Abstract
In the past decade, many diploma and degree programs in Yoga Studies and Yoga Therapy have opened throughout India. This article provides an overview of the origins of these programs and their curriculum at the level of the bachelor and master degrees. It also includes brief descriptions of visits to fourteen universities and specialized institutes dedicated to the study of Yoga. It concludes with some reflections on the history, context, and future prospects for this emerging academic discipline.
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Notes
Please note the usage of the initial capital in Yoga. This is to distinguish Yoga as a philosophical tradition on par with Buddhism rather than merely a physical sport such as basketball or cricket.
Some resources include Andrea R. Jain, Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); David Gordon White, Yoga in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Tilak Pyle and Calvin Mercer, The Writings of Swami Sivananda: A Bibliographical Study (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007); Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice (Prescott: Hohm, 1998); Sarah Strauss, Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures (New York: Berg, 2005); Elizabeth De Michelis, A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism (New York: Continuum, 2004) and others.
I first visited S-VYAS in 1989 and returned several times, participating in various conferences in the 1990s and meeting with founders (the late Dr.) Shastri (an aficionado of the Yogavāsiṣṭha), Nagendra, Nagarathna, and Raghuram both in India and in the USA.
These two programs served as the required “comparator schools” in the curriculum approval plan that was submitted in 2009 resulting in the eventual implementation of the first Master of Arts in Yoga Studies in the western hemisphere in 2013 at Loyola Marymount University. For a full description of the process, see “Establishing Yoga Studies” in Mariana Caplan and Gabriel Axel, editors, Proceedings of the Yoga & Psyche Conference (2014) (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016, pp. 11–22).
http://www.visvabharati.ac.in/files/517240516_PhEd-GoISelectsYoga.pdf Consulted February 2, 2020.
Bachelor of Science in Yoga (Honors) Syllabus, Framework by Committee on Yoga Education in Universities UGCMHRD, Department of Yogic Art and Science, Vinaya Bhavana, Visva-Bharati (A Central University of National Importance), Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. Printed copy received 2019.
Topics presented included “Yoga, Mantra, and Meditation for Mind, Body, and Soul at KKSU; “Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra” at UMumbai; “The Role of the Bhāvas” at YI; “Yoga Therapy and Outlook in the Sāṃkhya Kārikā and the Yogavāsiṣṭha” at KD; “Haribhadra’s Yogas and the Honoring of Padmāvatī: Transformations in Jainism” at UChennai; “Yoga Therapy: Philosophy through Literature” at MGH Cuddalore; “The Many Yogas of Haribhadra’s Yogabindu” at DSVV; “Turning Back: Thinking with the Yoga Sūtra” at DelhiU; “Religious Diversity, Yoga, and Jainism” at VivekanandaU; “Yoga in America” at VBU; “From the Transcendentalists to Modern Yoga” at BHU; “Karma, Pūjā, Yoga, and Japa” at PV; and “Yoga Therapy and the Heart” at KSOU.
https://theyogainstitute.org/social-initiatives/
Christopher Key Chapple, Yoga and the Luminous: Patañjali’s Spiritual Path to Freedom (Albany: State University of New York Press. 2008), p. 252. Quote from Dr. Pal is taken from Joseph S. Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 167.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/fields/print_2115.html
Consulted February 5, 2020.
Alter, op. cit., 171, 211–21.
See Yoga and the Luminous, pp. 9–16 and the unpublished paper presented as part of the panel discussion “Is Yoga Hindu?”, North American Hindu Association of Dharma Studies, American
Academy of Religion, November 20, 2011.
Electronic communication, January 2019.
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This research was undertaken with the support of a Fulbright Nehru Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence.
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Chapple, C.K. The Academic Study of Yoga in India. DHARM 3, 107–120 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00066-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00066-y