Abstract
While most Westerners might not be able to provide an in-depth explanation of what exactly it is, yoga is a familiar word, even if it looks significantly different from practices that one might find in India. This chapter draws on a mini ethnography of two yoga studios in Montreal in order to better understand and examine yoga in the ‘West’. The author argues that yoga studios can reveal some of the particularities of self-formation in the West as it relates to the construction of the spiritual and religious subject. Most contemporary yoga studios house all manner of religious and spiritual objects that refer to exotic other places; indeed, it is this connection to ‘other’ places that lends the studio its legitimacy as a sacred space.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, the term ‘West’ does not necessarily refer to a particular geographical location or continental boundary, but, rather,to a set of shared cultural characteristics that are often seen as distinct from the ‘East’. Thus, North America, Australia, and parts of Europe would fall under the ‘West’. Similarly, Westerners refer to people within these locales who embody shared cultural characteristics and habits.
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Smith, L. (2016). Being on the Mat: Quasi-Sacred Spaces, ‘Exotic’ Other Places, and Yoga Studios in the ‘West’. In: Beaman, L., Sikka, S. (eds) Constructions of Self and Other in Yoga, Travel, and Tourism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32512-5_11
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