Asana-Focused Yoga History Scholarship
I had already been applying what I learned from my Iyengar yoga classes at the Iyengar Yoga Center of New York in Soho to my weight-resistance training at Natural Physique Centre, the storefront gym in the East Village, for five years when, in early 1991, a friend gave me the March issue of Iron Man magazine so that I could read the article “Gallery of Ironmen: Professor K. V. Iyer,” by David Chapman. “Iyer attempted to blend Hindu mysticism and conventional physical culture into something uniquely his own,” wrote Chapman. “He wanted to show bodybuilders that they could build something more than a hard, muscled body.”
I rushed to the main branch of the New York Public Library, where I found Iyer’s Correspondence School of Physical Culture promotional booklet, Muscle Cult: A Pro-em to My System (1930). In it, I learned that Iyer’s system was actually a blend of bodybuilding and yoga. I was electrified. In so doing, he became the first person to combine what he called the “Cult of Body-building” and the “Hata-yoga Cult.” “My aim in My System,” he proclaimed, “is to reconcile these two great systems to assure the future Culturist of robustness of health and beauty of limb and trunk.” About 50 years later, I unknowingly replicated his system when I began practicing and teaching a regimen that combined Western strengthening and yogic stretching exercises.
How exactly did Iyer mix bodybuilding and yoga, I wondered. Did his practice of yoga postures inform his bodybuilding practice? To find out, I spent years locating his writings and writings about him, communicating with his family and acquaintances, and collecting images of him.
I began writing a book about Iyer that focused on his physical disciplines. At some point, though, I realized that in order to truly understand them, I needed to know more about the practice of yoga in the early 20th century. This was the beginning of my research into the history of asana-focused yoga—yoga as most of us know it.
Drawing on about 20 years of research from rare primary sources as well as recent scholarship, I began to write the sweeping story of how asana-focused yoga became the most prominent strand of modern yoga through examining the remarkable lives and accomplishments of nearly a dozen historical figures. I placed their achievements within the context of such Western trends as the physical culture movement, the commodification of exercise, militant nationalism, jazz age popular entertainment, the quest for youth and beauty, and 19th-century New Age religion.
The arc of the resultant book, The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice, published under the name Elliott Goldberg in 2016, chronicled a substrand of asana-focused yoga: the transformation of yoga from sacred discipline to exercise program for fitness and health to an embodied spiritual practice.
To read excerpts from The Path of Modern Yoga, click HERE.
The Path of Modern Yoga can be purchased from the publisher, Inner Traditions, or at local bookstores or online bookstores.
To inquire about my availability for readings, slide show presentations, or interviews, please send an email to elliottgoldbergyoga@gmail.com.
Endorsements
“The fruit of many years' research and reflection, Goldberg’s long-awaited study combines rich cultural history with practical insights into embodied yoga practice (partly based on his in-depth knowledge of contemporary exercise science). It is wide-ranging and well written, presenting the broader social contexts of yoga's global flourishing as a backdrop to a careful examination of some of its most influential teachers. I welcome and applaud this book.”
—Mark Singleton, senior research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and author of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice
“This is an outstanding account of the making of modern yoga, showing us the exquisite as well as disturbing ways in which it is of its time rather than ancient and timeless. Amidst bodybuilding, militarism, poetry, and anxiety, charismatic men and women both Eastern and Western, whose efforts transformed yoga into what it is for us today, walk through the pages of this marvelous book.”
—Siddhartha Deb, associate professor of literary studies at The New School and author of The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India
“Elliott Goldberg has produced a scholarly yet gripping account of modern yoga history. While telling many colorful and poignant stories of their lives, he describes how the early teachers developed modern yoga by emphasizing asana as fitness and health routine. In the last chapters he explores the asana of spiritual embodiment—as exemplified by the teachings of B. K. S. Iyengar—in which the physical reveals the sacred that is often hidden but always there and waiting to emerge within our asana practice.”
—Angela Farmer, yoga teacher who holds retreats for women worldwide and creator of the DVDs Inner Body Flow and The Feminine Unfolding
“Goldberg's exhaustive, comprehensive and endlessly fascinating The Path of Modern Yoga offers an important illustration of the wonderfully contradictory and often bizarre interplays at root in modern yoga—of Indian nationalism and Western movements, of spirituality and body culture, of idealism and exigencies. It is a pleasure to see these complicated dynamics parsed by so serious and probing an intelligence as Goldberg's.”
—Elizabeth Kadetsky, assistant professor of creative writing at Penn State University and author of First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance
“Elliott Goldberg presents a highly detailed and spellbinding narrative of the transformation of the Indian yoga tradition into today’s myriad postural yoga incarnations. Offering a nuanced perspective on the major personalities and the contemporary trends (both East and West!) that influenced them, he lays to rest the simplistic notion of yoga’s “authenticity” being tied to any one yoga style, religion, or nation. This complex history should enlighten us all.”
—Roxanne Kamayani Gupta, classical Indian dancer, environmental activist, and the author of A Yoga of Indian Classical Dance
“This is a detailed, comprehensive, and rich examination of the history of modern yoga, showing clearly—and with new insight—how “postural yoga” is thoroughly enmeshed in the culture of health, fitness and athletics. Goldberg has provided us with an important perspective on how different aspects of 20th century “body culture” shaped the practice of asana during the modern yoga renaissance.”
—Joseph S. Alter, professor in the study abroad program Yale-NUS College in Singapore and author of Yoga in Modern India and Moral Materialism
“In The Path of Modern Yoga, Elliott Goldberg has laid out a clear road map—with detours into philosophical musings—of the path of modern yoga from its origins in the early 20th century to its current state of practice in the early 21st century, especially noting the profound influence of my teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar. Although more could’ve been written about the openness and love with which Iyengar gave of himself, if you want to know about yoga and how it got to be what it is today, this is the book to read.”
—John Schumacher, yoga teacher and director of Unity Woods Yoga Center, described by Yoga Journal as one of “25 Americans who are shaping yoga today”
“This is a deep history of the birth of modern yoga. There is dogged research on and profound insight into the main protagonists. Their contributions are shown to be both unique and tempered by the spirit of the times in the West as well as in India. As a result, this story of modern yoga is equally intimate and expansive. Now we practitioners of yoga can muse over where we really come from.”
—Norman Sjoman, student of Sanskrit, artist, and author of The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace and Yoga Touchstone
“Goldberg’s “detective work” is impressive. In his investigation into the writings of British journalist Louise Morgan, he has uncovered her critical role in the transformation of the “Sun Salutation” into an “Elixir for Women”—a missing link in the development of modern yoga as a practice for women as well as men. Although at times irreverent, The Path of Modern Yoga is filled throughout with wisdom and understanding into the culture and experience of yoga.”
—Stuart Ray Sarbacker, professor in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion, Oregon State University and the coauthor of The Eight Limbs of Yoga
“Combining original historical research with a compelling narrative, The Path of Modern Yoga profiles some of the most significant—and in some cases surprising—personalities to shape modern yoga practice. Goldberg's reflections and insights will further understanding, both popular and academic, of yoga and its place in the contemporary world.”
—Suzanne Newcombe, associate lecturer for the Open University and research officer at Inform, both in London, and author of articles and chapters on the social history of yoga
My most recent writings about modern yoga, also published under the name Elliott Goldberg, are two entries in Yoga: L’ encyclopédie: “Yogendra et Kuvalayananda: santé et bien-être pour tous par le yoga” [Yogendra and Kuvalayananda: health and well-being for all through yoga”] and “L’invention de la salutation au Soleil” [“The creation of the sun salutations”].
