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Barbora Sojkova and Theodora Wildcroft, "Yoga Studies in Five Minutes" (Equinox Publishing, 2025)
00:47:04
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- [00:04]
Barbara Soykova
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets. Mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com Limu Gamu and.
- [00:32]
Theodora Wildcroft
Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We save. That may have been too much feeling.
- [00:52]
Raj Walcroft
Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
- [00:59]
Marshall Poe
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:07]
Raj Walcroft
Hello and welcome back to the New Books in Indian Religions podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Walcraft and more importantly, I have the double delight of welcoming to the podcast today, Dr. Skidor Wildcroft and Barbara Soykova. They are both co editors of a really, really interesting, accessible new publication called Yoga Studies in five minutes. So welcome both to the podcast.
- [02:33]
Barbara Soykova
Thank you for having us.
- [02:33]
Theodora Wildcroft
Thank you for having us. And I, I should probably point out we're both doctors as well. Barbara is also a doctor. So.
- [02:39]
Raj Walcroft
Yes, I did say, I did say doctors before. You know, I, I, I factored out the doctors before the brackets of your names.
- [02:47]
Theodora Wildcroft
Yeah.
- [02:48]
Raj Walcroft
Yes. Double doctors, double delight. We're all doctors. That's wonderful. So, so which one of the doctors in this house will tell us about the, the Upon Canna, the backstory? How did this come into being?
- [03:00]
Theodora Wildcroft
Well, I guess I can start because I was asked. So I'd done. I, My monograph, my kind of the book of the PhD was published through Equinox Publishing. And they have this series, this really interesting series that they're doing called In Five Minutes, which is like, it's like where the kind of, you know, Dummies Guide and real academic academia meet. Right. It's. And that's what makes it really interesting and really difficult to write because the idea is, what if you had information about academic topics that was actually accessible and easy to read, but also really rigorous and didn't, you know, didn't, didn't oversimplify things. So they published a whole series of these. There's one on Religion in Five Minutes. There's, there's ones on all sorts of things, right. And within religious studies, there's lots of different ones. The one on Hinduism in Five Minutes is really good. I really like it. And one on Buddhism in five Minutes, for example, so really good. And they wanted one on. Well, they originally asked me if I would do one on yoga in five Minutes. And I went, no, we can't call the book Yoga in Five Minutes because people will think that's practice. You know, it's just going to get lost in the sea of kind of guides for how to learn the whole of Yoga in Five Minutes, which obviously wasn't what we were promising. So we called, so we decided to call it Yoga Studies in Five Minutes. And my only caveat for doing it was that I wanted to partner with someone who actually could read Sanskrit. Like, I thought that the field of yoga studies is so wide that you need more than one person editing that because you need people who have comparable skills. And also I slightly wanted an excuse to do a book project with Barbara because we're friends and I knew it would be really good fun and we would learn a lot together and from each other doing it. So luckily she said yes. And it has been remarkably plain sailing making it happen. So, I mean, so, I mean, it's out now. So I'm about to say that we can Stop worrying about that now. But yeah, like getting, I think it was 40 odd different academics to write on the theme on time to deadline. To the right, you know, with the right tone accessibly and to the right length was more painless than we expected it to be and certainly more painless than some of the editors of other books in the series have privately told me.
- [05:31]
Raj Walcroft
There's so much there that's noteworthy. One that you know, the lovechild of, you know, of topic for dummies and someone's monograph, you know, that's where this podcast sits. That's where so much of my own scholarship and voice sits. It's like, you know, we have to make it accessible for the people who are interested, but we also have to keep one eye on the complexity behind, you know, we have to make the iPhone apps user friendly and also know how the circuitry works as well. And it's a little bit of a walking contradiction, but it's so necessary and it is, I think, where academia is headed for, not least of which for its own relevance and survival. Just rendering accessible and opening the conversation to those who are interested. And when done well, it does not mean dumbing down at all. You actually have to have fairly comprehensive knowledge and scope to present something accessibly. The other thing that really resonates is there's a scholar name McComus Taylor. I discovered he just recently retired. He was at Australia National University and great scholar. And we got on so well. We were like, you know what, we need to use this. I mean we're scholars, get on really well. Let's co edit something. So we co edited the Sanskrit volume and Sanskrit narrative volume and it was, it was a lot of fun. And I think, you know, the, the, either the publishing gods or the yoga gods are with you. If you had everybody submit in the right tone on time, I mean, that's no small feat. So. So Barbara, let's hear a little bit nui about your, your journey of being roped into this project.
