Mark Singleton (yoga scholar) explained

Mark Singleton
Nationality:British
Thesis Title:The Body at the Centre: Contexts of Postural Yoga in the Modern Age
Thesis Year:2007
Known For:Yoga Body (2010), thesis: modern yoga as exercise was shaped in 20th century
Occupation:Yoga scholar

Mark Singleton is a scholar and practitioner of yoga. He studied yoga intensively in India, and became a qualified yoga teacher, until returning to England to study divinity and research the origins of modern postural yoga. His doctoral dissertation, which argued that posture-based forms of yoga represent a radical break from haṭha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on āsanas, was later published in book form as the widely-read Yoga Body.

Singleton was a senior research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, working on the European Research Council-funded Hatha Yoga Project. As an editor of scholarly texts and essays on yoga, his works have been widely praised and well received by scholars. Gurus of Modern Yoga and Roots of Yoga are both considered important contributions to the field of yoga.

Education and career

Practitioner

Singleton spent three years in India in the 1990s learning yoga intensively, both physically and mentally, becoming a qualified teacher of Iyengar Yoga and Satyananda Yoga. He said that the classes and workshops that he took were aimed mostly at "Western yoga pilgrims", and that authentic, traditional Indian yoga was strikingly difficult to find.[1] He continued his intensive yoga practice with two and a half hours early each morning and teaching or taking classes in the evenings, but focused his days on studying the history and philosophy of yoga. His studies caused him what he referred to as "something like a crisis of faith",[1] namely, the discovery that modern āsana-based yoga had much more recent origins than was claimed for it.

Scholar

Returning to England, he attended Cambridge University, working as a research assistant at the Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic Research from 2002-2003, and earning his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in divinity in 2007 under the supervision of Elizabeth De Michelis.[2] [3] He continued his study of Sanskrit to enable him to access medieval haṭha yoga texts.[4]

From 2006 to 2013 he taught at St John's College, Santa Fe.[5] Meanwhile, he served as consultant for the Smithsonian exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, contributing also to the exhibition catalogue.[6]

After leaving the St John's College faculty, he went on to serve under James Mallinson, a renowned indologist, as a senior research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from 2015 to 2020. At SOAS, he worked on the European Research Council-funded Hatha Yoga Project, researching and translating yoga practice texts from Sanskrit and other languages.[7] At the same time, he served as the co-chair for the American Academy of Religions group studying yoga in theory and practice.[8]

Major works and reception

In 2009, Singleton began editing scholarly collections on yoga. His works have been considered valuable in the field of yoga. One of his books, Yoga Body, has gained a wider readership despite its scholarly approach, attracting both praise and criticism.

Yoga in the Modern World

The researcher Suzanne Newcombe, reviewing the 2009 collection Yoga in the Modern World edited by Singleton and Jean Byrne, notes that several of the chapters "successfully combine emic experience (seen from inside) with an etic analysis. Burley and Liberman openly declare that, in addition to being established scholars, they also teach forms of modern yoga. For Nevrin, Smith, and Strauss, experiencing the practice of yoga is an inherent part of a rigorous anthropological understanding that acknowledges embodied experience."[9] In Newcombe's view, "rigorous academic reflection" on modern yoga is an "interesting" development, making the book a valuable overview of the field.[9]

Yoga Body

See main article: Yoga Body.

In 2010 Singleton published a revised version of his PhD thesis on yoga as exercise, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice; it argues that certain modern forms of yoga represent a radical reworking of the haṭha yoga tradition in both content (dropping most haṭha practices other than āsanas) and purpose (exercise rather than mokṣa, spiritual liberation), and that the incorporation of many standing āsanas into popular yoga reflects the rise of systems of modern physical culture (such as Niels Bukh's Primitive Gymnastics) widespread in India during the 20th century. He noted that āsanas were brought to the Western world in the early 20th century by Yogendra; postural yoga was developed further by Kuvalayananda, Vishnudevananda, and by Krishnamacharya and his pupils Indra Devi, B. K. S. Iyengar, and K. Pattabhi Jois.[10] [11]

