page_title: Yoga Body
section_title: Discussion
hierarchical_section_title: Yoga Body / Reception / Discussion
caption_attribution_description: Yoga postures
context_page_description: Yoga Body: the Origins of Modern Posture Practice is a 2010 book on yoga as exercise by the yoga scholar Mark Singleton. It is based on his PhD thesis, and argues that the yoga known worldwide is, in large part, a radical break from hatha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on asanas, many of them acquired in the 20th century. By the 19th century, the book explains, asanas and their ascetic practitioners were despised, and the yoga that Vivekananda brought to the West in the 1890s was asana-free. Yet, from the 1920s, an asana-based yoga emerged, with an emphasis on its health benefits, and flowing sequences adapted from the gymnastics of the physical culture movement. This was encouraged by Indian nationalism, with the desire to present an image of health and strength.
  The book attracted wide interest, both among scholars and among yoga teachers and practitioners. Its argument has largely been accepted by scholars, and it has encouraged further research into the nature of modern yoga and its origins.
context_section_description: In 2011, the yoga scholar and philologist James Mallinson published "A Response to Mark Singleton's Yoga Body", thanking Singleton for "a wonderful piece of work" that explained "how sūrya namaskār had become so integral to yoga when it is nowhere to be found in the [medieval hatha yoga] sources I work with", and recording his eureka moment near the end of the book with Singleton's suggestion that "the modern Aṣṭāṅga yoga gets its name not from Patañjali's eight-fold yoga but from the aṣṭāṅga dandavat pranām, the 'stick-like prostration' in which eight parts of the body are to touch the ground." Admitting himself no expert on modern yoga, he identifies a series of medieval sources that describe non-seated asanas, from mayurasana (the peacock) in the 10th century Vimānārcanākalpa onwards. Mallinson and Singleton became colleagues at SOAS and went on to co-edit the 2017 collection Roots of Yoga which demonstrates in detail the medieval origins of many non-seated asanas, though as Singleton had argued in Yoga Body, only very few standing poses, Vrikshasana (tree pose) among them.
  The book provoked discussion among yoga practitioners as well as scholars. On TheBabarazzi blog, Mallinson and the mindful yoga teacher Frank Jude Boccio joined the debate on whether Singleton was ignoring earlier syncretism between yoga and other philosophies.
  Remski observed that there were ad hominem attacks on Singleton: he was labelled "a debunker, a cultural appropriator, a 'junior scholar from England', and a pro-colonial revisionist intent on delegitimizing the Indian roots of postural practice." Remski notes that most of these emerged and vanished on social media, their ephemerality indicating their "intellectual poverty", but their presence demonstrating Yoga Body's reach to a non-academic audience, "and its sting."
  The yoga teacher Bernie Gourley called Singleton's premise "a bold and stunning hypothesis" but stated that he was not persuaded. He argued that Singleton put "immense weight" on a few 19th century sources, mainly Europeans who may not have viewed yoga objectively, and that the choice of the 19th century as a boundary was arbitrary, even if there are few earlier sources. He questioned whether Krishnamacharya was, as Singleton implied, lying about learning his yoga from a scripture (the undocumented Yoga Korunta) from a Himalayan master (Ramamohana Brahmachari). He stated that the book avoided detailed examination of individual asanas, and that many asanas may have existed without documentation.
  Seven years after the book's publication, Anya P. Foxen wrote on the Oxford University Press blog that "Since the publication of Mark Singleton's Yoga Body, the yoga world has been swirling with the notion that the postural practice you'll find in today's fitness centers is not nearly as old as we've liked to imagine. With the release of Singleton's collaboration with James Mallinson—Roots of Yoga—the jury is still out on the precise role of yoga poses in the practice's long and varied history. It is nevertheless plain to see that yoga's root system is far more extensive and complex than even the most respected popularizers, such as B.K.S. Iyengar's midcentury classic Light on Yoga (1966), would have us believe."
caption: Singleton argued that Astānga yoga may get its name not from Patañjali's eight-fold yoga but from the aṣṭāṅga dandavat pranām pose.[YB 10]
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