Yoga practices as identity capital: preliminary notes from Turku, Finland

Abstract

As elsewhere in Finland, different types of yoga practices are popular in the city of Åbo/Turku. But how do practitioners view their own relationship to their practice, and further, what do they feel that they as individuals gain from it? Through in-depth interviews with yoga teachers in the city of Turku, the author examines ways in which individuals, in what could be called a post-secular society, construct a meaningful sense of self and of individual agency. The observations offered in this article represent preliminary notes for a larger work on yoga in Turku, conducted at the ‘Post-Secular Culture and a Changing Religious Landscape’ research project at Åbo Akademi University, devoted to qualitative and ethnographic investigations of the changing religious landscape in Finland.