Stefanie Syman

I started studying and practicing Iyengar yoga in 1978, read Taimni's Science of Yoga - his commentary on the yoga sutras - and then started attending a Ramakrishna-Vivekananda center. By about 1980 I was getting into Buddhism. But I still study and practice yoga, still in the Iyengar school. Along the way I have kept reading about yoga from different perspectives and also going to workshops around the country and meeting and talking with people. I mention all this because it colors my response to this book. I am surely an unusually knowledgeable reader. I didn't learn a whole lot from the book! But probably most readers will pick up a lot of useful information and get a good perspective on the whole show.

The book is a bit of a whirlwind, covering from maybe 1850 to 2000. It is not comprehensive, but it is not particularly selective either. That is a bit of a problem. It's just stretched a bit thin. The main theme seems to be, is yoga a religion or a physical exercise regime? Or anyway, how is yoga presented to and understood by Americans.

One frustrating thread... what about the modern history of yoga in India. We hear a tantalizing bit about e.g. Bikram's father who had some connection to Yogananda. Yeah back earlier there was a bit of discussion about Hindu revival in the late nineteenth century and the contrast between Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. But these are just little snippets of what is really of fundamental importance. Yoga in America is clearly very closely connected to Yoga in India. It's like we are studying the footprints of elephants and then just given a few glimpses of the actual elephants.

Or, to follow the metaphor, maybe religion and exercise etc. in American culture, that is like the soil. We hear a bit about the rise of jogging or aerobics, but not really very much. Or about other religious movements in America. For example Jim Jones is mentioned but what about Jesus freaks etc. Of course the subject is vast. But somehow maybe there could be some tighter organizing principle that could guide what is worth including and what to leave out.

So I would say this is a sort of quick tour of highlights of yoga in America with lots of dangling threads. It is not a comprehensive survey, nor does it dive into the details of the particular topics it does discuss. But anyway, it is a fun read and should broaden the perspective of most anybody who stumbles into this wild land and wants to get a sense of how the aspects fit together. Actually you won't really get a sense of how things fit together, but you might get a better sense of how it has come to be that the parts are so diverse and scattered and not very compatible. In that sense the book does sort of mirror its subject!… (lisätietoja)