Improving Moral Posture

Abstract

A common narrative in the discourse on modern transnational yoga concerns its secularization, i.e. the assumption that posture-based yoga can be separated from its soteriological background. This aspect is particularly pronounced in yoga manuals which, from the 1950s onwards, address a largely female audience. This article highlights a slightly different historical move: the promotion of yoga in line with a faith-based mindset. It presents a case study of two German sisters, who from 1952 onwards instructed an early generation of yoga teachers, referencing harmonious gymnastics, the Christian Indian Yesudian and the American legacy of Yogananda. I argue that in this sociohistorical context yoga practice was seen as a multi-religious method to increase and revive ethical rules and behaviour—regardless of the functional secular tone favoured in yoga manuals. This particular way of framing posture practice and its curative power was highly influenced by the aftermath of the war, and hence differed from what might be called New Age religion or today’s popular self-identification as ‘spiritual, but not religious’. The paper thus contributes to the entangled history of modern yoga and illustrates the impact of women for initiating the spread of respective posture practice. It adds theoretically to reconsidering religious narratives for positioning and rationalizing posture-based yoga.