Eric Shaw, Yoga in America: The Marketing of Hinduism by Multiculturalists East and West

(This presentation was a part of CIIS Multiversity February 2008.)

Integral Yoga was the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, CIIS’s patron saint, and Hatha Yoga is the quintessential Body/Mind/Spirit practice of the type propounded by the school’s mission statement. Aurobindo, like Swami Vivekananda, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Pierre Bernard, was an Anglo-Indian syncretist who re-tooled yoga for the Western mind. This slide lecture is about these luminaries and others who used Cartesian and New Age Healing modalities to change yoga and plant the seeds for today’s Pop Yoga phenomenon.

Eric Shaw, MARS, MASE, RYT, attended the American Academy of Religions conference in San Diego, CA in November of 2007. He is a yoga teacher and third year PhD student at CIIS focused on Hindu Religion and Philosophy. His dissertation is on the History of Yoga in America.