Modern Yoga Practice from the perspective of the Embodied Self:

A Study of the Lived Experiences of Chilean Iyengar Yoga Practitioners

Brbara Ayala Hannig

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of

MA in Anthropology of Health and the Body in the 21st Century
Department of Anthropology
Goldsmiths, University of London

17 September 2012

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on the practice of Iyengar Yoga, one of the most popular
forms of modern postural Yoga in the West. After presenting a brief description of
Modern Postural Yoga in general and Iyengar Yoga in particular, I review an
influential discursive approach to Yoga practice that considers it as a form of
complementary and alternative medicine. Although not focused exclusively on
Yoga practice, I consider worth discussing this approach, since I will argue that
albeit providing a critical analysis of the socio-cultural context in which Iyengar
Yoga is developed, its conceptualization of the body and the embodied self are
fairly limited. Based on a critique of the discursive approaches to the body, I will
present a phenomenological study of the practice of Iyengar Yoga in Chile.
Through the analysis of data collected in interviews and participant observations
with Chilean Iyengar yoga practitioners, I aim to explore the bodily dimension of
the Iyengar body techniques and the ways in which practitioners experience the
practice. I will conclude discussing the possibilities of this study of Iyengar
practice, showing that it complements the discursive approaches by allowing an
exploration of embodiment and its potentialities for subjectivity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

My warm gratitude to Annita, Tere, Ross, Nico and Pato

for supporting my journey
between desire and detachment
between abhyasa and vairagya.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

5. Introduction
8. Literature Review
16. Theoretical Framework
18. Methodology
22. Findings
34. Discussion
37. Conclusion
39. Appendixes
43. Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Postural Yoga practice has become increasingly popular in the last ten years in
Chilean urban contexts. The themes recurrence on national media and its
diffusion across different settings of practice such as gyms, health centres,
schools, colleges, community centres, private companies and so on, has
contributed to locate Yoga practice as a known topic within popular culture.
Thus, students usually choose to try the practice being previously recommended
to do so by friends, acquaintances and colleagues who have themselves
experienced its benefits, or directly by their doctor or psychologist who suggests it
as a form of complementary therapy for physical and emotional issues. Among
these practices, Iyengar Yoga method has been one of the most prominent, both
in terms of the number of its practitioners and its institutional spreading through
the country.
As a practitioner of the Iyengar Yoga method in Chile during the last 8 years, I
have been able to observe its process of expansion and legitimization. Chilean
situation is fairly similar to what is happening in other South American countries
(especially in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay)1 and in many European and North
American countries during the last decades. The growing popularity of modern
postural Yoga in the contemporary Western world has attracted the attention of
numerous scholars across the humanities, social and biomedical sciences.
Early analyses of postural Yoga focused on the classical Yoga texts (mainly
Patajalis Yoga Sutras and Hatha Yoga Pradipika) (Smith 2007). However, as
anthropologist Benjamin Smith emphasises: a social and cultural analysis of the
practice of modern postural Yoga necessarily involves a study of Yoga practice and
the embodied experience of its practitioners (2007:30-31, my emphasis). This
idea seems to be increasingly shared by scholars interested in the study of

Considering the lack of research on Yoga practice conducted in South America, this information
comes mainly from formal and informal interviews with South American practitioners and with
relevant figures within Chilean Yoga community (personal communication with Rishi Joseph and
Claudia Daz, owners of YogaMukti Centre, 10 July 2012).
5

modern Yoga, but it has not been translated into empirical research where the
literature about Yoga practice itself is scarce.
Acknowledging this, I propose a qualitative research focused on the embodied
experiences of Chilean practitioners of the Iyengar method. Using data collected
through interviews with 9 Iyengar practitioners, and through my own engagement
as an Iyengar practitioner and teacher, I will attempt to understand the popularity
of Iyengar Yoga in Chilean context from the perspective of the embodied and lived
experience of the practitioners. I will use phenomenology as a theoretical and
methodological orientation to explore the role of embodiment within the
practitioners experiences. In this sense, my research question will be: What does
Iyengar Yoga actually offers to those Chileans who regularly practice it?

I will start by outlining the practice of modern Yoga and its postural forms,
particularly the method of Iyengar Yoga. Then, I will present one of the most
influential approaches for its critical study within the social sciences: discursive
studies focused on the examination of complementary and alternative medicine
(CAM). Although not centred exclusively in Yoga practice, they include it as part of
a wider set of technologies, knowledge and practices aimed at the government of
individuals in contemporary societies. I will discuss this approach, considering its
possibilities and limitations in relation to the study of Iyengar Yoga. Together with
recognising its contributions for critically assess the socio-cultural context in which
Iyengar Yoga is developed, I will discuss its limitations in the conceptualization of
the body and the embodied self. Building on an already existing debate within the
field of body studies (cf. Blackman 2008), I will argue that these shortcomings are
the result of a limiting conceptualization of the body as a passive and malleable
object.
Afterward, I will present the culturally inflected phenomenology that served me as
theoretical framework and the methodological strategies that I used to develop
this research. In the section about findings I will try to describe both the bodily
dimension of the Iyengar body techniques and the ways in which practitioners
experience the practice. In the discussion of the findings I will return to the
6

literature review attempting to demonstrate how a phenomenological analysis of

the practitioners embodied experience can contribute to discursive analyses by
exploring new aspects of our embodiment that otherwise may remained
unnoticed. By the end of this dissertation I hope to have shown that a
phenomenological study of Iyengar Yoga practice opens up the possibility to
explore embodiment and its potentialities for subjectivity, an issue that is widely
absent in discursive approaches to CAM.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Modern Yoga and its Postural Forms of Practice

Within the emerging field of Yoga studies it is widely recognised that
contemporary forms of Yoga are the result of a transnational process of cultural
exportation, syncretic assimilation and acculturation between the East and the
West, particularly India and Europe (Newcombe 2009). In this sense, modern Yoga
should be regarded as a multiple and heterogeneous object of study that includes
a vast range of embodied practices and a diversity of ideas about the meaning of
these practices (Newcombe 2009:986). Despite this heterogeneity, the term
modern Yoga will here be defined as the disciplines and schools which are, to a
greater or lesser extent, rooted in South Asian cultural contexts, and which more
specifically draw inspiration from certain philosophies, teachings and practices of
Hinduism (De Michelis 2007:2).
Beyond the variety of possible linguistic, conceptual and performative usage of
the term Yoga, it could be argued that in the West, particularly in Englishspeaking countries (where most of the studies have been conducted), Yoga is
commonly understood as the performance of Yoga poses (asana) within a
classroom format, or the same type of practice performed at home with the help
of books, audiovisual tools, or on the basis of ones memory and knowledge of the
subject (De Michelis 2007:3). In fact, this description coincides closely with the
practice of one of the most disseminated forms of Yoga across the West, namely
modern postural Yoga (ibid.). The latter, also known as Hatha Yoga, started to
develop from the 1920s onwards and since then have become increasingly
influential, particularly through the schools established by B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi
Jois and TKV Desikachar (De Michelis 2007). These forms of Yoga are characterised
by the practice of postures (asana) and breathing techniques (pranayama), with a
particular emphasis on the physical and mental aspects of the experience of the
practitioner.

The Method of Iyengar Yoga2

The method of Iyengar Yoga is a specific form of postural Yoga created by Indian
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar and which has become arguably the
most influential and widespread school of Modern Postural Yoga worldwide (De
Michelis 2005 in Lea 2009:75). Drawing on his own experiences of a deep
engagement with Yoga philosophy and practice, B.K.S. Iyengar has developed a
sophisticated and systematized body of knowledge which includes detailed
descriptions of asana and pranayama techniques, their physical and psychological
benefits and the religio-philosophical underpinnings of the practice.
His teachings started to spread beyond India in 1954 when he first visited Britain
and taught a small group of practitioners (Lea 2009). Since then, his method have
become widely known through his various publications and participations in
international media, but also because of the creation of an international
programme for teacher training and accreditation (Lea 2009) which has allowed
the expansion of Iyengars teachings across 71 countries until now.
As a form of modern postural Yoga, Iyengar practice is based on the performance
of bodily postures (asana) and, to a lesser extent, breathing techniques
(pranayama)3, giving a clear emphasis to the orthopraxy of postures (Newcombe
2009:987). However, what distinguishes Iyengar Yoga from other forms of postural
Yoga is the way in which it draws special attention to the movements precision
and bodys alignment. Thus, the method prioritises quality over quantity of
movement and therefore encourages practitioners to hold the postures for longer,
in contrast to other Hatha Yoga methods.
Iyengars particular interest in the correct performance of asana and pranayama
techniques relates directly with his ideas about the importance of health within
Yoga practice. Having himself experienced the therapeutics effects of Yoga
practice, Iyengar highlights the relevance of having a healthy body-mind in order
to explore beyond the physical dimensions of the practice. Concerned about the

More information about the method in appendix 3 and 4.

