Touching the Limits, Assessing Pain: On Language Performativity, Health, and Well-Being in Yoga Classes

Abstract

Transcultural flows are communicated through various channels. For most of them language is instrumental in mediating and resituating cultural meanings. Taking the case of modern Hatha Yoga, this chapter focuses on the ways in which distinct types of tutorials contribute to the cultural translation of this bodily practice. I explore habitual language use in yoga classes in its capacity to shape and reformulate notions on the body, self, and well-being. This analysis focuses on two highly standardized examples of postural yoga, both practiced in Germany: (1) Bikram Yoga, a fairly recent and demanding form of yoga that emphasizes extensive stretching, muscle formation, and balance, performed in a training hall heated to forty degrees Celsius; and (2) Yoga for Everyone as promoted by Kareen Zebroff. Her yoga instructions on television and in books can be considered a paradigm for yoga gymnastics that in the 1970s facilitated the popularization of postural yoga in Germany and elsewhere. The comparison clearly shows the contrasts between various types of teaching postural yoga, and also in what respect the approach to yoga as a method of maintaining a healthy body seems to have changed in the last decades. I argue that some of the more recent fashions of Hatha Yoga (again) convey more than physical education; rather they call upon the self as an agent to transgress personal and bodily limits. In a post-secular and liberalized setting these techniques to enhance human flexibility and performance are framed within the health discourse.