- [06:58]
Barbara Soykova
Well, I was roped into this project when I was just finishing my PhD, which was a whole lot of fun because I kept pushing my own contributions to the volume by great lengths. And thanks for Theo's patience. I was able to eventually write them a year down the line. But I think for me, what was really interesting about this project is that as we are talking about it, it's not about dumbing down, but it's about making things accessible. And both Theo and I have quite an extensive experience of teaching within yoga teacher trainings. And I think we have both understood that this book is not only a book that we would want to use for kind of academic teaching, it's a book for undergrads or for anybody else who really needs some sort of introduction within yoga, but it can be also used as a kind of a trusted source within teacher trainings and for practitioners. And I think that was what really attracted me to it because I recognize that source like that, written by people who are actual academics with an experience in the research, in research in Sanskrit, but also modern yoga studies, it's just needed. The books that we have on yoga, I think, are just not written that much with practitioners in mind. There are some great volumes, but not, not the ones that perhaps Theo or I, and I'm putting it into Theo's mouth. But certainly I found it tricky to recommend things to practitioners just because they don't have the same background sometimes and they don't have the same sitzfleisch, let's say, in German. So I think that was the most interesting thing for me within the project, just to create something that can be used across different audiences and can be used, you know, in a trusted way, let's say.
- [08:57]
Raj Walcroft
Yeah, and that's, that's another sort of sweet spot in terms of, you know, the reason why the podcast thrives. And there's spaces like the Ochs Continuing Studies where I teach in many of the spaces. Your ytts. I've done a little bit of YTT work here and there is because, you know, sort of the thinking types and the practicing types are not separate categories anymore. There is this lovely luscious overlap of really smart, intellectually seeking practitioners of various stripes. And that I think because of that, more and more we need to communicate to individuals who are very well trained in other fields and very intelligent, but jargon free. And we've defined a way to not presume too much back knowledge. And you know, these articles are, they're unassuming because they're short and they're pithy and they're interesting. But I would want to put words in either one of your mouths. But I imagine a lot of work goes into the back end of writing such an unassumingly brief snippet like, you know, what is yoga? Is it Indian? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So maybe you could tell, one of you could tell me a little bit, tell us who are listening a little bit about the structure. I want to highlight the categories and the way you lay the book out. And then I would love to either mention or even maybe unpack some of these really cool questions and answers that you've set up.
- [10:23]
Theodora Wildcroft
Well, I think the first thing to say is this is where we got really controlling. So the kind of obsessive, compulsive part of the process was Barbara and I sitting down first figuring out what the chapters were going to be. We did not go to a bunch of younger academics and say, hey, what do you want to write about? The first thing we did is we made a list of the questions, and part of it came from, I think, the kinds of questions, questions that come up for us in teacher trainings as much as anything else. So the kind of questions that a teacher trainee is asking about how old is yoga? Is yoga Indian, is yoga, religion, is yoga scientific? Is yoga good for you? All these different kinds of questions. So it was partly the kinds of questions, like I said, that there are some teacher trainings, also the kind of questions that when you say you're a yoga teacher or you say you're a yoga researcher, it's the kind of thing that people who know nothing about the subject ask as well. So, you know, tell me in two minutes about your research, and you're kind of left going, you know, so is yoga 5000 years old? Is he? Well, it depends on your definitions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And I think there is a third category which is worth mentioning, which is there are a lot of academics who end up teaching courses on religious traditions or practices that are not necessarily specialists in. Like, we can't be specialists in everything in the teaching load that we have as academics a lot of the time. So I find myself, for example, teaching courses called things like dharmic worldviews or South Asian traditions or whatever. And, you know, I'm the kind of Hinduism, the Buddhism is fine, but the Jainism, I might need to look up, you know, like, I need a little bit of hand on there, or I'm trying to remember exactly which part of the dharma, part of such a such a thing is in. Right. You can't be a specialist on all of these things. So I use books like this, you know, in my teaching, just. And they're really useful to students as well, because I can take one chapter and I can, you know, One entry that's 1200 words, and I can set it as a required reading. So similarly, you know, other academics, when you're at conferences and so on, in, for example, religious studies or other kinds of things, you're in history or whatever other academics are like, so what's yoga about then? And you're like, so, again, it's the kinds of questions. So it is structured around the series of questions. It's like a. It's like kind of an academic version of an faq, right? It's like one of the frequently asked questions. So we came up with a long list of them first together, and really they haven't changed. They didn't change a lot from that initial list. I mean, some got folded into each other and some got moved around. And then we had to come up with the categories, which I think, Barbara, you were much better at that than I was trying to put them in, because I was just like, there are so many of these. So I don't know if you want to talk about the categories we have.