This has to do in part with the importance of having a certain preparation and expertise in the
practice of asana before exploring pranayama techniques. Iyengar Yoga classes are usually
distributed in 3 weeks of asana practice followed by 1 week of pranayama.
9
3

importance of maintaining a healthy body to practice Yoga, he developed

alternative techniques by creating and using various props (such as blankets,
blocks, belts and chairs) aimed to improve the embodied understanding of poses
and therefore to help gaining a better alignment and a deeper access to asana
experiences and mental and physical benefits (Newcombe 2005:308). Props are
also commonly used to help people with specific physical, medical or remedial
conditions. By emphasising the quality of movement, the practitioner learns how
to work within her or his own limitations and to perform the postures in a safely
way without the risk of physical injury.
Nevertheless, Iyengars insistence on the orthopraxy of asana and pranayama
goes beyond the physical and mental benefits. As Lea have noted, the practice is
intended to serve as a path to enlightenment, beginning from the materiality of
the physical body and working inward through the less immediately tangible
subtle bodies (2009:76), in order to explore the authentic self and its essential
divine character. However, it is also worthy to remark that while the spiritual and
philosophical underpinnings of Iyengar Yoga are described in most of Iyengars
books, the oral transmission from teacher to student that take place within classes
does usually not include such depth of interaction.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the Government of Individuals:

Yoga and Power
CAM has been generally characterised as practices that empower through a
discourse of holism, nature and authenticity that is usually contrasted with the
objectification and disempowerment methods of biomedicine. Nonetheless,
recent critical approaches have started to question the actual function of CAM in
the contemporary Western health context, asking whether these kinds of
practices are really liberating and empowering, or if they are another form of
power derived from hegemonic disciplines such as biomedicine.
These approaches, usually inspired in Foucaults work, characterize CAM as
disciplinary practices where health is transformed into a set of daily, internalised,
often pleasurable body practices bound up in personal identity work (Barcan
10

2008:15). In this sense, rather than being a rejection of biomedicine, CAM is

interpreted as a new type of surveillance where the vigilance of external bodies
is supplemented to greater or lesser degree by self-monitoring, selfmanagement, self-surveillance (ibid.). CAM is perceived as a new and more
insidious form of power, since it is pleasurable and seemingly freely chosen
(Barcan 2008:18).
Discourses about holism, self-knowledge, authenticity, enhanced health and
responsibility inherent to these practices of self-making would be revealed as
producing a particular kind of autonomous subject, making us unsurprisingly
efficient, useful and docile bodies, and therefore aligned with economic and
politic regimes. Following this perspective, it would be possible to infer that the
weekly Yoga class (mentioned as an example in Barcans analysis of CAM) could
be characterised as a prime example of investing in depth (searching for the inner
self through working on the outer body) and of a widespread uptake and
internalisation of an injunction to manage ones own health, which not
incidentally serves the efficient economic management of populations (Barcan
2008:17).
Moreover, these approaches allow understanding CAM as both medical and
consumer practices. As Barcan says, they are a form of surveillance medicine that
is also bound up in the individualism, hedonism and narcissism of consumer
culture, whose insistence on a healthy, youthful and ideally beautiful body gives
rise to a range of what Mike Featherstone (1991:182) calls body maintenance
techniques (Barcan 2008:19). From this, it is possible to conceptualise postural
Yoga practice as a way of enacting modern ideals regarding individualism,
hedonism and narcissism, as it has been suggested for activities within the
alternative and complementary health context and the holistic and spiritual milieu
(cf. Aupers and Houtman 2008, Heelas 2006).
A similar critique of CAM is made by Fadlon (2004), who based on her
ethnographic study of CAMs narrative and imagery of the body, argues that
rather than constituting a discourse of resistance to biomedical hegemonic power,
CAM is becoming part of it. By looking at the post-modern context of hyper-reality
11

and at the new technologies and concepts emerged in contemporary biomedicine,

she shows that the notion of a dematerialized body is not exclusive of CAM but
forms part of the cultural changes that point toward blurring the physical bodys
boundaries and addressing the virtual bodies (ibid.). In this sense, she argues that
CAMs discourse of holism, empowerment and its notion of a dematerializing
body defined by energy do not represent a form of counter-culture or resistance
to biomedical narrative of the body, but rather a new mode of medical
surveillance, with paradoxical implications for the patient who has been
empowered as a consumer while being further objectified by the medical gaze.
Others are still speaking for him, this time in terms which extend the scope of
medical control from body to mind to the elusive fields of energy (Fadlon
2004:84).
From these perspectives, it could be inferred that together with CAM, postural
Yoga practice (and Iyengar as part of this) would not be liberating practitioners,
but constraining their liberty by aligning their subjectivity with dominant cultural
discourses and economic and political interests.
These analyses of CAM provide a critical reading of the political, cultural and social
dynamics of the context in which this practice is welcomed, and offer an
understanding of the ways in which they are internalised through discourses and
practices. They reveal the connections between the inner and social world by
stressing the power mechanisms involved in the production of modern forms of
subjectivity. In this regards, postural Yoga practice would be an exemplary
instance of a self-making practice in the service of the promotion and production
of individuals oriented towards autonomy, freedom, responsibility and selfknowledge. Thus, Yoga practice would be aligned with the logics of domination
through the production of an autonomous and free subject, responsible for
his/her life and wellbeing.
Barcan (2008) and Sointu (2006) have taken these approaches into account in
their analysis of the rise of the use of CAM, therefore pointing toward the
connection of these practices with contemporary changes in the conceptions
about health, the increasing medicalisation of life, the valorisation of a particular
12

kind of self defined by autonomy and responsibility, the intertwinement of health

and fitness in consumer society, among other dimensions. This is undoubtedly
useful to be considered for any analysis of postural Yoga practice. However, by
looking at the wider picture in which alternative and complementary health
practices raise, these analytical perspectives only provide possibilities for a
general reading of Yoga practice, without being able to analyse the specific body
techniques and the embodied experiences through which this practice works and
makes sense to Western (and Chilean) practitioners.
In what follows, I will argue that Foucauldian approaches limitations have to do
with their disembodied character, which leads to leaving aside and unattended
the role of embodiment and subjective and live experience within those practices.
It is precisely this dimension that I will argue deserves to be in the centre of an
analysis interested in understanding how Yoga becomes significative and
meaningful for Western practitioners. I will support my point through a recent
debate within the interdisciplinary field of body studies.
Discursive approaches to the body inspired in structuralism or post-structuralism
have been criticised by scholars from various disciplines, particularly those coming
from a Foucauldian tradition which has been far-reaching within humanities and
social sciences, providing a platform for moving from the conceptualization of a
naturalistic body to a socially constructed body (Blackman 2008:27). These
approaches have been criticised for reducing the body to a passive object of
discourse or social determinism, foreclosing not only its capacities as embodied
agency but also its biological potentialities (Blackman 2008:28-29). Using Shillings
words, the body is affected by discourse, but we get little sense of the body
reacting back and affecting discourse (1993 in Blackman 2008:28).
What is at stake here is the problem of the embodied agency. Concepts such as
the docile body conceive the body as inert mass and detach mind and body in a
dualistic view where social processes have dominance over the thinking body
(Blackman 2008). Foucauldian inspired works and its limitations regarding the
exploration of the embodied agency have been, for example, emphasised in
relation to the study of body maintenance. Sociologist Nick Crossley argues that
13

these approaches often reify practices of modification as technologies or

apparatuses, ignoring the active role of embodied agents in these practices
(2004:41). As Barcan (2008) argues, Foucauldian inspired works tend to be
paradoxically quite disembodied, despite locating the body at the centre of their
analyses. Due to its conceptualization of the body as effect of discourses, it does
not give much insight about the lived and embodied experiences.
Similar critiques were developed within anthropology of the body, where the
pervasive presence of semiotic and symbolic approaches has been criticised for
reducing the understanding of embodied experience to cognitive and linguistic
models of meaning (Csordas 1999a, 1999b). Anthropologist Michael Jackson was
one of the first to point out the shortcomings of the representational approach to
the body, arguing that the subjugation of the bodily to the semantic is empirically
untenable (Jackson 1989:122). He demonstrates through his ethnographic work
in relation to the Kuranko initiations that the meaning of body praxis is not always
reducible to semantic and cognitive operations. Csordas (1993) endorses Jacksons
critique arguing that reducing meaning to a sign reinforces a Cartesian preeminence of mind over the body, the latter understood as passive, static and
inert.

