Tracing an American Yoga: Identity and Cross-Cultural Transaction

This dissertation looks at the creative identity of an American yoga, both rooted in its Indic origins and radically transformed in its U.S. manifestations. It traces the broad historical transactions of yoga in terms of East and West, Secular and Religious, authenticity and idealized conception, as well as provides a critical historical genealogy of Anusara and Sridaiva yoga. Furthermore, the project relates yoga to the identity, power, and knowledge dynamics of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern histories and interpretations of yoga and Tantra, multiple theoretical discourses, and the embodied practices of individuals within Indian and American contexts. I argue that there is a unique and polysemous yogic identity in America, and that this identity has developed from a messy process of transaction between Indian and Western modes of being and knowing. Furthermore, the current Americanized culture of yoga brings along with it narratives of specific value. American yoga displays a particularly consumptive quality of yogic lifestyle that reflects a cultural atmosphere of reinvention and a merging of profit and personal purpose. American yoga’s identity today is entrepreneurial, branded, business oriented, and marketed for consumption. This dissertation shows how the American yogic identity is in flux, continuously fracturing and multiplying into various and novel understandings that relate to yoga’s past and to the market value for today’s American consumer. It examines the moving nature of yoga in the American landscape as what Jared Farmer calls a “center of creativity” and as a display of excess and choice. The discussion of yoga is further located in John Friend’s styles of yoga and/or lifestyle practices, Anusara and Sridaiva, as they both redefine and further remove yoga from established Indian markers of identity. My locations as American yogi, as comparativist, as ethnographer, and as a Bachelor of Science in Advertising and Marketing also situate this analysis.

A Framework for Conceptualizing Psychologically Healthy Contemplative Practice.

In recent years contemplative practices such as Zen Buddhism and yoga have become increasingly utilized in the United States (Mann et al., 2001). The most visible contemplative practice in America today is the practice of yoga. According to a 2008 market study conducted by Yoga Journal, yoga was a 5.6 billion dollar industry in America in 2008. This market study also found that 15.8 million people, or 6.9% of American adults, practice yoga (Yoga Market Study, 2008). Zen Buddhism may be less visible than yoga in popular culture, yet its presence in the United States is substantial. While exact statistics are difficult to come by, Harvard University's Pluralism Project cites that the number of practicing Buddhists in America ranges from 2.4 to 4 million people, although it is unclear how many of these individuals practice Zen, or contemplative Buddhism (Pluralism Project Statistics, 2009). The popularity of Zen in America is further evidenced by the presence of Zen centers in most major cities. The sizeable and growing presence of Buddhism in America indicates a move towards the inclusion of contemplative practice in the cultural mainstream (Pluralism Project Statistics, 2009).