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Experian
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welcome to the New Books Network. Welcome back to the New Books and Indian Religions Podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balkaran. More importantly, I have the pleasure of welcoming to the podcast today Dr. Suzanne Newcomb, who's a senior lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, as well as Dr. Rafael Roy, who is a research fellow at CNRS Anthropology and is a co director of the center for South Asian and Himalayan Studies. Today, we are actually covering a development, not so much a book, but perhaps a development that will contribute to a great many books. We are talking about a conference called Yoga Darshana, Yoga Sadhana. This is the fourth international iteration of this conference to be held in Paris. And so without further ado, let us hear the genesis. How did this conference come into being and when?
- [02:02]
A
Oh, gosh. So it. It originated a long Time ago in 2016, pre Covid and when yoga studies was really just starting to be on the map. And our colleague Matilda at the Yagiellonian University in Krakow initiated it and got in touch with Elizabeth the Mikolas and Mark Singleton and myself who were all at Cambridge together and were kind of setting up yoga studies with the. The. The original website, which is now gone. But. But it was modern yoga research at that point. And we had a name change for lots of very good reasons. But she got in touch with us and said, let's have a conference. And she got her university in Krakow to organize most of it. And we were really blown away by the amount of attendees we got. It was really a thing. It was completely full. There were academics from all over Europe, a few internationally, and it was really the first time people were brought together who were studying yoga from all sorts of different academic, disciplinary angles. So it brought together the indologists with the social scientists, the kind of new modern yoga thing that was going on, which wasn't established at all. And it was really exciting, just the reception we got from it. So the idea was to repeat them, but it turned out that Covid kind of. We didn't have a firm plan. Covid intervened and then we're now trying to do this every two years since the second Krakow conference, which was in 2022.
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B
Yeah, it's fascinating. So certainly in the course of professions or personal memories, a decade is a favorite of time, particularly in terms of how interesting time is these days in the times in which we live. But in the course of fields and disciplines and subfields, it's a relatively new and burgeoning and exciting field of discipline, of yoga studies. And so much has been done. So it's great that there's this conference to sort of crystallize, maybe catalyze the promulgation of ideas and study of yoga. You say a bit about the. This sort of frame of yoga, Darshana, Yoga, Sadhana, and maybe if you don't mind commenting a little bit about. Is it sort of like what. What sorts of papers, if any, would belong at this sort of conference? Or is it anything related to yoga or other particular methods?
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A
No, there's definitely particular methods, and we are very much interested in a rigorous academic study of yoga, but tends to be from the humanities and social sciences and not the biomedical subjects. And in some ways we would like to have more dialogue with biomedical subjects, but it's really about the social history and social context of yoga and not whether it's good for healing, this, that or the other condition. Do you want to add some Raphael?
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C
No, I think you said the most. All papers are welcome to the point that they belong to a certain discipline within the social science and humanities. And so indology. And what is great in this kind of conference is that there's a real dialogue also between social science, humanities and indology. And this is a rare space for that.
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B
Yeah, that's fascinating. So thank you for that clarification of the parameters of who might be interested in presenting and what colleagues might be able to expect. So when we think about the frame of Yoga Darshana and Yoga Sdhana. In terms of Darshana being obviously a classical, how would we say, philosophical worldview or philosophical school, and sadhana often used as sort of a practice or praxis or a spiritual practice. This is just to reiterate for the audience, this is pertaining to academic study thereof as opposed to perspectives from within the Darshana or as opposed to perspectives from within Sadhana.
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A
Could you say that to some extent? I think that. I would say that we do have people exploring darshanas within different traditions. Like particularly there's usually a strong Jain exploration of what do yoga practices and traditions mean specifically within Jainism. So I think to some extent there's kind of a more theological, rigorous theology that can be incorporated or philosophy of these practices. It's not quite, I guess it's not quite. Not that theology nor philosophy are quite the right word. But there is an attempt, particularly in the historical and ancient texts, to try to unpack what the text meant in their time and place and what they. That kind of understanding, how it can enrich our understanding of the breadth and depth of the different ways yoga techniques and practices have been used in different worldviews from different perspectives.
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B
Thank you. So I think we have a sense of the overarching enterprise of the conference at large. And now let's maybe turn to this particular meeting, the fourth international meeting. The theme for the conference is Authenticity, Authority and Adaptation. I happen to love alliteration, maybe a little bit compulsively, because if I'm not mistaken, I think all of my articles have some kind of alliteration in the title. I mean, what can I say? So aside from being a compelling trinity of words, do you want to say a bit about what that frame sort of means for this conference?
