A Conversation with Mark Singleton, PhD

Abstract

Mark Singleton is the author of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010) and the editor, along with Jean Marie Byrne, of Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge 2008). Singleton has a PhD in South Asian Religions from Cambridge University (UK) and currently teaches at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work explores the modern history of Yoga in India, Europe, and America, shedding light on the cultural and political influences on the development of Yoga and challenging assumptions about the origins of modern asana practice. He is also a Yoga teacher in the Iyengar and Satyananda traditions. In this interview, Mark Singleton (MS) and IJYT Editor-in-Chief Kelly McGonigal (KM) discuss why Yoga therapists should care about the modern history of Yoga, what Yoga therapists should understand about the relationship between modern Yoga and science, and the commoditization of Yoga in the West.