Embodiment and Yoga Practice

Considering the disembodied character of discursive approaches and their
primacy within social sciences and humanities in general, as well as the existence
of little empirical research focusing on modalities such as embodied feelings,
sensations and engagements with the world (Brown et al. 2010:493), an
increasing number of academics from different disciplines have started to explore
and call for more embodied ways to look at the bodys complexities and capacities
that could complement the already significant volume of discursive studies on the
body (Blackman 2008, Barcan 2008, 2011, Brown et al. 2010, Crossley 2004,
Csordas 1990, 1993, 2008, Shusterman 2008).
Based on the aforementioned, I argue that in order to develop a comprehensive
understanding of modern postural Yoga practice it is necessary to complement
14

the previous approaches with an exploration of the embodied experiences of the

practitioners. Regarding this, a phenomenological approach is helpful in that it
allows exploring the lived body and subjective experiences in relation to Yoga
practice.
The present study focuses on the embodied experience of Chilean practitioners of
one of the most popular and worldwide known forms of postural Yoga practice:
the Iyengar method. Using a phenomenological approach, I explore the role of the
lived body and the body techniques in the process of embodied transmission,
incorporation and making-sense of the practice of Iyengar Yoga. The data was
collected through interviews with 8 individuals who sustain a regular practice of
Iyengar Yoga, mostly attending collective classes in specialised centres4. I also
used my own involvement as an Iyengar practitioner and teacher as an important
source of information to explore the more embodied and less discursive aspects
of the experience.
My hypothesis is that Iyengar Yoga practice opens up the possibility for the
cultivation of the mind-body relationship and therefore for the development of a
conscious exploration of the embodied self. That practical engagement with ones
embodiment enables the practitioner to gain access to new forms of bodily
experience, particularly to those that are subjectively and bodily felt as liberating.
After outlining a brief theoretical and methodological framework, I will present
findings and discuss its possible implications relative to the literature review.

In Chile the practice of Iyengar Yoga is taught in various settings (gyms, health centres, schools,
community centres, private companies, etc.) and in the format of collective and individual classes.
Some participants combine collective practice with a personal practice at home. This is promoted
by Iyengar method, especially when practitioners have developed some experience.
15

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This work adopts phenomenology as a crucial tool to complement the insights

offered by the aforementioned approaches. A phenomenological approach allows
exploring what remains unexplored in those perspectives: the lived body and the
embodied self. By doing so, this work follows a growing number of scholars who
have turned to phenomenology in order to get a comprehensive understanding of
the bodys capacities and its central role for subjectivity (cf. Barcan 2008,
Blackman 2010, Crossley 2004, Csordas 1990, 1993, 1994, 1999a, 1999b, Jackson
1989, Legrand and Ravn 2009, Morley 2001, Pagis 2009, 2010a, 2010b, Persson
2007, Sarrukai 2002, Sobchack 2010, Throop and Murphy 2002).
Without denying the bodys biology and materiality or its potential as an object of
social processes and structures, phenomenological accounts emphasise the
existential condition of the body by understanding it not as a mere object
whether natural or social- but as a subject that is necessarily, not just
contingently, embodied (Jackson 1989:119). Thus, the body is no longer
construed as representation but as being-in-the-world and, therefore, as the
ground for subjectivity and intersubjectivity (Csordas 1993, 2008).
As Csordas argues, such an approach distinguishes between the body and
embodiment. The former understood as a biological, material entity and the latter
conceptualized as an indeterminate methodological field defined by perceptual
experience and by mode of presence and engagement in the world (Csordas,
1999a:182). While recognizing that we have bodies as objects-, the
phenomenological approach highlights that there are multiple modes of
embodiment, and it is the modulations of embodiment that are critical for the
understanding of culture (Csordas 1999a:181-182). From this perspective, studies
are no longer focused on the body per se, but on the different modes of
embodiment and styles of bodily objectification that provide relevant information
to understand better culture and self.
Csordas approach establishes embodied experience as the starting point for
analyzing human participation in a cultural world (Csordas 1993:135). It proposes
16

a cultural phenomenology concerned with synthesizing the immediacy of

embodied experience with the multiplicity of cultural meaning in which we are
always and inevitable immersed (Csordas 1999b:143). Thus, body, culture and
self are conceptualized as inter-related both as bodily phenomena and as the
product of ideas, symbols, and material conditions (ibid.).
This approach offers me a productive theoretical and methodological framework
for my own anthropological research about Iyengar Yoga practice, since it allows
me to investigate the intricacies of the lived experience of the Iyengar Yoga
practitioners in relation to their culturally and embodied selves. This is of
particular relevance, since it allows overcoming a traditional critique attributed to
phenomenology, namely, that its analyses remain in the level of the individual and
subjective point of view, being therefore criticised as an account largely devoid of
historical and sociological content (Turner 2008:52). In Csordas words,
embodiment need not be restricted to the personal or dyadic micro-analysis
customarily associated with phenomenology, but is relevant as well to social
collectivities (1993:137).
This view is shared by other scholars within humanities and social sciences. In
relation to CAM, Barcan has argued that phenomenology can introduce a critical
social perspective and contribute by allowing us to ask why certain kinds of
bodily experience might be valued by particular kinds of person or in particular
social contexts, and what kind of person these practices might in turn help to
produce (2008:23).
From this perspective, human experience is never regarded as merely individual
and subjective, but as grounded in a bodily being-in-the-world and embedded in a
material and cultural world (Csordas 1993, Jackson 1989). Thereby, the words
individual and subjective are no longer opposed to the social and objective
world, opening up a possibility to overcome traditional dualisms within Western
thought such as individual/social and subject/object- and exploring the
intricacies between what has been fragmented as a multiplicity of bodies (cf.
Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987).

17

METHODOLOGY

Social scientists engaged with research on embodiment and bodily practices have
started to recognise the challenges involved in the process of exploring and
analyzing embodied experience, knowledge and meaning. The methodological
questions of how to access and record the data and, to a lesser extent, how to
analyze them are central issues in this discussion. The problematic status of these
questions refer to something like a gulf between language and embodied
experience (Brown et al. 2011, Crossley 2007, Samudra 2008), which has to be
dealt with, and hence approached in a researchable and academic way. As Brown
et al. points out, the lived immediacy of the phenomenological body is
nevertheless always paradoxically deferred or partially absent from our analyses,
its felt, sensuous, a-symbolic character eliding efforts to fix it definitively within
any given analytic frame (2011:496). In this respect, traditional methods for
academic research have been considered insufficient, as they tend to focus on
representation and discourse. There is a need for creating new methodologies
opening up the exploration of sensible experience through the attention to other
senses beyond sight (Brown et al. 2011, Samudra 2008). The idea of a gulf
between language and embodied experience does not mean it is impossible to
research the latter in an academic (and therefore linguistic) way. It rather
indicates that scholars studying bodily practices and kinaesthetic cultures should
be creative and flexible while developing non-dualistic forms of accessing and
recording the sensual and sensible aspects of embodied human life.
Following Csordas, to work in a paradigm of embodiment is not to study anything
new, but to address familiar topics from a different standpoint, from a
methodological attitude that demands attention to bodiliness even in purely
verbal data such as written text or oral interview (1999a:184). Thus,
embodiment is neither about behaviour nor essence per se, but about
experience and subjectivity, and understanding these is a function of interpreting
action in different modes and expression in different idioms (ibid.).