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C
Well, I think you'll tell me, Suzanne, if I'm right, but I think what we're trying to do here is to gather as large as possible the public able to present in this conference. So as you can see with these three words, it kind of opens up the discussion to a very large spectrum of problematics in yoga, both in contemporary world, but also in more historical periods. So the, the aim, I think is to. To really give a space where people who are actually now engaging in a specific theme of research that has to do with yoga can come and present what they are doing. Basically more than a restraining, like we would find in other workshop or conference, to refrain to a specific topic, but that we want deepen here, it more opens it. So that's why we each time for each conference we choose, until now, we choose three words to kind of open up the discussion as much as possible. The idea really, I think, behind this conference is to gather as much as possible all the people nowadays that are working in the academia on yoga.
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A
But I think having the kind of alliterative subtitle focuses people when they're doing their abstracts and it helps us arrange panels so that people are able to talk across specific subjects a bit more. So it gives it a little bit of focus. But it's not. There are papers that don't explicitly refer to the alliterative title. And it also, I think, signposts some of the kind of really big questions in social sciences and humanities like authority and authenticity is a perennial issue that kind of bridges the practitioner academic engagement with yoga as a kind of scholarly subject.
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B
Yeah, thank you for commenting that they strike me as compelling prompts and sort of encapsulations of key overarching themes in yoga and yoga studies and also prompts. And it's great to know that they are much like the questions on this podcast. They're not meant to be delimiting in any way. They're meant to be generative. They're meant to be prompts for, you know, sort of coat hangers for various ideas. And it's great to know that contributions have been welcome that may not stringently fall under these categories.
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A
So.
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B
So a couple sort of practical questions, I suppose, although the link to the conference will be there in your podcast notes. But some of you may be, you know, washing dishes or gardening or walking or who knows what, or audio learners. So tell us, when will this take place? Over how many days? Tell us a bit about the details in real time.
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A
Sure.
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C
So this year's conference will happen in Paris in. In organizing a big campus that is situated in the north of Paris, which is fairly new. It was built up three years ago to recruit different universities that have to deal deal with social science. So it's a quite fairly big compass. And the dates of the conference are from the Wednesday 27th of May at midday and. And it will end up on Friday 29th of May in the evening. And we'll end up in the evening with a, you know, Parisian cruise on the Seine altogether to celebrate the end of the conference. And people are most welcome to stay also over the weekends as we'll have a few museum visits in Paris organized on the Saturday. And then there's lots of things to do while you're in Paris. So we encourage people to stay over the weekend if they Wish to. And well, basically the conference will be organized as usual conference. Big conference like this in the academia around different panels that are organizing sessions that are organized in parallel. Because we have 120 speakers this year, it will be dispatched between three or four rooms depending on the days. But there are two main keynote conferences that will happen. The first one will happen on Wednesday afternoon and will be given by Dominique Goodall, who is extremely well known Sanskritist and who will talk to us about how is Kundalini conceived when she first appears in the 7th century Shiva Siddhanta scriptures. So it's a very. I waited for a conference and as you know, Dominique Goodall is the head also of the fao, which is the extreme Oriental school, and he's based in Pondicherry, but will be in Paris for that conference. And then there will be also a second keynote that will be given by our colleagues Sunita Kali and Christian Novetsky, which are both from the University of Washington and that will propose us a really beautiful keynote whose subject is yoga as a theory of sovereignty. So we're very much looking forward to those two, two keynotes and hopefully we'll trying to broadcast them live if the technical apparatus is ready for that time. But we'll let you know for the podcast.
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B
Yeah, that's great. Let me see. Panels on panels on yoga authority and a boat cruise on the sand. And so keynote speakers. I mean, can I come? This sounds fascinating when you say you. You will be broadcasting if the tech cooperates. Just to clarify, do you mean that there is a remote, a remote option for the conference? Is it all in person?
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C
Yeah, thank you very much for this question. No, the conference is definitely only an in person event. This is because it's much easier and also because we've discovered with the experience that also it allows much closer connection between people who are actually in the room. This is. Yeah, this is the experience we've had in the last conferences yet. There's another conference that is organized, was first organized last year, which is fully online so that people can attend also. And maybe Susan will tell us a little bit about that one. But just to finish on that Paris conference, what I suggest is that maybe these two keynotes can be broadcasted live if the tech cooperates till that time. But the rest of the panels will be in person only.
