Sinister Yogis

Author : David Gordon White
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226895157
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sinister Yogis written by David Gordon White and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga’s origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize. To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga’s practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia’s vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities—which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation—to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren’t downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. At turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.

Author : Debra Diamond
Publisher : Smithsonian Books
ISBN 13 : 1588344592
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Yoga written by Debra Diamond and published by Smithsonian Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Published by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, October 19, 2013 - January 26, 2014. Organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the exhibition travels to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, February 22-May 18, 2014, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 22-September 7, 2014."

Author : Anya Foxen
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429750587
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Is This Yoga? written by Anya Foxen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a rigorously researched, critically comparative introduction to yoga. Is This Yoga? Concepts, Histories, and the Complexities of Contemporary Practice recognizes the importance of contemporary understandings of yoga and, at the same time, provides historical context and complexity to modern and pre-modern definitions of yogic ideas and practices. Approaching yoga as a vast web of concepts, traditions, social interests, and embodied practices, it raises questions of knowledge, identity, and power across time and space, including the dynamics of "East" and "West." The text is divided into three main sections: thematic concepts; histories; and topics in modern practice. This accessible guide is essential reading for undergraduate students approaching the topic for the first time, as well as yoga teachers, teacher training programs, casual and devoted practitioners, and interested non-practitioners.

Author : Kenneth Rose
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472571703
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Yoga, Meditation, and Mysticism written by Kenneth Rose and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemplative experience is central to Hindu yoga traditions, Buddhist meditation practices, and Catholic mystical theology, and, despite doctrinal differences, it expresses itself in suggestively similar meditative landmarks in each of these three meditative systems. In Yoga, Meditation and Mysticism, Kenneth Rose shifts the dominant focus of contemporary religious studies away from tradition-specific studies of individual religious traditions, communities, and practices to examine the 'contemplative universals' that arise globally in meditative experience. Through a comparative exploration of the itineraries detailed in the contemplative manuals of Theravada Buddhism, Patañjalian Yoga, and Catholic mystical theology, Rose identifies in each tradition a moment of sharply focused awareness that marks the threshold between immersion in mundane consciousness and contemplative insight. As concentration deepens, the meditator steps through this threshold onto a globally shared contemplative itinerary, which leads through a series of virtually identical stages to mental stillness and insight. Rose argues that these contemplative universals, familiar to experienced contemplatives in multiple traditions, point to a common spiritual, mental, and biological heritage. Pioneering the exploration of contemplative practice and experience with a comparative perspective that ranges over multiple religious traditions, religious studies, philosophy, neuroscience, and the cognitive science of religion, this book is a landmark contribution to the fields of contemplative practice and religious studies.

Author : Kristen C. Blinne
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1498584381
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pop Culture Yoga written by Kristen C. Blinne and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pop Culture Yoga: A Communication Remix was born out of a series of questions about the paradoxical nature of yoga: How do individuals and groups define yoga? What does it mean to “practice yoga,” and what does this practice involve? What are some of the most important principles, guidelines, or philosophical tenets of yoga that shape people’s definitions and practices? Who has the power and authority to define yoga? What are the limits, if any, of shared definitions of yoga? Kristen C. Blinne explores the myriad ways “yoga” is communicatively constructed and defined in and through popular culture in the United States. In doing so, Blinne offers insight into the many identity work processes in play in the construction of yoga categories, illuminating how individuals’ and groups’ words and actions represent practices of claiming—part of a complex communicative process centered around membership categorization—based on a range of authenticity discourses. Employing popular culture writing styles, Blinne ultimately contends that the majority of yoga styles practiced in the United States are remixes that can be classified as pop culture yoga, a distinct way of understanding this complex phenomenon.

Author : Paul G. Hackett
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498552307
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Assimilation of Yogic Religions through Pop Culture written by Paul G. Hackett and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The image of the meditating yogi has become a near-universal symbol for transcendent perfection used to market everything from perfume and jewelry to luxury resorts and sports cars, and popular culture has readily absorbed it along similar lines. Yet the religious traditions grounding such images are often readily abandoned or caricatured beyond recognition, or so it would seem. The essays contained in The Assimilation of Yogic Religions through Pop Culture explore the references to yogis and their native cultures of India, Tibet, and China as they are found in the stories of many famous icons of popular culture, from Batman, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange to Star Trek, Doctor Who, Twin Peaks, and others. In doing so, the authors challenge the reader to look deeper into the seemingly superficial appropriation of the image of the yogi and Asian religious themes found in all manner of comic books, novels, television, movies, and theater and to carefully examine how they are being represented and what exactly is being said.

Author : Amy Hale
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030768899
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Essays on Women in Western Esotericism written by Amy Hale and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-21 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women’s scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told.

Author : Benjamin Lorr
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 031267290X
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga written by Benjamin Lorr and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lorr explores the fascinating, often surreal world of Bikram Yoga, a style taught to millions by a very living guru, Bikram Choudhury. Bikram Yoga is distinguished by the extreme heat it is practiced in, an overt focus on pain, and the materialism of its founder.

Author : Knut A. Jacobsen
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004212140
Total Pages : 533 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Yoga Powers written by Knut A. Jacobsen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book offers a number of new insights in the history of yoga powers in the South Asian religious traditions, analyzes the position of the powers in the salvific process and in conceptions of divinity, and explores the rational explanations of the powers provided by the traditions.

Author : Chad M. Bauman
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000328880
Total Pages : 957 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations written by Chad M. Bauman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical interplay of Hinduism as an ancient Indian religion and Christianity as a religion associated (in India, at least) with foreign power and colonialism, continues to animate Hindu–Christian relations today. On the one hand, The Routledge Handbook of Hindu–Christian Relations describes a rich history of amicable, productive, even sometimes syncretic Hindu–Christian encounters. On the other, this handbook equally attends to historical and contemporary moments of tension, conflict, and violence between Hindus and Christians. Comprising thirty-nine chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook is divided into seven parts: Theoretical and methodological considerations Historical interactions Contemporary exchanges Sites of bodily and material interactions Significant figures Comparative theologies Responses The handbook explores: how the study of Hindu–Christian relations has been and ought to be done, the history of Hindu–Christian relations through key interactions, ethnographic reflections on current dynamics of Hindu–Christian exchange, important key thinkers, and topics in comparative theology, ultimately providing a framework for further debates in the area. The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations is essential reading for students and researchers in Hindu–Christian studies, Hindu traditions, Asian religions, and studies in Christianity. This handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as anthropology, political science, theology, and history.