- [13:09]
Barbara Soykova
I'm trained as a librarian, so I'm really used to classifying things. Yes. So we had a long list of 60 questions at the end of the process, as Dio said, some of them got kind of reshuffled. Some of them, actually, the academics who took them under their wings and wanted to write about them, they came back to us and said, you know what? The question doesn't really make sense this way. Let's rephrase it. And we were obviously very happy about that. But in the end we ended up with, I believe, five or six categories or six questions. So one is, what is yoga? Then what's the point of yoga? Which is my favorite. Is yoga healthy? How do you practice yoga? How do you study yoga? How did modern yoga develop? And the last one is, how does yoga look today? And I think the first few are really kind of pervasive. So the questions within that are not just about pre modern or modern yoga, but what we were trying to aim at was that people kind of provide an overview, kind of an historic arc within their questions. And obviously some questions were taken up by people who were a specialist in pre modern yoga, Some were specialists in. In modern. And so certain questions have their, you know, taste, or how to call it flavour, maybe, based on who is answering them. But I think, at least in the first few sections of the books, we're really trying to kind of COVID everything within the answers. And then towards the end, it's more geared towards modern and contemporary yoga and.
- [14:57]
Raj Walcroft
As a thing, fascinating. So why don't you maybe talk about a couple of your own contributions? I mean, I have, you know, I can feel the audience, you know, sort of squirming because they've heard things like, you know, what is yoga? Yeah, what is the point of yoga? Is yoga healthy? And they're like, tell us the answer. We want the answers to these questions. So tell us about some of your own questions and answers. And then I might be cheeky and ask you, is Yoga Indian? And see what you say.
- [15:30]
Theodora Wildcroft
I think our contributions, kind of both separately and together, a number of the chapters, the entries that we wrote, we did write together as well, which is really nice. It got that codependent. We were actually writing individual entries together as well, which is really nice. But I think they fall into two categories. The ones kind of later on in the book or scattered through the books were the ones that we knew no one else was going to be able to write. So that was one category. So some of it is either things that other people can't write or the things that other nobody wanted to write. Some of it was just because we have to have a quite an entry on this and anybody we can possibly ask to do it has already written, however many different entries already. So we. It's going to have to be us that writes them. So things on yoga and kind of diet, for example, it was just like, I think we're just going to end up having to write that one. But then I, for me, I think one of the really important bits is we then also got to write the introduction. And the introduction is also praised as a series of questions. And that's really where together we got to set the tone of the debate and the scope of what we're talking about. And again, I think it's really important to come back to the fact that this is yoga studies in five minutes, not Yoga in five minutes. What's really important about that is we are not trying to define the practice. We are not setting ourselves up as any kind of pundits or gurus in this situation. We are talking about the academic study of yoga, and therefore, that's the kind of answers that we're giving. And it also allowed us to set up, I think, how people should or might want to engage with the book. And I think that Barbara is right. There are a lot of the chapters, particularly early on, that aim to give a full scope. So they're like, you know, if is Yoga Indian? Well, you have to start by saying, well, 4,000 years ago it was like this. 2,000 years ago, like this. A thousand years ago it's like this. Today it's like this. And, you know, all of those things can be true, right? So that allows us to give the kind of answers where you get a real sense of the scope rather than trying to give one answer rather than trying to give a one. Kind of like, this is the only answer that we can give. We can say, some people think this and some people think that. So that, you know, there are those questions where the answers are really broad in scope like that, but also there are questions that might seem to be very closely related in terms of what they're asking. And we had different people answering those questions so that the answers you get are slightly different. And I think that also gives you a flavor of where there is healthy debate and difference between different academics, but also different methodologies, different ways of looking at the problem. If you're a sociologist, you're going to get one kind of answer. If you're a philologist, you're going to get another kind of an answer. And I think that all of this hopefully gives the sense that even though this is a book that's about making things clear and accessible, again, we're not just not trying to oversimplify, we're trying not to universalize. We're not trying to give one answer to any of these questions. We're trying to give people a sense of that. It's complicated. And in a number of cases, the answer is really, you're asking the wrong question. Right. And that's the question. So, for example, you know, what is yoga? What is yoga for? Well, what are you defining as yoga? Who are you asking? You know, for example, so sometimes the answer is you need to answer the question differently, and this is why.
