The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America

The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America

In The Subtle Body, Stefanie Syman tells the surprising story of yogaâ€™s transformation from a centuries-old spiritual disciplineÂ to a multibillion-dollar American industry.
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Â Â Â Â Yogaâ€™s history in America is longer and richer than even its most devoted practitioners realize. It was present in Emersonâ€™s New England, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was fashionable among the leisure class. And yet when Americans first learned about yoga, what they learned was that it was a dangerous, alien practice that would corrupt body and soul.
Â Â Â Â A century later, you can find yoga in gyms, malls, and even hospitals, and the arrival of a yoga studio in a neighborhood is a signal of cosmopolitanism. How did it happen? It did so, Stefanie Syman explains, through a succession of charismatic yoga teachers, who risked charges of charlatanism as they promoted yoga in America, and through generations of yoga students, who were deemed unbalanced or even insane for their efforts. The Subtle Body tells the stories of these people, including Henry David Thoreau, Pierre A. Bernard, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Christopher Isherwood, Sally Kempton, and Indra Devi.
Â Â Â Â From New England, the book moves to New York City and its new suburbs between the wars, to colonial India, to postwar Los Angeles, to Haight-Ashbury in its heyday, and back to New York City post-9/11. In vivid chapters, it takes in celebrities from Gloria Swanson and George Harrison to Christy Turlington and Madonna. And it offers a fresh view of American society, showing how a seemingly arcane and foreign practice is as deeply rooted here as baseball or ballet.
Â Â Â Â This epic account of yogaâ€™s rise is absorbing and often inspiringâ€”a major contribution to our understanding of our society.

Country	USA
Author	Stefanie Syman
Binding	Hardcover
EAN	9780374236762
Edition	First Edition
ISBN	0374236763
Label	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
MPN	9780374236762
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	400
PartNumber	9780374236762
PublicationDate	2010-06-22
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ReleaseDate	2010-06-22
Studio	Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America

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