The Yoga Tradition Of The Mysore Palace

On the Haṭha Yoga tradition based on age old practice in Mysore Palace, with illustrations of asanas from the Yoga section of Śrītattvanidhi by Kr̥ṣṇarāja Vaḍeyara, III, Maharaja of Mysore, fl. 1799-1868; includes English translation of the text.

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim? In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today. Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head.

The volume traces the intellectual history of Patanjala Yoga philosophy from the early centuries of the Common Era through the twentieth century. It also provides a systematic discussions of the philosophy of classical Yoga. Particular attention is given to the meaning of concentration (Samadhi), engrossment (samapatti) and the extra-ordinary cognitive capacities (vibhutis, siddhis) and the role that these notions play in the Yoga philosophy, which are relevant for issues currently under discussion in contemporary western philosophy of mind. The volume compares and contrasts classical yoga philosophy with classical Samkhya and with Indian Buddhist thought. Although the primary focus of the volume is on Patanjala Yoga, the system of Hatha Yoga and other satellite systems of Yoga are discussed as well, and an attempt is made to differentiate clearly the classical system of Yoga Sastra from Hatha Yoga and the other satellite systems. Some twenty-eight Sanskrit texts of Patanjala. Yoga are summarized or noted in the volume. Twenty-six volumes of Hatha Yoga and the texts of some other satellite systems are also included. Altogether the volume contains summaries and or notations for some seventy-five Sanskrit texts.

New York Times best-selling author Michelle Goldberg tells the globetrotting story of the incredible woman who brought yoga to the West. When Indra Devi was born in Russia in 1899, yoga was virtually unknown outside of India. By the time of her death, in 2002, it was being practiced around the world. Here Michelle Goldberg tells the globetrotting story of the incredible woman who helped usher in a craze that continues unabated to this day. A sweeping picture of the twentieth century that travels from the cabarets of Berlin to the Mysore Palace to Golden Age Hollywood and beyond, The Goddess Pose brings the Devi’s little known but extraordinary adventures vividly to life.

A unique reference work from the foremost writer on Yoga today, THE YOGA TRADITION surveys the 5,000-year history of Hindy, Buddhistm, Jaina, and Sikh Yoga, featuring full and partial translations of numerous key scriptures and over 200 illustrations. It is considered the CLASSIC text on Yoga practice and history.

"Published by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, October 19, 2013 - January 26, 2014. Organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the exhibition travels to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, February 22-May 18, 2014, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 22-September 7, 2014."