- [18:46]
Raj Walcroft
What were some of. And might be an impossible question to ask, but manageable? What were some of. Maybe some of your favorite bits or memorable or maybe even most controversial or. Clearly, there's so much in each article, and clearly, as you've just explained, I mean, they're very accessible. But the articles are like any great teacher, where they're not going to give you an answer. They're not going to evade an answer that's unavailable, but they're going to. They're going to coach you into understanding how to frame the question and how to seek that answer for yourself. But were there articles that really kind of stayed with you or you found most intriguing, most controversial, most difficult? I mean, I don't have any particular agenda in asking that, but I'm sure there's stuff that still kind of rattles around in your brain well after. Well, after you've written it or read it.
- [19:35]
Theodora Wildcroft
Can you think of any, Barbara right now? And then, I don't think.
- [19:38]
Barbara Soykova
I think you might say the same one as I do. I think my personal favorite is Jim Allanson's, which is called what is the difference between Hatha Yoga and Hatha Yoga? Which is just great because we begged him on our knees. We know he's a very busy man, and we also know he's wonderful. And we knew that if somebody had to answer this question, it would have to be him who has very personal experience of what Hatha Yoga is, but also has done number of years, if not decades of academic work on it. And I think his article is great because it's funny, but it's also very rigorous and I think it. It tells people exactly what they need to know about these two things. So this one has really stayed with me. And I. Since the book has come out, I have already used it in multiple teacher trainings and gave it to the students to read if they read just one thing within five minutes. You know, just read this one article.
- [20:46]
Theodora Wildcroft
So for me, I think there's a couple. I agree. I mean, I mean, you say begged on an ease. I don't think I begged, Jim. I think I've just told him, this is what you're doing because you're doing this, Jim. I relied on the fact he was my boss for a while, for quite some time, so I relied on the fact that he owed me one. Basically put up with you as a boss for a good couple of years, Jim, do this for us. And he kind of said yes. And then I remember getting an email from him and saying, hang on a minute, in 1200 words. And we went, yes. And now you've said. You said yes, and now you have to do it. But yeah, you know, with all the first, he did write a fantastic chapter. And you're right, it's a really good one. Some of the chapter titles I really love. I really love. Susan Newcomb's got a really fantastic chapter on kind of that kind of transition in genders that you have, that you have in kind of amongst modern practitioners. And it's just called where did all the women come from? Which I really love, because it is the question, if you're thinking about the history of modern yoga is one of the first questions come to mind, right? Where, why? Why? Why? Where did all the women come from? Which is kind of fun. And I. There are ones I actually also really like, the ones that sound really esoteric but are really accessible. I think Lubimirs kind of, you know, who. Gok Satana and Matsyandra. Matsy Andrasana. See, I can't even say it in Sanskrit, you know, like. Like that kind of Stuff like no one's read, no one who doesn't know any something about yoga has any idea why they need to read that chapter. But if you read that chapter, understand why you need to read that chapter. And I think there's also, there's something about the breadth of what's on offer that you've got those really kind of specific philological, kind of indological kind of treatises and then you've got, you know, you've got a chapter by Marissa on what's the relationship between yoga and capitalism like? And it's all in the same book. And one of the things I think that really stands out for me is how many authors essentially how interdisciplinary the increasingly this, this incredibly diverse subject of yoga studies has become, where kind of pre modern scholars are increasingly sensitive to the nuances of modern kind of anthropological and sociological approaches and kind of sociologists and anthropologists are increasingly also sensitive to the pre modern history of the practice as well. And I think that what this book also evidences is a real body of consensus about all of that that we're starting to build as a, as a fledgling discipline in many ways within academia that, you know, there are things that we know as a community, not just as individuals. And I think that's also really evident in the chapters.