18

Considering the latter, rather than using well-established and traditional

methodologies, this research develops more embodied ways to engage and work
with the lived experiences of Yoga practitioners. The data I collected emerged
mainly from two sources. First, my own engagement with the Chilean Iyengar
community, as I have been a Yoga practitioner for 8 years and a Yoga teacher for
five years, the last of these being actively interested in the study of the cultural
transmission of embodied knowledge and meaning through practice5. Second, the
reports of other Iyengar practitioners that were invited to share with me their
experiences in relation to their Yoga practice in the context of interviews and
written communication.
As to the first point, in 2011 I started making field notes and recording audio in
Iyengar classes, workshops and teacher training courses in Santiago, Chile. To be
part of the Iyengar community and therefore gain access to a closer observation
and get rapport with my consultants were some of the benefits of participating
actively as an Iyengar practitioner. However, I found that perhaps the greatest
advantage was to be able to explore my somatic and sensual experiences during
the practice and use them later in the process of interviewing other practitioners.
In this regard, my engagement as a researcher could be defined as a form of thick
participation by which cultural knowledge was recorded first in my body and only
later translate into words to be compared with other practitioners experiences
(Samudra 2008). As Geertz thick description, this form of participation draws
attention to details, but they differ in that while the first focuses on interpreting
social discourse, thick participation centers on sharing social experience. The
communications of the body can be verified even when not encoded into
language because they work in practice (Samudra 2008:667).
In relation to the second point, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 9
Chilean Iyengar Yoga practitioners during July and August 20116. My aim was to
5

To become interested in researching a particular body technique in which oneself has been
involved as a practitioner is something that happened not only to me but to many scholars
studying embodiment and kinaesthetic cultures (cf. Crossley 2004, Lea 2009, Leledaki and Brown
2008, Newcombe 2005, Popovic 2012, Samudra 2008, Smith 2007, Strauss 2004).
6
All interviews lasted between one and two hours and were recorded and later transcribed (in
Spanish) for the analysis. For more information about the participants, see appendix 1 and 2.
19

explore their experiences in relation to their Iyengar practice, hence I only used
open-ended questions as suggested themes. The data obtained through these
interviews was useful as they provided interesting accounts on social, physical,
psychological and also spiritual effects of the practice. The accounts were
nonetheless insufficient regarding embodied and sensual experiences from which
those effects emerged. Similar to what Samudra (2008) described about silat
practitioners reports of their kinaesthetic experiences, I found that while my
consultants could easily talk about how Iyengar Yoga practice helps them in their
lives, their verbal reports became usually inhibited when reaching more embodied
aspects of their experience moments normally characterised by interruptions in
their discourse.
In relation to these insights, I used thick participation to explore ways of
translating my participatory understanding of the shared experience of Iyengar
practice into communicative data. For that, I focused on developing the reflective
skill of exploring, identifying and naming the sensory impressions and memories
derived from my somatic and kinaesthetic experiences as an Iyengar practitioner.
Translating my sensory impressions was particularly relevant for this research on
Yoga practice, since Iyengar is not so much about the (visible) movements and
forms of the body, but about the (invisible) things that are done with the internal
body, being able to explore mindfully the inner and subtle sensations within the
body-subject7. Based on this new material generated during the first months of
2012, I invited the same participants to have a new conversation about their
experiences as Iyengar Yoga practitioners8. During the following interviews
(conducted in May and June 2012) I shared this sensory vocabulary with them.
That proved to be a valuable starting point from which they could begin to explore
and translate their own lived and felt experiences into sensible descriptions,
allowing for a somatic dialogue between their accounts and mine. Their initial
accounts (first interviews in 2011) became richer in somatic and sensual contents
7

Similar to what happens in silat practice (Samudra 2008:673), this exploration towards the
interiority of the body is not available to the beginner; it is rather something that develops through
regular practice.
8
Contact was made via email with six participants. They were offered the options of a phone or
written interviews.
20

and details. Furthermore, I agree with Samudras point about how sensible
impression allows entry to other peoples internal experiences and leads to
taking their reports seriously (2008:674). Thus, my sensory communication was
an essential tool to begin a shared exploration of the embodied meaning of usual
words reported by practitioners and somewhat difficult to explain, like
connection and balance.

21

FINDINGS

Iyengars pedagogy of somatic learning

During Iyengar classes, the teacher guides the practice following a particular
sequence of postures. She/he uses verbal commands, visual demonstrations and
verbal and bodily corrections to instruct the students on what to do and how to
do it. After introducing the name of the asana to be performed, she/he
demonstrates it by performing it and
giving verbal indications (see right
photograph9).

Afterwards,

students

practice the same asana while the

teacher repeats verbal instructions,
adds new indications and makes verbal
or bodily corrections if needed (see left
photograph).
Detailed instructions and specific corrections are directly related with the
importance attributed by Iyengar method to the bodily alignment. Indications and
adjustments aim at helping the student achieve a
correct10 alignment of bones and joints when
performing the asana. The emphasis on precision in
movements and bodily actions is highly linked with
the role played by health within the Iyengar
method, since correct alignments are believed to
enhance physical and mental benefits provided by
asana. The particular emphasis on alignment and
precision is expressed by the use of a great deal of

All photographs used with the permission of Yogamukti and Estudio de Yoga. Both centres
are located in Chile.
10
As it will be explained later, the knowledge of what is a correct alignment in Iyengar Yoga is, to
certain extent, experienced as something that combines the external-objective knowledge and the
internal-subjective embodied feeling.
22

biomedical sciences language. Teachers continuously use anatomical terms to

refer to bodys parts (muscles, joints, organs, etc.) and physiological references to
explain the technique and benefits of a particular pose11.
An example of this can be seen in the photograph below, where practitioners
learn to perform Virabhadrasana II (Warrior Pose). In order to reach the pose
students have been guided by the teacher who indicates the distance between
legs, the position of feet, legs, arms and trunk, and finally the flexion in one of
their legs and the rotation of their head in order to achieve the final form of the
asana. Nevertheless, all these instructions are accompanied by indications on how
to do the correct alignment:
how to position the sacrum,
how to work with the hips in
order to open them (which
is one of the most important
actions of this particular
pose), etc.

Bodily consciousness in Iyengar Yoga Practice

As described earlier, Iyengar teachings attempt to communicate not just what to
do but also how to do it. In the words of an interviewee, Iyengar method may be
described as action with control. To perform a particular bodily actions is as
important as knowing how to do it. In other words, Iyengar body techniques
promotes a form of mindful bodily action by asking the practitioner to consciously
pay attention to her/his own body while doing actions that are increasingly more
complex as the practice progresses12.

11

Practitioners accounts reveal that the use of biomedical knowledge is a powerful way to
legitimate Iyengar Yoga practice. For many practitioners, that knowledge proves that Iyengar Yoga
is not an esoteric practice, but something well grounded on scientific knowledge.
12
Iyengar is not the only practice that inculcates the ability to maintain attention during periods of
physical and mental challenge. This process of turning inwards the normal, outward orientation of
the practitioners attention has been described as characteristic in Hatha Yoga practice in general
(Henrichsen-Schrembs and Versteeg 2011) and in Ashtanga in particular (Smith 2007).
23

In this respect, the emphasis on alignment goes beyond the correct performance
in biomedical terms, pointing toward the development of a bodily consciousness
through practice. In fact, the importance attributed to the sequence and
instructions aim to promote the cultivation of a particular mindful and sensible
disposition that allows the practitioner to be opened13 to his own embodied
experience. In this context, language is central, because it conveys the necessary
instructions while also allows for an exploration of ones own somatic and internal
experience, therefore enabling the recognition of the embodied experience not
only from outside by exteroception (e.g. through vision and touch), but from the
inside by interoception and propioception.
The bodily self-awareness developed through practice is essential. As any
beginner may realise, the types of actions required for each posture are not a
matter of copying the teachers movements or manipulating the body as if it were
a subordinate object in relation to the mind. Instructions such as rotate the
biceps and deltoids from inside to outside creating space for the neck (common
for many postures, e.g. Adho Mukha Svanasana) seem as incomprehensible for
most beginners, not just because they often do not know what those anatomic
terms mean but also because they are not able to actually do the action14, i.e. to
transform the thought or image of the upper arms rotation into the embodied
movement. Thus, practitioners promptly recognise that Iyengar practice require
some kind of embodied knowledge that is never achieved just by thinking. This is
illustrated in the following vignette15:

