Yoga in Britain - Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis - Suzanne Newcombe
Yoga as Therapy
Yoga in Britain - Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis - Suzanne Newcombe
Suzanne Newcombe [+]
Open University and Inform, King's College London
Suzanne Newcombe is a senior lecturer in religious studies at the Open University and honorary director of the charity Inform, based in theology and religious studies at King’s College London. From 2015 to 2020, she was part of the European Research Council– funded project “Ayuryog: Entangled Histories of Yoga, Ayurveda and Alchemy” in South Asia, which examined the histories of yoga, Ayurveda, and rasaśāstra (Indian alchemy and iatrochemistry) from the tenth century to the present, focusing on the disciplines’ health, rejuvenation, and longevity practices. She is the coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (Routledge, 2021) and the author of Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis (Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2019).
Description
Many reported experience of physical pain and suffering as a motivation to begin yoga practice. This chapter explores the growth of yoga as therapy to deal with specific medical complaints, with a particular focus on The Yoga for Health Foundation, the Yoga Biomedical Trust and B.K.S. Iyengar’s traditions of yoga for ‘remedial’ conditions as varying visions of applying yoga as therapy. The further professionalization of yoga teaching in the therapeutic context is considered. It is argued that yoga in Britain avoided a medical model of professionalization, while maintaining a popular promise of improving health and well-being.