- [23:31]
Raj Walcroft
Fascinating. So tell us, what is the role of diet in yoga?
- [23:35]
Theodora Wildcroft
Well, Barbara has to start because you wrote the pre modern bit. What is the role of your diet in yoga? Well, we wrote it two years ago.
- [23:43]
Raj Walcroft
And your diet's changed since November.
- [23:45]
Theodora Wildcroft
Fair point.
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Barbara Soykova
This is one of the questions that nobody wanted to answer and also one of the questions that nothing is really written about. So you can't just go and reference somebody's paper because there is literally nothing about this. And we both knew that we wanted to kind of answer this question of are all yogis vegetarian? And also do all yogis go to a juice bar or a smoothie bar after their session in Lululemon pans? So we kind of knew that both Dio and I knew that we had to do this together because that's just how it is sometimes when you edit a book. For me, I had to trundle through quite a lot of pre modern sources and luckily we now have Roots of Yoga, which was a really, really good source book for us. And I feel like we're kind of an appendix to Roots of Yoga in a certain way because when you give Roots of Yoga to yoga practitioners or teacher trainees, they are sometimes bit scared. It doesn't really gel with them. Obviously not everybody, but it's a wonderful book, but it's a bit scary. And so what I did was basically I went through all of the possible pre modern sources that I could have found, luckily helped by roots of yoga, and tried to figure out what do we actually find about, about yoga? Do we know anything about vegetarianism? Do we know anything about the diet that yogis would have actually eaten? And the problem with the pre modern yoga sources, and I'm saying it as somebody who is trained as a Vedicist and not as a yoga studies scholar, the problem with the sources is obviously that they are ideal, right? They give you an ideal way how a yogi should live. They don't give you a manual or they don't give you an actual menu of what a yogi in 15th century has eaten or did eat, which is a bit tricky when you want to do kind of a resume of what is a diet in yoga? Well, you know that there are certain things that yogi shouldn't eat. Certain spices, for example, for example meat or meat of some kind. And you know that there are certain things that, that yogi is encouraged to eat. But did they actually eat that? I think it's tricky to know.
- [26:27]
Theodora Wildcroft
And then when you come into the modern era, things get really complex. But in many ways the data is more available, not necessarily the writing now. So there isn't necessarily massive amounts of research on this, but there is at least data like you can go back particularly to the kind of late 19th century, early kind of first half the 20th century development of yoga across the world. You get that transnational push of yoga is often associated with other movements that are around health and well being and diet is included in that. So you know, yoga, vegetarianism, whole foods, all of these things are associated together kind of throughout the kind of late 19th and 20th century really. They come of age at the same time in a number of different contexts. And that's where you start to get this association, this very strong association in the west of yoga with particular kinds of restricted diets. And that in turn is connected to kind of long histories of ideas of purity in all kinds of religious and spiritual practices where, you know, part of the way that you maintain or achieve spiritual purity is in terms of what you put into your body, right? So it's about health and it's about well being, but it's also about purity and what purity means and taking in the good stuff and pushing out the bad stuff, right? Particularly some, anything that we might label as toxins, whatever. And it's really Important to note that a lot of this stuff has less scientific basis for it and more actually kind of spiritual and religious and moral basis for it. But the reality is that I think you can say today that the vast majority of yoga practitioners think about their diet in some ways, like they, they, they have, have a deliberate relationship to what, what is put in their bodies, but their actual practices in terms of what they eat and how they eat, when they eat is going to really, really vary. Right. In lots of different ways. And there can be a lot of contention about that. I've known yoga events that, that went, essentially went to war over eggs. I mean, you know, where they came from and were they allowed and you know, these kinds of things. So, yeah, dietary, dietary kind of disputes are one of the ways yoga communities can actually get really toxic with each other in many ways. And then the final thing I think you have to add is this really complex relationship between yoga and eating disorders in the modern and contemporary era, which we also have to be aware of, where yoga can be a really good adjunct therapy for people with suffering from eating disorders, but it also can be part of a wider pattern of the disordered relationship to health, well being and exercise. So, you know, it can be a sign, you know, to doing a lot of yoga or doing a lot of yoga in particular ways, or deciding to kind of have a kind of 70% raw vegan diet can be excused as a yogic thing, but also can be a mental health issue. So it's always complicated, I think. Was that five minutes? That's what I don't know.