Throughout the process I progressively understood each single

action. All those words slowly gained a clear shape: initially these
were actions that I quite did not understand, or when I was able to
understand them, I did not know how to put them into practice.
13

The expression to be opened is used here in the sense that Latour (2004) does in his paper
How to talk about the body. This means to be opened to be affected by the bodys experience.
14
The difficulty is increased by the fact that most of the actions are totally different or even
opposed to the habits adopted by our bodies in everyday life.
15
All vignettes were translated by me from Spanish to English. The practitioners names are
fictitious.
24

Eventually I was able to put the words into practice, but never all of
them at the same time. During practice, it often happened that I
would finally understand the command as well as the muscle I had to
move and the way to do it. I would then immediately notice my body
performing those actions. Consciousness over my body became
increasingly stronger. That includes the actions that I am not able to
fully perform with the required precision or intensity. Now I
understand why I can't perform these movements as well as the sort
of strength and stretching that are missing" (Marie).

Every practitioner travels from a starting point where the teachers indications are
non-sense or, at least, inaccessible in practice, towards an embodied process of
inhabiting his own body by representing and sensing it, until the moment where
verbal indications move from the cognitive understanding to an embodied and
practical comprehension. This process happens by means of regular practice,
where bodily work is never just a work of the body as separate from the mind,
but of a mindful embodied agent, who has to pay continuous attention to his own
bodily being-in-practice. As her/his somatic attention is trained and sharpened by
means of practicing, the students ability to feel and sense his own body increases.
The student then becomes able to gain new embodied understanding that
enables him to sense new parts (normally subtler and inner) of her/his body and
consequently work on them in ways that were previously inaccessible. Hence the
possibility of controlling the body seems intimately connected to the
understanding of ones embodiment. That is promoted by a kind of attention
which is less about observing or thinking about the body from an analytic
perspective, and more about a form of somatic engagement where attending to
ones own body involves a turning inwards (Henrichsen-Schrembs and Versteeg
2011, Smith 2007) and an exploration of ones whole embodied being.
Iyengar practitioners work not upon their bodies but from within them, since they
perform mindful and embodied actions which are the result of a negotiation
between teachings communicated through discourse and technique, and ones
25

personal assessment of these by exploring and taking into account the sensible
experience that emerges from ones own lived body. Likewise, Iyengar bodily
techniques promote another kind of dialogue by developing a practice where the
relationship between mind and body is cultivated (Leledaki and Brown 2008,
Yuasa 1987). By fostering this interplay, it enables both the mindful will to enter
the flesh and the flesh to be expressed and experienced as subjectivity. Within the
practices process, the flesh reacts to the mindful attention not only by
performing certain movement, but more importantly by enabling the practitioner
to live a particular embodied experience.

A New Form of Embodiment: The Exploration of the Embodied Self

The bodily consciousness developed through Iyengar practice leads to discovering
a new form of embodiment. Together with experiencing physical changes (better
posture, increasing flexibility, relief of tension and pain if there was any,
improvement in physiological processes such as sleeping, breathing, etc.), the
practitioner is confronted with the awakening of a new body by feeling new
bodily parts, new possibilities for its movements and unknown details of its forms,
qualities, depths and asymmetries. This becomes a powerful discovery particularly
in contrast with their previous form of embodiment, which could be
characterised, following Leder (1990), by the notion of absent body. In this
sense, I quote anthropologist Michael Jackson whose account of his own Iyengar
Yoga practice speaks for itself:

Until I was in my mid-thirties, my awareness extended into my body

only to the extent that I grew hungry, experienced lust, felt pain or
weariness, and did not resemble that somatotype of popular
advertising. My body passed into and out of my awareness like a
stranger; whole areas of my physical being and potentiality were
dead to me, like locked rooms. When I took courses in hatha yoga
(under Iyengar-trained teachers) it was like unpicking the locks of a
cage. I began to live my body in full awareness for the first time,
26

feeling the breath, under my conscious control, fill my lungs,

experiencing through extensions and asana the embodied character
of my will and consciousness. (1989:119)

Jacksons words clearly express the new form of embodiment that emerges
through practice. The participants accounts show that they develop a new
relationship with their bodies where these are perceived as more than mere
physical and biological entities. The non-dualistic character of Yoga practice allows
them to work with their bodies as physical object, and at the same time to realize
in an embodied way the body as a source of subjectivity. The interviews reveal
that the objectification that Iyengar method entails are not opposed to the
subjective experience of the lived body. In this sense, this practice offers a
paradigmatic example of a kind of experience that allows accessing the embodied
self within the perception of ones own physicality, demonstrating what has
already been argued within phenomenological research (Legrand and Ravn 2009).
The prominence attributed to the lived experience during the practice helps the
practitioner perceiving Iyengar Yoga (both its discourse and techniques) as a
method that, along with providing the necessary knowledge for developing a
safety practice (in terms of physical and mental health), offers space for a
personal exploration of ones embodiment and self. In this sense, rather than
being perceived as a foreign doctrine, Iyengar Yoga practice is experienced as a
source of infinite tools for embodied self-knowledge. An example of this is
revealed in the way the practitioners experience asana. Reports show that,
beyond the technique that defines the correct performance, what is most
important is to explore ones own lived and kinaesthetic experience in order to be
able to work from this within the asana. In this regard, the asana is more than the
image or form that is portrayed in books or that can be seen in the teachers
demonstration; it is a sensible exploration of ones inner body16. Thus, the
practitioner draws attention toward her/his body not just to achieve the expected

16

See Sarukkais (2002) work on the experience of the inner body in Hatha Yoga practice.
27

physical form, but more importantly to attend to her/his own embodied

experience within the posture.
Since asana is an experience of the embodied self, it is not static but changes in
relation to the practitioners mental, emotional and physical states. Thus, the
experience appears as a dynamic process, where the engagement with ones
embodiment transcends the technical and biomedical indications of what is
regarded as the correct performance. In the account of two practitioners:

I visualize it [her body], from bones and muscles, to skin and organs.
I connect with a range of sensations produced by the asana. I see it as
a different journey every day. Even if I repeat exactly the same
sequence, the challenges are always different. Occasionally new
layers of difficulty are added, perhaps due to tensions that were not
there the day before. There are also days in which either mind or body
intercept ones pursuit. Other days, when things seem to be on ones
side, the body frees itself, the mind no longer floats and one is able to
enter a wonderful interconnection state (Sandra).

Asana practice is something totally alive. It is even more alive as I

practice more. When I practice, there is generally a sensation that I
want to reach something else, go deeper, penetrating even more with
the intelligence of my body. It does not always feel good. When I have
a lesion I am very frustrated, especially when I dont understand
whats happening to me, and that brings the worse out of me. Then,
when I understand my mistakes, the sensation is more one of
tenderness and love toward the injured part of me (Ana).

