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The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, by Stefanie Syman
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In The Subtle Body, Stefanie Syman tells the surprising story of yoga's transformation from a centuries-old spiritual discipline to a multibillion-dollar American industry.
Yoga's history in America is longer and richer than even its most devoted practitioners realize. It was present in Emerson's New England, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was fashionable among the leisure class. And yet when Americans first learned about yoga, what they learned was that it was a dangerous, alien practice that would corrupt body and soul.
A century later, you can find yoga in gyms, malls, and even hospitals, and the arrival of a yoga studio in a neighborhood is a signal of cosmopolitanism. How did it happen? It did so, Stefanie Syman explains, through a succession of charismatic yoga teachers, who risked charges of charlatanism as they promoted yoga in America, and through generations of yoga students, who were deemed unbalanced or even insane for their efforts. The Subtle Body tells the stories of these people, including Henry David Thoreau, Pierre A. Bernard, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Christopher Isherwood, Sally Kempton, and Indra Devi.
From New England, the book moves to New York City and its new suburbs between the wars, to colonial India, to postwar Los Angeles, to Haight-Ashbury in its heyday, and back to New York City post-9/11. In vivid chapters, it takes in celebrities from Gloria Swanson and George Harrison to Christy Turlington and Madonna. And it offers a fresh view of American society, showing how a seemingly arcane and foreign practice is as deeply rooted here as baseball or ballet.
This epic account of yoga's rise is absorbing and often inspiring―a major contribution to our understanding of our society.
- Sales Rank: #1034871 in Books
- Published on: 2011-05-24
- Released on: 2011-05-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.21" h x 1.17" w x 5.42" l, 1.05 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Yoga conquers America—and is conquered in its turn—in this labyrinthine cultural history. Journalist Syman traces American enthusiasm for yoga back to Thoreau and follows it through cycles of waxing and waning popularity: it was decried by Victorians for its association with madness and tantric sex rituals, celebrated in the 1960s for its association with altered states of consciousness (and tantric sex rituals), and ubiquitously embraced in the 21st century as a wholesome, anodyne exercise program. The author argues that, even as the om-chanting adept became the embodiment of spirituality, yoga's mainstreaming risked the discipline losing its rich spiritual content, along with the more extreme contortions, regular enemas, and whatever else Americans considered off-putting. Unfortunately, the author's attempts to clarify yoga's spiritual content, which is multifarious and intractably murky, don't always succeed, and sometimes the narrative bogs down amid barnstorming swamis and their squabbling sects. When she pulls back to view the culture mashup yoga has become—a cure for back pain, a beauty regime, and a route to God—she gives a cogent, engrossing analysis of this Asian-born spiritual practice turned all-American panacea. 8 pages of b&w illus. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Syman begins her embracive and illuminating history of yoga in America by discussing how polymorphous a practice yoga has become. From an age-old spiritual tradition in India designed to enable disciples to gain mastery over their bodies to attain the divine, yoga has morphed over the last century and a half into a form of exercise so mainstream, people performed yoga poses on the White House lawn during Easter celebrations—a sight no one would have imagined when yoga first scandalized Americans with its frank approach to every aspect of physical life, from breathing to sex. From Thoreau, the first American yogi, to the earliest yogis from India in America, including the influential Swami Vivekananda who arrived in 1893, Syman profiles a great array of colorful yogis and yoga teachers while chronicling with remarkable knowledge and wit all the permutations yoga has undergone. Of particular pleasure and discovery are Syman's coverage of yoga in Hollywood, the profound social changes propelling the union of yoga and psychedelics in the hippie era, and the yoga for success of more recent vintage. --Donna Seaman
Review
“Stefanie Syman's . . . spacious history of yoga in America, The Subtle Body, begins by describing how deeply and enduringly classical Indian philosophy influenced American transcendentalists. Both Emerson and Thoreau admired the Bhagavad-Gita . . . However, neither knew much about the physical-fitness side of yoga. The earliest Indian vendors of spirituality, like Swami Vivekananda . . . looked down on the asanas, or poses, of hatha yoga as a defective path to yoga's goal: the union of the individual self with the divine Self.” ―PANKAJ MISHRA, The New York Times Book Review
“Syman . . . astutely shows how yoga's versatility as a practice has helped it adapt to ever-conflicting historical currents.” ―CLAIRE DEDERER, Slate
“Syman gives a terrific overview of the teachers whose names are now so much a part of the history of yoga in this country: Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Prabhavananda, Indra Devi, Jois and Bikram . . . As for charges of commercialism or elitism: ‘Yoga is both an indulgence and a penance,' she writes. ‘It will tone your thighs, and it might crack open your reality.'” ―SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS, Los Angeles Times
“Many of us have been waiting for decades to read a comprehensive history of yoga in the United States. Stefanie Syman has written that history and she has written it very well. I recommend this book to the 16 million people who practice yoga in this country, as well as to anyone who simply wonders what the fuss is all about.” ―David Gordon White, author of Sinister Yogis