- [29:50]
Raj Walcroft
You're a lot more than five minutes on the podcast. But no, obviously clearly means. So just that one answer to that one article just is a great peephole into the layers and layers of, well, you know, what do we have in texts and to what extent are texts descriptive or prescriptive? And do we have traditions around the text? And then there are movements of modernity and then, and then dietary disputes are almost sort of, you know, they're cross cultural and people always are up in arms about what we should and should not eat. And you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's chicken or beef or, you know, egg or dog, some will say delicious, some will say gross, some will say it's, it's fascinating. It's endlessly fascinating. Yeah, a lot of rich content there. So thank you. I'll just be mean and ask you just one more such question. But for those of you who are listening, I'm not asking them any of the questions written by the other authors, such as things like is yoga Indian? And what is kundalini? And why do yogis stand upside down? And what is a guru? And are teachers of yoga enlightenment? All kinds of stuff that I'm sparing them. So, you know, I'm asking them what they have written on. And the next one. Oh, nerdy footnote. You just said in passing, Barbara, that you're a Vedicist when you're not doing this, or before in addition to doing this. We've got to talk about that at some point. And I've got some questions for you after this call about the heiress, but that's a whole different line of thought. Maybe say, if you'd like, say a quick word about your training as a Vedicist, but then you've got to tell us definitively what life does the ideal yogi lead?
- [31:37]
Barbara Soykova
Oh, that's a tricky one as well. This is one of the essays that Theo and I also co authored again because we needed somebody to cover quite a lot of depth and breadth of various things. And you are here putting me on the spot because again, I haven't really seen this for the last couple of years, since we have finished the book, but I think it has something to do with what we've just referenced in the previous answer to the question about diet, which is there are prescriptive and descriptive texts and unfortunately for the pre modern part of this question, huge part of our battle with pre modern texts is that especially for ritual manuals and for works such as yoga texts, these texts are essentially prescriptive. They tell you the ideal way a yogi should live, but not the actual way. And so from the pre modern point of view, what we can find is usually just how the yogi should live, but not how they're actually living. So that is, at least for me, the centerpiece or the focus of this question. And then within the modern or contemporary yoga movement, then Theo will answer this better than me. Again, we have this idea of, you know, we have these people like Krishnamacharya, like Iyengar, who are kind of putting themselves on the pedestal of like, we are the main, we're the yogi that you should follow. But again, is it prescriptive or is it descriptive for the people who follow them and practice in the same way that they do?