Making (Embodied) Sense of the Practice

These accounts highlight the fundamental role of subjective experience in making
sense of the practice, something which had already been noted at the New Age
practices of the holistic milieu (Heelas 2006, 2008, Henrichsen-Schrembs and
28

Versteeg 2011, Newcombe 2005) and at alternative and complementary health

practices (Barcan 2011, Sointu 2006). This study found that the participants
associate different meanings with the practice according to their own
experiences, and that these meanings tend to change in relation to the moment
of their life in which they practice. In general, Iyengar practice seems to be
valuable because it offers exactly what I need.
It is worth mentioning that despite personal differences, all participants coincide
in recognising Iyengar Yoga as more than just a physical practice. All of them
describe their experience in terms of transformations involving physical, mental
and emotional aspects. Some of them even indicate that Iyengar Yoga has
radically changed them, transforming them into totally new persons.
A phenomenological approach explains those transformations. If we conceive
embodiment as the existential condition for the self (Csordas, 1990) or as beingin-the-world, we may understand that Iyengar body techniques can produce
changes not only in the physicality of the body and the way the practitioner
relates to her/his embodiment, but also in the way she/he experiences and
perceives others and the surrounding world. Moreover, Csordas (1993) notion of
somatic modes of attention helps us understanding that Iyengar practice both
cultivates a conscious somatic attention towards ones own embodiment and
enhances the ability to attend to the embodied presence of others, hence
potentially changing ones sensory engagement with the world.
The previous discussion raises the question of how it works in the context of
Iyengar bodily practice. How does the work upon the body transform the self? As
described earlier, Iyengar practice offers an access to experience the bodys
subjectivity while working on its physicality. This means that performing asana
involve encountering both physical limitations and challenges and mental and
emotional constraints. It involves realizing the way in which our mind and body
connects or disconnects from each other and what our mental, emotional and
physical ways of being are. The practice brings awareness to all these aspects that
would otherwise remain unconscious. In this sense, it implies an exploration of
the lived body in its complex biological, cultural and subjective constitutions. Thus,
29

exploring and working with the challenges and difficulties encountered within the
practice is experienced as a form of embodied knowledge that is meaningful
beyond the concrete time and space. Iyengar practitioners live their embodied
practice as a process of self-knowledge and self-development that enable them to
live better.
Next, I will demonstrate that these transformations in the embodied self should
be understood in relation to the experience of the lived body that Iyengar
techniques promote rather than simply a result of the inscription and
reproduction of contemporary discourses upon the body. In this sense, the role of
the body is not metaphorical but rather concrete as it enables the exploration and
expression of ones subjectivity through the bodys physicality.

Empowerment Through Wellbeing

Health is the first and perhaps the most obvious dimension in which the
practitioner experiences the effects of the practice. As Sointu (2006) has argued in
relation to CAM, the kind of health offered by Iyengar Yoga practice cannot be
reduced to the biomedical or physiological level, since it involves various aspects
of the embodied being. In this sense, even though most practitioners explained
they initially look for relief to physical or emotional problems (mainly chronic pain,
depression and anxiety), eventually they also find motivations to continue
practicing. The therapeutic function of Iyengar Yoga offers more than emotional
and physical health. Practitioners experience the practice as a source of wellbeing
and a tool that prepares them to live better everyday life. The practice empowers
them by offering practical knowledge about how to take care of the physical and
emotional health by means of cultivating somatic awareness. The focus on
performing asana in a healthy and safety way by continuously working and
adjusting the posture according to ones own embodied experience rather than to
external rules is experienced as a search for developing and improving other
aspects of the self. According to a practitioner: There is something about the
practice that marvels and challenges me. That is the fact that one has to perform

30

poses and try to do them the best way possible. I feel that is something worth
applying to other dimensions of my life (Juliet).
Two notions appeared frequently in the practitioners discourse referring to selfdevelopment: balance and alignment. During the interviews, I discovered that
these terms were used not so much in a metaphorical sense but to express their
concrete experience of wellbeing. Their accounts reveal that balance and
alignment sought between bodys parts when performing the asana become an
experience of alignment and balance between the aspects of their embodied
selves. Alignment is lived as the process of introducing order in ones subjective
life. This order is not perceived as static and predetermined, but as a dynamic
balance between the different aspects of the self (mental, emotional, physical,
relational and spiritual). This dynamic balance is thereby conceived as changing
and dependent on ones own subjective being, taking different embodied
meanings according to ones experience. For some, alignment and balance has
made them more tolerant and kind with others; for others to be less sensitive,
emotional and perfectionist. In the accounts of two practitioners:

Through my bodily consciousness I find my soul and I polish my

character, softening, wakening, accepting, invigorating... My body is
the vehicle to perfect myself. With Yoga I encounter the deepest part
of me, I see the good, the bad, the feminine, the masculine, I seek
balance and approach day by day the interior silence that brings
absolute peace. I feel that in various aspects I am better every day
(Sandra).

An Embodied Self Open to the Otherness

From the aforementioned, it is possible to understand the non-dualist character of
Iyengar Yoga practice, since it produces an experience of integration between

31

inner/outer and mind/body17. The process of attending and exploring ones

embodied experience during the practice has been described as a turning
inwards (Henrichsen-Schrembs and Versteeg 2011, Smith 2007). However, it is
important to highlight that this going inward does not lead to an experience that
could be interpreted as subjective and individual as opposed to objective and
social. Similar to what happens with the twofold mind-body within the practice,
Iyengar Yoga offers a phenomenological experience of ones own embodiment
where the inner and outer body appear as a dynamic and permanent interplay. To
see and touch the body from the outside through exteroception is not opposed to
sensing and feeling the body from the inside through interoception and
propioception18; they are rather combined in the somatic experience developed
within the practice. Therefore, the practitioners exploration of their somatic and
subjective experience does not lead to a separation of the embodied self and the
world. On the contrary, practitioners experience Iyengar Yoga as a time and space
to connect with themselves as well as with others and the surrounding world.
The particular somatic modes of attention cultivated within Iyengar practice offer
both the possibility of experiencing the depths of ones own embodied being and
an embodiment characterised by openness and interdependence to otherness.
Attending to ones own bodily sensations was experienced by the practitioners
attending to the bodys situation in the world rather than as an isolated object.
Thus, far from experiencing the practice as a journey trapped in themselves and
their own world, it was experienced as openness toward developing a more
embodied relation with others and the world. In agreement with Csordas (1993)
views on attention and sensory engagement in the constitution of subjectivity and
intersubjectivity, the practitioners accounts suggest that the particular modes of
attention consciously cultivated within Iyengar practice should be characterised as
particular forms of attending to and with ones own body. Those participating
in this study reported their experiences of attending to ones own body as
intertwined with the experiences of attending with ones body. Participants
17

Integration has to be read as inter-dependence, but not as a unity where differences disappear
transforming them into monism.
18
Knowing and sensing are not opposed in practice, as suggested by Mol and Law (2004).
32

describe the experience of Iyengar practice as the development of a new form of

embodiment through which they become much more aware of their sensory
engagement with the world. This is best exemplified by describing the sensory
engagement required and encouraged by the teachers adjustments and the use
of props during the practice (see photographs below). Both the use of props and
the bodily adjustments leads to the practitioners body to a physical encounter
with an Other (human or not) that has something to teach him. The teachers
verbal

indications

accompany

these

encounters encouraging the practitioners

body to be opened to be affected by these
others (props or others bodies). Thus, the
practitioner progressively learns that being
touched by these others is both to adjust his
external body and to face the encounter that
communicates

particular

forms

of

embodied knowledge according to the

quality of touch (if it is by pushing,
modelling, softening, etc.). Props are not just
used for an orthopaedic function, but as a
means to transmit practical knowledge in a sensible way. The teachers body has
the same function when adjusting the practitioners pose, since the corrections
attempt not only to correct the bodys
external form, but to promote a
somatic attention that goes through
the external body boundaries.

33

DISCUSSION

In the previous sections, I attempted to show that an analysis of Yoga practice

from a culturally inflected phenomenological perspective offers new possibilities
to researching and conceptualizing the experience of Iyengar practitioners and the
role played by the lived body. Like Smith, I consider that such a study provides
valuable information of aspects of our embodiment that otherwise have
remained predominantly conceptual (2007:41). In this context, I will turn to
discuss the findings in relation to the literature review previously presented.
The results presented above demonstrate that Iyengar Yoga practice is more than
just a form of power. By shedding light on what discursive and Foucauldian studies
have ignored, the phenomenological approach offers an exploration of the more
messy and complex reality in which embodied agents negotiate social discourses
and power.

Yoga as a turning inward that opens the subject

Contrary to the interpretation of Yoga practice as a narcissistic (related to
pleasure) and individualistic form of spirituality, therapy or consumer practice,
this study reveals that Iyengar Yoga is perceived as a form that connects both to
oneself and the world. The development of a bodily consciousness does not only
open the body for ones own pleasure but also to be more aware of a potential
sensory engagement with the world. Most practitioners mentioned how the
practice has introduced a lot of changes in their relation with their embodied
selves (at the level of discourse and embodiment), and consequently in their
relation with others. Following Heelas, Iyengar practitioners experience could be
characterised as relational individualism (2006:228-229), in the sense that
rather than producing isolated and privatised selves, the practice of Iyengar is
perceived as a form of connecting with ones self while being relational.

