"This volume investigates contemporary bodily practices as a mode of transmitting and receiving South Asian religious and spiritual traditions. The collection's essays explore processes of adoption and adaptation, and the ways in which somatic religious practices are transplanted into new contexts, acquiring new meanings and generating dynamics of their own"--
This volume investigates contemporary bodily practices as a mode of transmitting and receiving South Asian religious and spiritual traditions. The collection's essays explore processes of adoption and adaptation, and the ways in which somatic religious practices are transplanted into new contexts, acquiring new meanings and generating dynamics of their own. Using the concept of "embodied reception" as a heuristic, the contributions address the dialectic between inscribing knowledge on practitioners' bodies and opening new avenues for meaning-making through bodily experiences. The collection assembles a range of empirical cases: contemplative bodily techniques such as postural yoga, mindfulness, and meditation; ritual practices in modern advaitic satsang; South Indian martial art; tantric goddess veneration; contemporary Samkhyayoga practices. The empirical studies span devotional communities, yoga institutions, New Age milieus, and secularized contexts, providing a rich tapestry of contemporary embodied reception in and outside South Asia. Assembling research on embodied forms of reception both in South Asia and in Western countries, the volume advocates for paying close attention to entangled histories of knowledge. Grounded in this empirical outlook, the volume also speaks to theoretical and methodological debates on travelling bodily practices. The contributions suggest theoretical and methodological frameworks ranging from aesthetics of religion to sociology of knowledge, from ethnographical to cognitive approaches.
Editors
Preface
Henriette
Hanky, Knut A. Jacobsen and Istvįn Keul
I
THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
1.
Introduction Embodied Reception: South Asian Spiritualities in
Contemporary Contexts
Henriette
Hanky
2.
TrainingSensingPredicting: Towards a Theory of the Reception of
Practices as Embodied
Anne
Koch, University of Freiburg
3.
The Search for Rigour in Ethnographies of Bodily Practice
Theo
Wildcroft, The Open University
II
PERFORMING TEXTUAL TRADITIONS
4.
Transpersonal Therapy and a Tantric Temple: The Partrik in
Western Practice
Istvįn
Keul
5.
Practicing the Yogastra? An Approach to the Analysis of
Contemporary Yoga Philosophys Somatic Aspects
Laura
von Ostrowski, University of Hamburg
6.
Lay Skhyayoga Practices in Contemporary India
Knut
A. Jacobsen
III
BODILY PRACTICES ON THE MOVE
7.
Embodied Receptions and the Creation of B.K.S. Iyengars Light on
Pryma
Suzanne
Newcombe, The Open University and Inform, King's College London
8.
Between Patańjali and Psychology: Acems Classical, Meditative
Yoga
Margrethe
Lųųv, NLA
University College, Oslo
9.
Kaarippaya in Performance: Adoptions and Adaptations of a
South Indian Martial Art
Lucy
May Constantini, The Open University
IV
EMBODIED MEANING-MAKING
10.
Osho in a Nutshell? Dynamic Meditation and the Relationship Between
Bodily Performance and Meaning-Making
Henriette
Hanky
11.
Being here fully: Autoethnographic Approaches to
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as an Embodied Group Interaction
of an Authentic Self
Alan
Schink, Ulm
University
12.
Moving Beyond the Mind Through Listening by Heart: The Role of
Experience in Modern Advaitic Satsangs
Elin
Thorsén, University of Gothenburg
13.
Aligning the Good and the Beautiful: Yogic Aesthetics in a Globalized
World Amanda
Lucia, University of California, Riverside
Henriette Hanky is University Lecturer in the Study of Religions at the University of Stavanger and a doctoral candidate at the University of Bergen.
Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen.
Istvįn Keul is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen.