- [33:46]
Theodora Wildcroft
I love this question because it allows me to talk about one of my favorite concepts in kind of the history of religion, which is hagiography, which I'm slightly obsessed with, which is about, which is really about memory and how we tell stories. So the idea of hagiography originally is. It's a description for the kind of biographies of the saints in any religious tradition, kind of originally kind of Christian traditions, but then much wider than that. So the idea is that when you write the kind of biography, quote unquote, of a. Of a charismatic religious figure, of some kind of a saint, of a guru, whoever it might be, then really what you're writing is some way between the historical fact and also the values and kind of ideals that that person embodies for the community. Right? So that's why we call it hagiography rather than biography or history, because it's that life curated in such a way that it tells us who we are as a religious community. Right? So it matters that it matters if miracles happen, it matters if people are ethically pure, it matters if they were visited by the gods on their 13th birthday, it matters that they had visions and so on and so forth, because it matters that they spent 20 years giving to the poor or whatever else it might be, because that they become the kind of embodiment, the avatar of the values and ideals of the community as a whole. And I think the idea of hagiography is a really interesting one because it allows us to be gentler with ourselves about the historical accuracy of the stories we tell about charismatic figures. And I think within. Whereas with the lives of the saints, you may be talking about something that's centuries old. When we're talking about modern yoga and even contemporary yoga, we're talking about people being this. This hagiographic process happening in real time. You can kind of watch it happening for good or ill, right? So in the case of figures that may be, that may have history, been known, histories of abuse, for example, that's why it matters that whether Patabi, Joyce or Yogi Bhajan or whoever it is, you know that the. The accuracy of how we tell their stories matters because to the community that's still around them, it's like, well, these are the people that embody our ideal, yes, but also, but also they had this other impact on people's lives. One question that I have around hagiographies is how can we, how can we tell people stories in a way that, that, that doesn't reduce them to one thing or another? How can we tell the stories of these figures in a way that allows for all of us to find within them what we need? Because if you're a survivor of the abuse that happened, and it was quite widespread in modern yoga, then these men are you know, the, the, the, the, the Platonic ideal, if you like, of something very, very different. Right. They represent anyone who's ever been harmed within a yoga class. And that is also an important story to tell. So I think that's the interesting question to me is less what's the life that we need to live as yogic practitioners and more how do we idealize, how do we kind of enter into kind of hagiography with the people that we follow and the people that we look up to and admire? Do we allow our teachers to be real people? Do we allow them to represent different aspects of what they represent within a community and with a culture? And yeah, hopefully this chapter, that entry talks about that in a way that starts to get people thinking about those processes, I think.
- [37:34]
Raj Walcroft
Yeah, I mean, I really appreciate the reliance upon and the understanding of narrative and the mandates of narrative, the nuances of narrative. And you know, this comes up time and time again whether teaching indic thought or really world religions. The notion that, you know, whether or not Moses part of the Red Sea or Jesus Christ walked on water or the pond of. Was recited by deities. Obviously there's an element of what we do which is an historical element. But when it comes to narrative and sort of ideals, it's, you know, our data is the cultural imaginary. Our data is how things are imagined to be. And you know, that is. It is a historical process insofar as there were actual individuals who, who propagated that vision of the world for whatever political, social, spiritual, philosophical agenda. And another power of that narrative is not the veracity of the walking on water or the multiplication of rose or the veracity of the bed of errors. The power is in. Why would this be conjured? Why would this be imagined to be the case? And you know, and what values are implied in this? And, and are they still, you know, do they still have currency? And so that's really fascinating. All right, so you know, I've, I've. You two have been, you've suffered enough. So forgive me sham, your Tom, but are there any other. Is there anything else about the book in particular or the project or developments or anything that you'd like to touch on?
- [39:17]
Theodora Wildcroft
I think that. What would I like to touch on? I, I think it's always interesting for kind of non academics to kind insight into the academic world and how it works. I think, and I think that there are important things to be said about how books like this, such as this are produced. And one is that it is almost entirely volunteer labor. That's really Important for people to understand that no one who wrote for us got paid a penny for doing what they do. And if Barbara and I are really lucky, we might be able to go out for dinner. It's kind of that level. That's how publishing works generally. These, particularly in academic publishing. So like, support your academics because most of them, most of us are earning, as I'm sure both of you are aware, far less money doing what we do than people have any idea of what we're doing really. But. So I think that's part of the process. Therefore it is a labor of love. Like we, you know, we've all, not just us, but every. Right, every contributor cares and cares about what they wrote and cared about what they put in. Also, it's a really mammoth, long project. I mean, as Barbara pointed out, you know, it's two years since we wrote some of these entries. It was, I think, 15 months between, just between submitting the manuscript and publication and writing, you know, the project as a whole. I can't even remember. It's got to be a good few years really, just to make this happen. And then what was really lovely about it, and don't tell our publishers that we said this, but then, then they basically just announced it overnight. We were, they kept, we kept emailing and saying, oh, is the book coming out soon? It's a bit coming out soon and of course it's within a series, so it has to come out like other. It's dependent on other things happening and other books coming out. And then essentially we both kind of went, hang on a minute. We texted each other and said, hang on a minute, I've just seen it on Instagram. That's it when our book was out. So as a result, like the other thing I would say is if you can help us celebrate this book in any way, please do. Like, we've got kind of a couple event events kind of online and podcasts like this and an in person event and if you can possibly kind of like come and just show us some love or just text us or email us or put a comment on one of our posts and say, I've read this and it's really good, that would be really lovely because that's why we're doing it, really. Hopefully it's useful. So, yeah, that's a plea for people to be nice to us, I guess, but I think that's fair enough.