34

Not an enterprising self19 but an embodied balance

The experience of balance is grounded in the physical actions that have to be
integrated within the bodily practice, and from there develops into a wider
sensation that involves the whole embodied being. That is a dynamic balance, in
which the practitioner is always in movement, searching, exploring, sensing,
knowing.
However, the centrality of this experience goes even further, introducing
dynamism by confronting the self with duality. Duality means that the quest for
self-development is not infinite and that together with the search for perfection
(within the pose, within oneself) it is also necessary to accept the present. In
asana practice, balance is felt by integrating force and movement with stability
and ground. In the exploration of the embodied self, it is lived as the desire for
experiencing, learning and developing but also as encountering ones self in the
present world. Thus, Iyengar Yoga promotes interplay between self-improvement
and self-acceptance. That particular form of balance introduces some relevant
nuances to the image of the enterprising self proposed by Rose (1992). For
instance the idea of self-understanding and self-improvement are challenged by
experiences in which there is nothing to be understood at the level of
representation (or at least it is unthinkable and unspeakable), and in which the
self is perceived as mobile rather than the seat of an autonomous enterprise.
The differences between the actual experiences of Iyengar practitioners and a
Foucauldian approach to the practice in this case a governmental approach do
not imply that there are no connections between the two. In fact, this study
confirmed the presence of discourses about inner authenticity and holism in
Iyengar Yoga teachings and in the practitioners accounts of their practice.
However, I agree with Barcans (2008) remark on the importance of looking at the
intersections between these discourses and other spiritual traditions that
promote a conceptualization of the self as diffuse, intercorporeal and potentially
indistinguishable from other selves. Even though I found no explicit presence of
any kind of religious or spiritual teachings within Iyengar classes in Chile, some
19

See Rose (1992).

35

participants reports point toward similar experiences while practicing Savasana

(Corpse Pose). A participant describes it as a total surrender of the body to
vacuum, vacuum that is also fullness... Sometimes it feels as being part of the
whole, as energy, the body disappears, it feels as if the body had no limits (Ana).
Another says: I feel like I was disappearing, as if there was no body or the body
was part of the floor... I feel my conscious breathing, what is happening and the
disconnection of language... it is like a connection with the nothing, but without
anxiety... I feel that Savasana has the mark of humility, of being nothing (Daniel).
In summary, Iyengar Yoga practice produces a self that is more mobile, open, and
flexible. Instead of being compelled to self-development, the self is inspired by
this search, feeling the desire to experience the process rather than seeking
specific results.

36

CONCLUSION

Liberation and Limitation in Iyengar Yoga Practice

Based on the previous discussion, it is possible to argue that a comprehensive
approach to the contemporary rise of postural Yoga practice should consider both
its social, cultural and politic dynamics and the ways in which the practitioners
experience and make sense of it.
In this work I have pointed to the shortcomings of analysing postural Yoga practice
merely from the perspective of discourse and power. To help overcoming that, I
opted for an alternative approach and presented possible new explanations. This
research found that Iyengar practice is more than just another form of biopower
or disciplinary practice. Adopting a phenomenological approach to Yoga practice, I
demonstrated that there is a significant amount of valuable data and analyses that
can contribute to a more detailed exploration and understanding of the methods
specificities and potentialities. In this sense, I do not reject entirely the idea that
Iyengar practice can be a form of self-surveillance and disciplinary practice.
However, the central point of this researchs findings indicate that Iyengar Yoga is
much more than a practice aligned to consumer capitalism and/or neoliberal
politics.
So what factor determines if Iyengar will have a liberating or a limiting impact on
its practitioners? Our findings demonstrate that that varies significantly according
to practitioners capacity to be opened to be affected physically, emotionally and
mentally. I acknowledge that the experience of Iyengar Yoga is certainly mediated
by the methods particular discourse and techniques. However, the essential role
is played by the subject and by the way in which she/he relates, explores and
interprets her/his embodied experience.
As previously explained, the practice of Iyengar opens up the possibility to
develop ones bodily consciousness and by that means to powerfully transform
ones embodiment. The bodily techniques and methodology used in Iyengar
classes certainly mediates this process of turning inwards by attending to ones
body. However, the potentialities offered by the practice cannot be achieved
37

solely through these elements since it inescapably requires an embodied

engagement of the subject. It is that involvement that allows a real exploration of
the practices potentialities for the embodied self.
A practitioner puts into words the experience of Iyengar Yoga as a liberating
practice: [the practice] requires a disposition to open oneself physically and
internally, when you open your hip, it is not only that... the word space comes to
my mind, in the sense that one explores different spaces every time according to
the physical opening that one has created... to surrender is essential, and that
begins in the physical, release tension... it has to do with breathing especially
where is difficult, and with each exhalation move forward and find space, instead
of retaining the breath and becoming smaller... using the breath to open the range
of physical sensations at the beginning which then are transformed into internal
spaces (Ana).
Iyengar Yoga enables the practitioner to negotiate social discourses and power
rather than being totally determined by them. In this sense, I follow Barcans
stand on CAM, arguing that Iyengar practice looks less like simple enactments of
modern forms of subjectivity (oriented to individualism, hedonism and
consumerism) than sites of discursive struggle between several models and
experiences of selfhood and corporeality (2008:24).

Based on the aforementioned, I return to the initial question: what does Iyengar
Yoga actually offers to those who regularly practice it? I found that it is chiefly our
embodiment as existential condition that allows us to make sense of this practice.
The encounter of ones embodied self and the opening-up of its subjective and
intersubjective potentialities are the elements that render meaning to the
practice.

38

APPENDIXES

Appendix 1: About the sample

The practitioners selected for this research are part of the Iyengar community. I
tried to make the sample as varied as possible in terms of gender, age and
practice levels. I deliberately attempted to include the most men possible in the
sample since they usually are a minority among Iyengar practitioners. I also looked
to interview Yoga students with more than one year experience in the assumption
that they would have enough attachment and commitment to the discipline of
Yoga to make the results of this research meaningful.

Appendix 2: Practitioners characteristics

The participants of this study are aged between 26 and 68 years old, seven of
them women and the rest of them men. Their experience with the practice of
Iyengar Yoga ranges from eight years to one year. All of them are highly educated
people, most of them professionals and with a good socio-economic condition.
The majority of them practice Yoga regularly, between 2 to 3 days a week,
although some of them try to practice it as much as they can, aiming to do it daily
when possible.
Most of them practice in the context of collective Iyengar yoga classes given in
specialized centres. Nevertheless, some of them try to reinforce the effects of the
collective practice with personal sessions at home.

Appendix 3: Iyengar Yoga in Chile

Modern yoga practice started its popularisation in Chilean society from late
1990s20. The first centres are still Yogashala (founded in 199721) and YogaMukti

20

Before this, there were some classes of Satyananda Yoga by Swami Ekananda, but it was not
something much know, since society was still reticent to yoga since it was associated with religion.
Centro
de
yoga
satyananda
niketan,
Biografa
de
Swami
Ekananda
http://satyanandayoga.cl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=21
21
Yogashala Snchez Fontecilla (YSF) http://www.yogashala.cl/Yogashala_Sanchez_Fontecilla.htm
39

