Biography of a Yogi

Biography of a Yogi by Anya P Foxen

With over four million copies in print, Parmahansa Yogananda's autobiography has been translated into thirty-three languages, and it still serves as a gateway into yoga and alternative spirituality for countless North American practitioners. This book examines Yogananda's life and work to clarify linkages between the seemingly disparate aspects of modern yoga, and illuminates the intimate connections between yoga and metaphysically-leaning American traditions such as Unitarianism, New Thought, and Theosophy. Instead of treating yoga as a stable practice, Anya P. Foxen proposes that it is the figure of the Yogi that give the practice of his followers both form and meaning. Focusing on Yogis rather than yoga during the period of transnational popularization highlights the continuities in the concept of the Yogi as superhuman even as it illuminates the transformation of the practice itself. Skillfully balancing traditional yogic ritual, metaphysical spirituality, physical culture, and a flair for the stage, Foxen shows, Yogananda taught a proto-modern yoga to his American audiences. His Yogoda program has remained under the radar of yoga scholarship due to its lack of reliance on recognizable postures. However, as a regimen of training for the modern Yogi, Yogananda's method synthesizes the spiritual and superhuman aspirations of Indian traditions with the metaphysical and health-oriented sensibilities of Euro-American progressivism in a way that exactly prefigures present-day transnational yoga culture. Yet, at the heart of it all, Yogananda retains a sense of what it means to be a Yogi: his message is that the natural destiny of the human is the superhuman.

The monograph is carefully edited, includes an index, and offers a thorough introductionScholars of modern yoga, metaphysical religion, and therapeutic spirituality will find Foxen's study to be a valuable resource for further research. * Dominic Zoehrer, Religious Studies Review *

Anya P. Foxen teaches in the Religious Studies Program at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is a certified yoga instructor and long-time practitioner.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780190668051
ISBN 10	0190668059
Title	Biography of a Yogi
Author	Anya P Foxen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press Inc
Year published	2017-08-24
Number of pages	264
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable