Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Millions of people practise yoga, attracted to the mat by its promise of physical and mental benefits, social connection, and spiritual nourishment. Promoted as a way of healing the body and mind from wounds inflicted by the world, modern yoga may be a critique of the social order – an “anti-world” to which practitioners escape. Yet yoga can never free itself entirely from the compromises and contradictions of reality.
In Yogalands Paul Bramadat wrestles with his position as a skeptical scholar who is also a devoted yoga practitioner. Drawing from his own experience, and from conversations with hundreds of yoga teachers and students in the United States and Canada, he seeks to understand what yoga means for people in the modern West. In doing so, he addresses issues that often sit beneath the surface in yogaland: why yoga’s religious dimensions are rarely mentioned in classes; how the relationship between yoga and trauma might be reconsidered; and how yoga seems to have survived debates around nationalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual misconduct.
Yogalands encourages practitioners and critics to be more curious about yoga. For insiders, this can deepen their practice, and for observers, this approach is an inspiring and unsettling model for engaging with other passionate commitments.
"This is a great book! It made me laugh. It got me thinking about how to be a better teacher because of how it presents concepts in ways that feel accessible without being condescending. It is unlike anything else I have read in modern yoga studies in both its approach and subject matter. This is a necessary book and an enjoyable read." Laurah E. Klepinger, Utica University and author of *Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and its Blind Spots *
“In this honest, critical, and compassionate study, Bramadat challenges simplistic accounts of Western appropriations of historically Asian spiritual practices, rousing curiosity about yoga’s complex entanglements with North American approaches to religion, health, and trauma. The result is a nuanced picture of what yoga is and why it matters.” Andrea R. Jain, author of Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality
“Fascinating... revealing subtle ways in which yoga, for so many, is spiritual, yes, but also religious without being religion.” Spirituality & Practice
"In addition to its insightful explorations of accessibility and the adaptation of cultures not our own, [Yogalands] offers a clear-eyed look at the cultural, social, and deeply personal dimensions of yoga practice." On Good Medicine, Substack
"[Bramadat] adeptly levels intellectual concepts into straightforward explanations that feel accessible without being condescending. Yogalands conveys the textures and sensations of the research sites in filmable, memorable detail." Laurah E. Klepinger, Religious Studies Review
"Bramadat does not shy away from speaking about yoga as intrinsically political, religious, and problematic in its power structures of charismatic authority. He provides enough space in his writing style to allow yoga to remain politically complicated, personally transformational, and understandable to all those interested in the subject." Christa Kuberry, Religious Studies Review
"Yogalands is an inherently fascinating and thought-provoking read that will hold immense appeal to readers with an interest in the practice of yoga and its historical origins in the context of Eastern religions." Midwest Review of Books
"You don’t need to care a whit for yoga to enjoy and be edified by this book. It is fascinating as sociology, touches on most of the unprecedented challenges North Americans are facing in the early 21st century, and does not offer yoga as a solution." British Columbia Review
“Yogalands confronts American and Canadian perspectives on the practice and purpose of yoga. Selecting topics that many North American yoga practitioners and teachers often avoid such as the use of deities in yoga and promises of attaining superpowers [and] drawing on his own autoethnographic experiences and a religious studies framework, Bramadat offers thoughtful dialogue without definitive answers, leaving space for readers to reflect. Recommended” Choice