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B
Thank you for the clarification. Suzanne, did you want to come up to any of that?
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A
Yeah, sure. I mean, we did try after Covid, everyone tried hybrid and we came to this conclusion that was better to do one or the other. So the Ari Hansner Institute, in that Chris Miller has been leading, put on our first online only YDYS conference in 2025. And that was a really effective online presentation because they do online teaching there and they were really set up for it. So we don't have a confirmed repeat of that next summer yet, but maybe with popular demand they'd be willing to do that again. I think it might be a good point to bring in the fact that this is really part of a developing international research network and we've got a website, yogaresearch.org and a mailing list. And so we'd really like people who might be interested in organizing conferences in future and joining that research collective who are established dollars of yoga all over the world to get in touch there because it is a, it is a, a community effort and we, we've decided if, if it's going to keep going, we need people to volunteer their own resources and cities to put on the conferences. And we're excited to try to, to put together a kind of international foundation. We're trying to put in the administrative steps, but those are often very time consuming. The organizer of the last conference, Peter Pasternock in Hamburg, is leading those efforts.
- [16:31]
B
Monster Energy. Everybody knows White Monster, Zero Ultra, that's the og it kicked off this whole zero sugar energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian Sunrise and Vice Guava. And they all bring the Monster Energy punch. So if you've been living in the White can branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe and every single one is Zero Sugar Tap the banner to learn more. Yeah, fantastic. So, a couple comments. Yeah, it really is interesting regarding the online versus the hype, the hybrid versus the the in person. And so you know, for whatever reason, all of my, even before the pandemic, the vast majority of my teaching spe, you know, consulting is online, which really facilitates with reach. And yet I find myself traveling maybe three or four times a year to offer in person opportunities for students, for teachings. There's nothing that really while online media is viable, there's nothing that replaces the in person experience. And I like that idea of the. The in person only offers a level of containment. Now if the tech cooperates and you have a colleague who, you know, can't get a visa or just couldn't come or it's not well, but can give the paper, you know, certainly, you know, it seems that, you know, in person, in person only conferences certainly there are cases where technology can be extraordinarily useful to include someone who might otherwise be included. But there is something to be said both about a the power and the reach of online and also the containment of people in a room that's not being sort of broadcasted elsewhere. So it's, you know, we're sort of building the airplane as we're flying in terms of figuring out where the sweet spot is in, especially in this post Covid world. The other piece that I think is really noteworthy is the extent to which this is the result. I'm inferring from what you're saying this is very much the result of scholars in the field rolling up their sleeves and donating a bunch of their time and energy and ingenuity to make this happen. And so for those listening, certainly there may be some among you who be interested in attending the conference, but also there might be some among you who might be able to have a hand in organizing or hosting the conference. So the website that was mentioned that replaced the old website that Suzanne spoke about when she first started talking is yogaresearch.org the link to the specific conference page at that site is posted in the podcast notes, FYI. So is there anything else about the conference or the project or anything at all that you might like to touch on? Well, sure.
- [19:24]
C
I mean, just to say just a few things that I think are exciting for the field is that during this conference will be given two book launches. One is the actual first critical edition, the Hata Pradipika, which is amazing project, you know, that has been edited by James Pallinsson, Jurgen Haneder, Bemitsu Ademoto, Jason Birch and Neil Jaxson. And so that's the first book launch we'll have with a whole panel discussion around that edition, which is a really breakthrough I think in the, in the pictures of Hatha Yoga. And there's also another book launch, but we'll stare surprise because I haven't yet the the right to tell who it is and what the title of the book is. But I can tell you that it's going to be something awesome for the field also. So hopefully when the podcast is online, maybe we'll be able to tell you more about that. And there will be also a film launch by Jason Burch and Jackie, who is also a first shown in public film. I think on the contrary tradition. So that also is weighted for events. And there's plenty also of panels very interesting. So you'll see them on the, on the program, which is not yet finalized but will be on Seeds online. And for example, just to give just a few things. For example, an interesting panel for you on local yogas and not only in France where there's new research that has been going on. And there's also different panels on Mantra Yoga linked to the great ERC that is ongoing. And there's also two other things that I just want to mention. There will be an exhibition that is also met up by the ERC on Mantra and the team from Bahrain Larios in Vienna. And there will be also workshop that will be leaded by Lucy McConstantini. So there's be a few things on the side that will make this event hopefully pretty much enjoyable for all of us.
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B
Fantastic.
