritual wellness industry more broadly—often exhibits an ideal formulation of the body wherein beauty and morality are co-constituted, each providing an index of the other. Beautiful people, that is to say, people who are deemed beautiful, are celebrated for their presumed moral elevation and spiritual advancement. The demand to present as perfected-wellness-embodied has significant ramifications for wellness influencers (including yogis), not the least of which are financial. This chapter argues that there are South Asian antecedents to this type of indexing of beauty and morality in South Asian religious forms, and provides evidence by looking to the bodily descriptions of religious virtuosi in religious and yogic texts, and in the presumptions of Ayurvedic remedies. However, it also shows how the contemporary global yoga industry colludes with the beauty industry creating an “embodied reception” that is also a moral hierarchy based in unequal access to economic and social capital.