- [41:55]
Raj Walcroft
Lovely. Barbara, anything else you want to add?
- [41:59]
Barbara Soykova
I don't think I have anything else. Maybe just that Theo has mentioned that we have A couple of events coming up to celebrate the book. So one is going to be in person in the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, which for me is lovely because it is a place that fed me throughout my masters and my DPHIL in Oxford. Every Wednesday there is a lunch. So I'm really, really grateful that it's Ochs that is hosting our launch and it's going to be lovely to see people there.
- [42:32]
Raj Walcroft
Yeah, that's lovely, lovely. I have the good fortune of, of teaching adult learners at continuing studies at the Ochs, but I am stationed in the holy city of Toronto or unholy city of Toronto, depending on your view, in Canada, this little place called Canada across the pond. But yes, I had the good fortune of visiting in person and I would love to check out one of their Wednesday feeding fests. That's great. So, yeah, it's so, you know, we've talked about, we've talked about this so many times on the podcast as well. Not just the books we produce, but the process where, whereby they're produced in this shifting landscape of sort of high profile slave labor.
- [43:19]
Theodora Wildcroft
That's a really nice way to put it. High profile slave labor. Yeah, yeah. When people are like, you're really well known, surely you, you have money.
- [43:30]
Raj Walcroft
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I've got two monographs set with rally and quite literally, you're right. If I can take. And one of my academic advisors on my doctoral committee, Hilary Rodriguez, brilliant, brilliant scholar of the Durga Puja of many things, but really well known for his work on Durga. He's like, you know, Raj, if you can go out for a nice dinner with a friend, it means you're doing really well for the year of royalties for an academic book. And he'll. Hilarious. I think last week I got my, my statement from literally both the books and I think I. Yeah, that's about right. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go out for dinner. You know, we're probably gonna be able to afford dessert and maybe a drink or two and we're good. And also. But I'm in this bizarre, bizarre space of literally it's been, I think it's going to soon be a decade since defending and all of the academic production articles, books, it's all. I found certain ways to monetize. But I do some online platforms, one on one counseling, coaching work, and then all of that's pro bono. And I mean it's not tenable for the vast majority of super bright, super hardworking, newly minted PhDs to go and find some way to earn their keep and then be a pro bono academic until a job opens. So really, I mean, I really appreciate your call for those out who are remotely interested to be de facto patrons of this work and using it for their teaching or perhaps their personal study, perhaps even their YTTs. Actually, I should probably send a note out. I've got tons of yoga people in the audience at the online school and many of them have YTDs. And I should probably send a note out and see if we can. That's of interest in this. So that's great. Okay. So fantastic. Thank you both for appearing on the podcast today. That was fun, at least for me.
- [45:28]
Theodora Wildcroft
Oh, we had a good time. That was wonderful.
- [45:31]
Barbara Soykova
Thank you.
- [45:31]
Raj Walcroft
Good. So for those listening, we of course have been speaking with doctors Theodora Wildcroft and Barbara Soikova on yoga studies in five minutes. Really, really fascinating, accessible, erudite points of entry, such as is yoga religion, Is yoga philosophy? Are there sacred texts in yoga, you know, what is om, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so check it out. And until next time, keep. Well, keep listening, keep reading, and keep contemplating this thing called yoga. Take Sam.