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A
Yeah, I guess I would add just on the conference itself, we try to be really welcoming to early career scholars and PhD students. And related to that, the field has grown so much so recently, it's really hard to get an overview of all the scholarship and what the cutting edge research is. So even people like Raphael and I who've. I mean, I think I met Raphael at a conference in Cambridge in the early 2000s, which makes me feel very old.
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C
Absolutely.
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A
But at that point in time you really could read everything that had been written and you just can't anymore. So I think these conferences are really crucial to try to help understand the kind of state of the art. And we really want to encourage younger scholars or people who are just trying to get a sense of what is the state of understanding in the arts and humanities on what yoga is and its role in contemporary society and in different times and places in history. It's a great place to get up to speed.
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B
Yeah. So excellent teasers on the actual content and launches of the conference. And that's a great and important point regarding the welcoming of early career scholars and graduate students in particular, who may be looking for rigorous yet safe spaces to perhaps present and test ideas in collaboration. So that's fantastic.
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C
I just wanted to underline what you just said, which I think is really important, that the fact that it is also in person is also and within an academic place is that it's a safe space to actually discuss ongoing research. And this is, I think very important to underline that there is a need for these spaces where research which is being done can be discussed, can be argued, can be, before it is actually made fully public within the form of either a book, either a keynote conference or either an article. So these spaces are very important and as you said, it's a safe space for early career scholars also to Come in and present their ongoing research. And usually there's a very nice atmosphere in this. I have to stay in these conferences. It's particularly nice and friendly, I would say, of what my experience has been so far.
- [24:00]
B
That's great to know. There are various written conference cultures, for example, for those who do maybe sort of South Asian religions, one might be the American academic religion versus Madison, Wisconsin. Very different fields, very different experiences perhaps. So it's great to know that it's a welcoming, collegial space. And I, you know, even as a graduate student, you know, I often found, and still it's, rather than hammering about whether this idea is perfect or not, I really, I find quite useful a rigorous but safe space where one can say, hey, you know what, you're my guinea pigs. Here's what I'm arguing. I'm testing this idea and I would love some feedback before I publish this. So you're very forthcoming and you have epistemological humility. And just because your work might benefit from critique doesn't mean it's not something or worthy. And so the attitude that, hey, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I suspect about whatever, in my case the Devi Bahati or the Mahabharata, here's my theory on YAS or what have you, and hey, feel free to present some feedback. And so that's a very different experience of scholarship, I think, than sort of being concerned, being concerned that the critique is disastrous versus welcoming the critique because it's well intentioned and it's aimed at building you up rather than tearing you down. So that's a really important point in terms of the culture of the conference.
- [25:34]
C
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I would even underline that usually when you look at the academy from the outside, you feel that it's made of individual works, but actually all these individual works are usually also kind of the product of the collectivity, because usually they're first presented within seminars with students, then maybe within conference, within workshop. And each time they benefit from the, from the feedback from the people attending and then it is, you know, submitted to a journal, then they will have reviews from other people. And actually all the research, serious research, academic work that we're able to read is actually also positively, has positively taken all this input from this vast collective that is not always nameable. It's quite sometimes difficult because there's all these, of course, peer reviews that are anonymous. But I think we have to remember that the academy is made of that and this is why these spaces are Important.
- [26:37]
A
And back to the different cultures, academic cultures. I know a lot of your listeners are in North America, even though you've got a very global audience. And I think that the academic culture of Europe, and thankfully Britain as well, which may or may not be part of Europe, depending on who you talk to, is much more rewards collaboration. We get our grants by collaborating with colleagues and that leads to a very different kind of conference culture, a different kind of conversation. And so part of what a lot of people are doing at a conference like this is working out which people they can work well together with or when they come across that person with a shared idea or perhaps a shared funding application. It's kind of who's on your wavelength and who can you work well with in a friendly way, not a competitive way.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. I was just interviewing a brand new publication from a brilliant open access press with hasp, the Heidelberg Agent Studies Press. And we were talking, it was a new publication, it happened to be about sort of roots, patterns of theologies. It had to be about clusters of temples and what allows them to be clustered. But aside from the actual topic, what we talked about at the outset was the extent to which this publication was one of a number that resulted from this massive collaboration between two European universities from different nations with two different PIs and a half a dozen different profs working. So, so just kind of to, to kind of peek into the collaborative machinery that's required behind the scenes. And I think, yeah, I think certainly elements of that culture map well onto North America and certainly elements of that culture may not. And different spaces, different cultures. Okay, so we've had an interesting and perhaps even far reaching discussion on this particular upcoming conference in Paris and the conference in general. And then life, the life of academia. Anything else about the project conference, the Meaning of Life you might like to touch on.
