21st Century Yoga: Culture, Politics, and Practice

Yoga may be rooted in ancient India, but it’s morphed into something new in North America today.

Precisely what that might be, however, is difficult to say. Yoga is taught everywhere from spas to prisons, and for everything from weight loss to spiritual transcendence. With its chameleon-like ability to adapt equally well to advertising, athletics, and ashrams, contemporary yoga is a fascinating phenomenon that invites investigation.

Written by experienced practitioners who are also teachers, therapists, activists, scholars, studio owners, and interfaith ministers, 21st Century Yoga is one of the first books to provide a multi-faceted examination of yoga as it actually exists in the U.S. and Canada today.


CONTENTS:

Introduction: Yoga and North American Culture - Carol Horton

Enlightenment 2.0: The American Yoga Experiment - Julian Walker

How Yoga Makes You Pretty: The Beauty Myth, Yoga and Me - Melanie Klein

Questioning the "Body Beautiful": Yoga, Commercialism, and Discernment - Poep Sa Frank Jude Boccio

Bifurcated Spiritualities: Examining Mind/Body Splits in the North American Yoga and Zen Communities - Nathan Thompson

Starved for Connection: Healing Anorexia Through Yoga - Chelsea Roff

Yoga and the 12 Steps: Holistic Recovery from Addiction - Tommy Rosen

Modern Yoga Will Not Form a Real Culture Until Every Studio Can Also Double as a Soup Kitchen and other observations from the threshold between yoga and activism - Matthew Remski

Yoga for War: The Politics of the Divine - Be Scofield

Our True Nature is Our Imagination: Yoga and Non-Violence at the Edge of the World - Michael Stone

How Yoga Messed With My Mind - Angela Jamison

Afterword: The Evolution of Yoga and the Practice of Writing - Roseanne Harvey