(founded in 200022), both created in Santiago and offering various styles of yoga
classes, being Iyengar method one of these.
In the lapse of eight years participating within the Chilean Iyengar Yoga
community, I have been able to observe the popularization of yoga practices in
general and the Iyengar method in particular. Being relatively unknown for most
people when I started practicing it in 2004, in the past years yoga became a
fashionable topic within the media, a common product for the health and leisure
market, and a practice offered by a growing number of yoga institutes, health and
fitness centres, schools, companies, universities and private homes. Crucial for the
popularisation of yoga has been a centre called Yoga a luka (which could be
translated as Yoga for a pound), which made it available for people with lower
economic resources than the historically standard yoga practitioner.
The growing interest in Iyengar Yoga was visible in the rise of students
participating in intense and specialized workshops organized every year by
different yoga centres. Yogamukti was a central reference in this sense, organizing
yearly workshops with advanced and well-known international Iyengar yoga
teachers (such as the Indian H.S. Arun and the Argentinean Paula Tortolano).
With a considerable number of Iyengar yoga practitioners interested in
undertaken a formal teacher training in Iyengar methodology, 2007 can be
considered as the beginning of yoga professionalisation in Chile. Two senior
teachers were sent by B.K.S. Iyengar to Chile to conduct a two-year introductory
course in order to run a first level Iyengar-certified teaching programme. Since
then, at least 43 teachers have acquired Iyengars certification to provide Iyengar
yoga classes.
It is also worth noting the creation of the Chilean Association of Iyengar Yoga
(Asociacin Chilena de Yoga Iyengar [ACYI]) in December 2011, an organization
aimed to develop the teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar, create a network between
Chilean practitioners and Iyengars Institute in Pune, India, and protect the quality
of the lessons by processes of examination and certification. It is possible to
estimate that the creation of the ACYI would grant the Chilean Iyengar Community
22

http://yogamukti.cl/historia.htm
40

a higher institutional status than its more traditional and pure yoga counterparts.
In this sense, Iyengar yoga is nowadays not only one of the most popular but also
one of the most consolidated styles in terms of teaching standards.

Appendix 4: Iyengar Yoga Classes

As a consequence to the standardised teacher-training programme developed by
the Iyengars, the ways in which Iyengar classes are taught in Chile are nowadays
very similar to those given in other Western countries. The characteristics that
were described above (emphasis on the sequence of asanas and its alignment and
precision, the use of a specific vocabulary, and the use of props) are also main
features of Iyengar Yoga classes in the Chilean context.
Classes are organized according to the different practitioners levels of experience
and in a way in which every week a specific group of postures (standing poses,
forward bends, backbends, twists, restorative poses, etc.) are emphasised,
ensuring that all types of postures are covered throughout the month. Within this
structure, and following technical guidelines, each teacher creates the particular
asana sequence for his or her class.

41

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aupers, S. and Houtman D. (2008). The Sacralization of the Self: Relocating the
Sacred on the Ruins of Tradition, in De Vries H. (ed), Religion Beyond a
Concept. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 798-812.
Barcan, R. (2008). Alternative Therapies as Disciplinary Practices: The uses and
Limitations of a Foucauldian Approach, in Anderson, N. and Schlunke, K.
(eds), Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 14-26.
Barcan, R. (2011). Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Bodies, Therapies,
Senses. London: Berg.
Blackman, L. (2008). The Body: Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg.
Blackman, L. (2010). Bodily Integrity. Body & Society 16(3): 1-9.
Brown, S. D., Cromby, J., Harper, D. J., Johnson, K. and Reavey, P. (2010).
Researching experience: Embodiment, methodology, process. Theory &
Psychology 21(4): 493-515.
Crossley, N. (2004). The Circuit Trainers Habitus: Reflexive Body Techniques and
the Sociality of the Workout. Body & Society 10(1): 37-69.
Crossley, N. (2007). Researching embodiment by way of body techniques. The
Sociological Review 55: 80-94.
Csordas, T. J. (1990). Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos 18(1):
5-47.
Csordas, T. J. (1993). Somatic Modes of Attention. Cultural Anthropology 8: 135156.
Csordas, T. J. (1994). Embodiment and experience: the existential ground of culture
and self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csordas, T. J. (1999a). The bodys career in Anthropology, in Moore, H. L. (ed.),
Anthropological Theory Today. London: Polity Press, pp. 172-233.
Csordas, T. J. (1999b). Embodiment and Cultural Phenomenology, in Weiss G. and
Haber, H. F. (eds), Perspectives on Embodiment. The Intersections of
Nature and Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 143-162.
42

Csordas, T. J. (2008). Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality. Subjectivity 22: 110121.

De Michelis, E. (2007). A Preliminary Study of Modern Yoga Studies. Asian
Medicine 3: 1-19.
Fadlon, J. (2004). Meridians, Chakras and Psycho-Neuro-Immunology: The
Dematerializing Body and the Domestication of Alternative Medicine.
Body & Society 10(4): 69-86.
Heelas, P. (2006). The Infirmity Debate: On the Viability of New Age Spiritualities
of Life. Journal of Contemporary Religion 21(2): 223-240.
Heelas, P. (2008). Spiritualities of Life. New Age Romanticism and Consumptive
Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Henrichsen-Schrembs, S. and Versteeg, P. (2011). A Typology of Yoga
Practitioners: Towards a Model of Involvement in Alternative Spirituality.
Practical Matters 4:1-19.
Jackson, M. (1989). Paths toward a clearing: radical empiricism and ethnographic
inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Latour, B. (2004). How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of
Science Studies. Body & Society 10(2-3): 205-229.
Lea, J. (2009). Liberation or Limitation? Understanding Iyengar Yoga as a Practice
of the Self. Body & Society 15(3):71-92.
Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. London: University of Chicago Press.
Leledaki, A. and Brown, D. (2008). Physicalisation: A Pedagogy of Body-Mind
Cultivation for Liberation in Modern Yoga and Meditation Methods. Asian
Medicine 4:303-337.
Legrand, D. and Ravn, S. (2009). Perceiving subjectivity in bodily movement: The
case of dancers. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8(3): 389-408.
Mol, A. and Law, J. (2004). Embodied action, Enacted Bodies: The example of
Hypoglycaemia. Body & Society 10(2-3): 43-62.
Morley, J. (2001). Inspiration and Expiration: Yoga practice through MerleauPontys Phenomenology of the Body. Philosophy East & West 51(1): 73-82.

43

Newcombe, S. (2009). The Development of Modern Yoga: A Survey of the Field.

Religion Compass 3(6): 986-1002.
Newcombe, S. (2005). Spirituality and Mystical Religion in Contemporary
Society: A Case Study of British Practitioners of the Iyengar Method of
Yoga. Journal of Contemporary Religion 20(3):305-321.
Pagis, M. (2009) Embodied self-reflexivity. Social Psychology Quarterly 72(3):
265-283.
Pagis, M. (2010a). From Abstract Concepts to Experiential Knowledge: Embodying
Enlightenment in a Meditation Center. Qualitative Sociology 33(4): 469489.
Pagis, M. (2010b) Producing intersubjectivity in silence: An ethnographic study of
meditation practice. Ethnography 11(2): 309-328.
Persson, A. (2007). Intimate immensity: Phenomenology of place and space in an
Australian Yoga community. American Ethnologist 34(1): 44-56.
Popovic, M. L. (2012). Moksha Rose From the Heart: A Prosaic and Poetic
Embodiment of Yoga Autoethnography. Cultural Studies: Critical
Methodologies 12(1): 30-42.
Rose, N. (1992). Governing the enterprising self, in Heelas, P. and Morris, P. (eds),
The Values of the Enterprise Culture. Kent: Routledge, pp. 141-164.
Samudra, J. K. (2008). Memory in our body: Thick participation and the
translation of kinaesthetic experience. American Ethnologist 35(4): 665681.
Sarukkai, S. (2002). Inside/Outside: Merleau-Ponty/Yoga. Philosophy East & West
52(4): 459-478.
Scheper-Hughes, N. and Lock, M. (1987) The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to
Future Work in Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly
1(1): 6-41.
Shusterman, R. (2008). Body consciousness: a philosophy of mindfulness and
somaesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, B. R. (2007). Body, Mind and Spirit? Towards an Analysis of the Practice of
Yoga. Body & Society 13(2): 25-46.
44

Sobchack, V. (2010). Living a Phantom Limb: On the Phenomenology of Bodily

Integrity, Body & Society 16(3): 51-68.
Sointu, E. (2006). The search of wellbeing in alternative and complementary
health practices, Sociology of Health & Illness 28(3): 330-349.
Strauss, S. (2004). Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. Oxford: Berg.
Throop, C. J. and Murphy, K. M. (2002). Bourdieu and phenomenology: A critical
assessment. Anthropological Theory 2(2):185-207.
Turner, B. [1984] (2008) The Body and Society. (3rd edition) Los Angeles: Sage.
Yuasa, Y. (1987) The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory. New York: State
University of New York Press.

45