- [28:46]
A
Yeah, I was thinking about why yoga studies? Because sometimes it feels very limiting and sometimes I, I ask myself, am I still really interested in this after 25 years, 26 years? But I was talking with some friends over the weekend and what came to mind was actually how many events and really crucial issues that looking at the study and practice of yoga in depth can uncover. And specifically I'm thinking about the entanglements of globalization and the way cultural exchange happens and also different ways of knowing the importance of being in a human body. How do we deal with being in a suffering human body? And I think the rigorous study of yoga opens the gate to lots of these really big crisis issues in the world today. In a really interesting way. And it's also such a, a almost ubiquitous practice. A lot of universities started off in the, as like theological institutes with whatever the established church was. And considering the pervasiveness of people engaging in yoga, maybe we're doing something like this kind of theological project of the original universities and trying to figure out the meaning of life and everything through a particular, through a particular window. But I believe very strongly that you get to the universals by doing a rigorous study of a particular. And you can't really say anything general without looking closely at a specific context. And yoga studies is a really interesting place to, to do that kind of exploration.
- [30:28]
B
Yeah, that's a really fascinating point that this principle that transcends so many of our subfields and sort of research niches, the idea that when you have something that is captivating or endlessly enthralling, say in my case the Devian Mahavnya or certainly the Mahabharata, we often come to realize that it's staying power and its intrigue has to do with the extent to which it is speaking to so many aspects of experience and encoding insights or questions about so many vectors at the same time. And so it's Yoga studies. What is that? Well, I don't know, embodiment, authority, transmission, etc, etc, etc, the list goes on and on. There are these 10 really massive timely topics that map that, that, that, that one can glimpse by looking through the Yoga studies people. Right. And similarly, I mean, I mean, probably less well known, the same as when you look into the Mahabharata. They're all kinds of issues, literally even transgender issues, even like, you name it. It's astonishing the number of issues that, that, that, that the textual world is looking at. So, so maybe you know, from far away or like, you know, Yoga said is this thing like, you know, perhaps someone who's in North America, Europe, you know, India is this thing over there. But once you get to India, the cultures from state to state, there's more differentiation than you know, or equal as the sort of the nations of Europe or Britain. And so it's a world, it's an absolute world. So it's not surprising to me that you find this umbrella of Yoga studies endlessly fascinating because it, because it touches on so many different topics and aspects of our life. Any other thoughts, insights?
- [32:38]
C
Yeah, no, yeah, I just wanted to also underline what I find exciting in your studies is that they actually bring back an idea that has been quite old, I think in the sociology of India, for example, where since long, since Dumont Maiden. It's been said that, you know, sociology and Indology were to work together hand in hand. You cannot study contemporary India without knowing about the text, you know, that made this culture. And I think this goes even deeper in yoga studies where we really feel, see this collaboration between people interested in the contemporary practice. This is, you know, the, the sadhana part kind of at the conference, but also Darshana, the text, you know, that are linked to this practice or on which these practices are made in the name of. And so I think in yoga studies we really find this collaboration and we can see it also in the organization in this conference. Because I think it's important that this conference move from one country to another every two years because it also builds up the academia. And I can see organizing it in Paris that we have different centers talking together that usually not talk so much together, but because here, through yoga, they have a common theme through which they can collaborate. So I want to thank, just quickly here, all the different laboratories that are helping us organizing this conference. Not only the Gray, the FAO and the EPHE and the EHSs, who are all collaborating to kind of make this conference possible.
- [34:13]
B
Excellent. Well, thank you both very much for appearing on the podcast today.
- [34:17]
A
I might just add those preliminary plans to have the next YDYS conference in 2028 in Finland, yet to be confirmed, but probably towards the end of May. So if you can't make it this year to Paris, maybe kind of roughly pencil in your diary, Finland in 2028, if you have the time and the means.
- [34:40]
B
Thank you for that important follow up. So, folks, Paris later in this year, 2026 or Finland in 2028. For those listening, we've been speaking with Dr. Suzanne Newcomen, Rafael Wallace on the upcoming 4th International Yoga Darshana Yoga Sadhana Conference, Authenticity Authority Adaptation. The link is in the podcast notes. Until next time, keep well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the past and future of yoga. Bye for now.