Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture

Andrea Jain

Nov 2014 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

Premodern and early modern yoga comprise techniques with a wide range of aims, from turning inward in quest of the true self, to turning outward for divine union, to channeling bodily energy in pursuit of sexual pleasure. Early modern yoga also encompassed countercultural beliefs and practices. In contrast, today, modern yoga aims at the enhancement of the mind-body complex but does so according to contemporary dominant metaphysical, health, and fitness paradigms. Consequently, yoga is now a part of popular culture. In Selling Yoga, Andrea R. Jain explores the popularization of yoga in the context of late-twentieth-century consumer culture. She departs from conventional approaches by undermining essentialist definitions of yoga as well as assumptions that yoga underwent a linear trajectory of increasing popularization. While some studies trivialize popularized yoga systems by reducing them to the mere commodification or corruption of what is perceived as an otherwise fixed, authentic system, Jain suggests that this dichotomy oversimplifies the history of yoga as well as its meanings for contemporary practitioners. By discussing a wide array of modern yoga types, from Iyengar Yoga to Bikram Yoga, Jain argues that popularized yoga cannot be dismissed--that it has a variety of religious meanings and functions. Yoga brands destabilize the basic utility of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that represent the fulfillment of self-developmental needs often deemed sacred in contemporary consumer culture.

Ratings and reviews

Reading this book, it is clear that the author is some poorly educated hippie who decided to go on some Eat, Pray, Love journey to India and wrote about her experience in this trash of a novel. It's written like a teenager, with the emotional and intellectual depth of a self-centered idiot. Anyone who finds meaning in this book, is some neo-buddhist who identifies as a yogi and thinks they are well accustomed to Hindu traditions. This book is an insult to my indian heritage and the price tag of it is not worth reading about this dumbass's "spiritual" journey through India.

About the author

Andrea R. Jain is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.