“The Subtle Body is an enthralling book, and an enlightening one.” ―Robert Thurman
“Stefanie Syman's superb book fills a major gap in our understanding of religion in America. This fascinating account, full of colorful characters, demonstrates the importance of yoga in transforming Americans' understanding of the body. Any survey of American religious history must take this narrative into account.” ―Randall Balmer, Professor of American Religious History, Barnard College, Columbia University
“As this intriguing narrative chronicles, few points of dynamic transfer in the encounter between East and West have proven more useful to creative Americans than the ancient philosophy and exercise regime of yoga. For its many practitioners, yoga fuses body, mind, spirit, energy, and attitude into an alembic of well-being harmonizing self and non-self, struggle and peace.” ―Kevin Starr, University of Southern California
Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
A beautiful fascinating book that unfortunately disappoints
By A. Jones
A fascinating, exceptionally well written book about the history of yoga in America. Well researched and referenced (reads almost like a doctoral dissertation). It's major weakness is the complete lack of proportion between the historic importance of various characters and the amount of text devoted to them. Obscure and relatively irrelevant characters (e.g., Margaret Woodrow Wilson) get far more page time than T.Krishnamacharya and BKS Iyengar. How is this possible? Many of the interesting and influential teachers of the past 30 years are not even mentioned. Many of the distinct styles of Hatha Yoga are not even mentioned. It's almost as though the author ran out of time or steam when she reached 1980. Also, having referenced so many interesting but obscure old documents, the author would have been wise to provide more pictures.
25 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
enjoyable but flawed
By J. owen
This is a book I've wanted to see for a long time. The subject of yoga culture and teachers was central to my own life from the 60's through the 90's. I think many of you old yogis and ashramites will enjoy this book. Despite many flaws, it is entertaining.
As a book of history, this has much interesting research into the early days of American yoga thinkers and teachers. I thought the focus on Pierre Bernard was excessive compared to other teachers and Gurus (Yogananda seemed marginalized by comparison). The focus also seems very heavy on tantra and sexual scandal, which to me seemed to be there to sell more books.
The later years of yoga fly by very quickly and Ms Syman seems to prefer the media shock value and scandal of the Gurus of the 60's through 80's and miss less dramatic but important developments of the various yoga/meditation movements. I'm tired of the Beatles/Maharishi connection seeming to be the center of Mahesh's career. There Was life after the Beatles for the TM movement
This book is strong on history and source referencing but weak on cultural analysis and makes many bizarre connections. I'm sorry, but I think this person should stick to being a reporter, not an analyst.
I guarantee its worth going over to U-tube to see Elvis sing "Yoga is as yoga does', a gem of a very bad song that Stefanie mentions when citing the media dumbing down and whitewashing of yoga.
So, enjoy it. Take with a grain of NaCl.
42 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
The Less than Subtle Body
By Rickter
Having been a student, practitioner, and teacher of yoga for the past 35 years, it was with some positive anticipation that I began reading The Subtle Body. Unfortunately, when I completed the book my first thought was that if I knew nothing about yoga, this book would make sure that I never pursued any form of yoga in the future. Yogis were a pretty weird and suspicious group as described in the book.
The author should be praised for amassing a substantial number of references. However, the errors and omissions in the book would keep me from recommending it to others. For some reason, the author chose to develop individual chapters of the book to the Bernards while only mentioning Paramahansa Yogananda in passing. My view of Swami Prahbavananda, based on reading his books and discussing him with a Nun who knew him was that he was of the highest intellect and morality. In this book he comes off as a chain smoking guy who had some conversations with Isherwood and Huxley.
Certainly, the numerous controversies in which some yogis were involved deserved mentioning. However, the positive aspects of many of the yoga masters described were downplayed or left out. For instance, Muktananda's Siddha Yoga is discussed in terms of Durgananda who left Siddha Yoga on good terms. No mention was made of the several other substantial SY swamis who have maintained their work within the organization.
Of considerable concern is the failure to discuss yoga philosophy and psychology which some feel trump that found in the west. Their is little discussion, if any, of the title of the book. The subtle body needs much more clarification or it seems like some silly fantasy. The trumping of spiritual yoga by the various hatha yoga "studios" has been deplored by such yoga scholars as Dr. Georg Feurstein. This issue is missed by the author.
Of greatest concern, was the oblique conclusion that yoga and western religion are antithetical to one another. Yogis have gone out of their way to show the parallels in the western and eastern paradigms. Certainly, there are differences, but many practitioners of western religion have found ways to assimilate a yoga practice into their lives.
Anyone wishing to understand yoga would do better to read Prabhavananda and Huston Smith's Spiritual Heritage of India. Then go to various centers offering meditation as a main form of yoga and find one with which you are comfortable.
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