Gajendragadkar autobiography of a yogi pdf
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Is Yoga A Religion?
Is Yoga A Religion? This question has come up a lot in the recent weeks. From my students in our Yoga Teacher Training classes to my Yoga privates with a Christian Missionary doctor, I figured this topic would be an insightful addition to our blog where it can be eternally accessed as this questions arises again in the future.
I was born and raised in India. In fact, I have lived there most of my life so yes, that makes me a Hindu. Since Yoga made its entry into the Western world, there has been some amount of controversy about whether or not Yoga is a religion. Does the practice of yoga poses and an occasional OM chant endanger your own faith, whatever that might be?
The simple answer to is NO, Yoga is not a religion. But then isnt Yoga a part of Hinduism? The problem here is that people do not have a clear understanding of what Hinduism really means or what it is. The word Hindu is derived from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, a prominent river that flows through the Northwestern part of the Indian sub-continent, and the word itself has evolved with time. The term Hindu referred to the ethnic communities that lived in and around the Sindhu (also known as Indu or Indus river). It is believed that the Persians who
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Sri Yogendra: Magic, Modernity and the Burden of the Middle-Class Yogi. In Mark Singleton ed. Gurus in Modern Yoga. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
Shri Yogendra: Magic, Modernity, and the Burden of the Middle-Class Yogi University Press Scholarship Online Oxford Scholarship Online Gurus of Modern Yoga Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg Print publication date: Print ISBN Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January DOI: /acprof:oso/ Shri Yogendra: Magic, Modernity, and the Burden of the Middle-Class Yogi Joseph S. Alter DOI/acprof:oso/ Abstract and Keywords In the early s Shri Yogendra was among the first to develop a system of modern yoga physical education, adapting what he learned from his guru, Paramahansa Madhavadasji, about the health benefits of āsana and prāṇayāma to an understanding of physical culture and gymnastics developed during several years teaching, healing, and lecturing in New York. As an advocate for rhythmic exercises, Yogendra embodied many of the contradictions of a modern guru. While intent on reinterpreting the medieval haṭhayoga literature to dispel popular conceptions of esoteric magic and erotic sexuality, he invoked the potential of yoga’s supernatural power, the authority of mystical gnosis, and the rhetoric of nationalist cultural