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Editor's Notes
- Chapter 5 considers more closely the Indian physical culture scene of the period. Colonial educators tended to present Hindu Indians as a weakling race who deserved to be dominated. The British physical culture regimes, however, were adopted by Indians and used as components of nationalist programs of regeneration and resistance to colonial rule. It is in this context that āsana began to be combined with modern physical culture and reworked as an “indigenous” technique of man‐building. Considered here are what are probably the earliest experiments in the synthesis of yoga and physical culture.
- • Today in America athletes are looked up to; they are role models to many• Class differences? Philosophers were higher class and looked down on physical exercise
- • Yoga helpful for gaining control over the mind – could be helpful for the military• Importance of being strong to build a strong military • Felt the need to be stronger than the white man – foreign influences (especially of the British) – needing to include Indian methods of exercise as well as English method to make a “happy blending of both” (p. 108) – major influence of modern hatha yoga
- Combat yoga
- Combat yoga
- Possible answers/discussions:• “Physical effeteness seemed often a mere index of spiritual downfall” (p. 97)• “Yoga came to be seen in some quarters as a kind of transgenerational fast track to genetic and spiritual perfecton” (p. 98)• Swamiji: “How will you struggle with the mind unless the physique be strong? . . . First build up your physique. Then only you can get control over the mind” (p. 100)• “One fails to attain realization if there be but a slight defect of the body” (p. 101)
- Cirque Du Solei. Gymnast. Yoga Postures