Yoga is now found in urban centres and rural retreats across the world as well as in its historical home in the Indian subcontinent. What is now practiced as yoga across the globe has a long history of transnational intercultural exchange and has been considered by some as an outgrowth of Neo-Hinduism. Although the popularisation of yoga is often cited in theories about ‘Easternization’ or the ‘re-enchantment’ of the West since the late 20th century, most of these theories make little reference to the growing number of historical, sociological and anthropological studies of modern yoga. This article will consider how the apparent dichotomy between yoga as a physical fitness activity (often termed ‘hatha yoga’) and/or as a ‘spiritual practice’ developed historically and discuss recent trends in the research.

The Development of Modern Yoga: A Survey of the Field

Modern postural yoga as a mental health promoting tool: A systematic review.

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Tracing an American Yoga: Identity and Cross-Cultural Transaction

Serious leisure and social world theory provide a framework to qualitatively examine a small number of yoga participants with regard to their social world connections and propensity to engage in event tourism. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of 15 yoga practitioners in Brisbane, Australia. For most devotees, yoga was regarded as serious leisure with a social world in which highly involved ‘actors’ participated in a range of ‘insider’ capacities. Social engagement was a strong motivator and having friends involved with, and building strong friendships through yoga was a common denominator. It was found that there was a strong association between the social world of yoga and event tourism, and a new model titled the ‘yoga devotee career trajectory’ was developed. Yoga was considered to be a unique and personal journey which became a complete lifestyle involving continuous learning and self-exploration. Theoretical and future research implications were also discussed.

The social world and event travel career of the serious yoga devotee

Understanding the motivation and satisfaction of yoga consumers is of critical importance for both leisure service providers and leisure researchers to enhance the sustainability of personal lives in terms of physical wellness and mental happiness. For this purpose, this study investigated 25,120 pairs of online ratings and reviews from 100 yoga centres in Shanghai, China using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA)-based text mining, and successfully established the relationship between rating and review. Findings suggest that Chinese yogis are motivated by improving physical condition, improving psychological condition, gracing appearance, establishing social connection, and creating social isolation. In addition to teaching mainstream yoga, yoga centres also provide additional courses. From a consumer perspective, yogis are relatively satisfied with teachers, courses, and the environment, but complain about the supporting staff, membership price, and reservation service. Managerially, yoga centres are encouraged to continue attending to the motivations of yogis, specialising their guidance, and fostering strengths and circumventing weaknesses in their service. This study also contributes by verifying, elaborating on, and tentatively extending the framework of the Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale (PALMS).

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4458/pdf

Leisure Motivation and Satisfaction: A Text Mining of Yoga Centres, Yoga Consumers, and Their Interactions

Modern yoga has emerged as a transnational global phenomenon during the course of the twentieth century and from about 1975 onwards it has progressively become acculturated in many different developed or developing societies and milieus worldwide. Eventually it started to be studied more critically, and various processes of enquiry and reflection were initiated. Perhaps not surprisingly, this trend has been especially noticeable in academic circles, where we see the earliest examples of research on acculturated forms of modern yoga in the 1990s, with work picking up real momentum from about 2000.

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Elizabeth De Michelis

Papers

A Preliminary Survey of Modern Yoga Studies