Singleton notes that while some āsanas are undoubtedly ancient, traditional sources such as Patanjali's Yoga Sutras say nothing of the best-known modern yoga poses like downward dog.[12] Krishnamacharya's method, Singleton wrote, was "a synthesis of several extant methods of physical training that (prior to this period) would have fallen well outside any definition of yoga," making use of haṭha yoga, the British army's calisthenic exercises, and Niels Bukh's primary or primitive gymnastics from Denmark.[13] [14]

The book was widely read both by scholars and by practitioners, arousing sometimes strong reactions. The book was attacked from two sides: saffronising Hindu nationalists wanting to reclaim yoga as a single thing, distinctively Indian; and modern global yoga marketing wanting to wrap its product "in the mantle of antiquity" to maximise sales. In 2011, Mallinson pointed out that it had become a catalyst in arguments over "who owns yoga", despite the deep antisectarianism in the medieval texts; and that Yoga Body reiterated that yoga was always meant to be "a practical method of achieving liberation that was open to all, irrespective of philosophy or theology". Mallinson questioned Singleton's view that modern postural yoga was only lightly related to medieval haṭha yoga, giving examples of asanas with definite medieval origins.[15]

Harold Coward, reviewing Yoga Body for the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, admired its analysis and accessibility.[16] The yoga instructor Timothy Burgin, reviewing it for Yoga Basics, calls it "fascinating and remarkable", both well-documented and likely to "ruffle a few yogis' feathers".[17] The yoga teacher Jill Miller, reviewing the book on Gaiam, observes that the book agreed with the intuition that many āsanas were similar to those in martial arts, and that authenticity in yoga was not what it seemed.[18] The author Matthew Remski, writing in Yoga International, called the publication "a watershed moment in the history of global asana culture." He agrees that the book is "uncomfortable", gently deconstructing terms like "original" and "authentic", pointing instead to the student-teacher relationship. He finds the book strongly "yogic", weaving together "the cultural and the personal".[19]

He has written about his work in The New York Times and the Yoga Journal, including a tribute to B. K. S. Iyengar, an Indian yoga teacher who brought yoga as exercise to Westerners.[20]

Gurus of Modern Yoga

See main article: Gurus of Modern Yoga.

In 2014, Singleton and Ellen Goldberg edited the collection Gurus of Modern Yoga. Scholars reviewing the book found it an important and substantial addition, even "outstanding",[21] to the often limited scholarly analysis of modern yoga gurus, especially of female leaders, though some regretted the lack of a chapter comparing existing work, or an overall conclusion."[22] She finds its inclusion of women gurus "an important contribution".[22] [23] [24] [25] [26]

Roots of Yoga

See main article: Roots of Yoga.

While working at SOAS, he co-authored Roots of Yoga with Mallinson. This is a collection of mostly original translations of over one hundred yoga texts, mainly from Sanskrit but with texts from The sources were written in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Arabic, Persian, Bengali, Tamil, Pali, Kashmiri, Old Marathi, Avadhi, and Braj Bhasha, the last two being early forms of Hindi. Its eleven themed chapters cover many of the traditional practices of yoga (such as āsana, prāṇāyāma, mudrā, meditation, and mantra) as well as essential contexts for practising yoga (such as preliminaries to yoga practice, the yogic body, siddhi or special powers, and mokṣa, liberation). The book, published in 2017, has a main introduction summarizing the history of yoga and yoga scholarship, while each chapter has its own shorter contextual introduction and notes.

Scholars reviewing Roots of Yoga universally welcomed the wealth of sources, from ancient times to the 19th century, made available for the first time in English in the book, and admired the editors' lack of partisanship. Reviewers noted that the collection would be useful to scholars, yoga teachers, and practitioners. They admired the concise and erudite introduction to the texts, and that it would quickly become a classic.[27] [28] [29] [30] [31]

Other works

Articles

Book chapters

Translations

Books

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Singleton . Mark . 4 February 2011 . The Ancient & Modern Roots of Yoga . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20170425062621/https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/yoga-s-greater-truth . 25 April 2017 . Yoga Journal.
  2. Web site: Sharing Knowledge . 25 February 2022.
  3. Web site: Dr Mark Singleton: Staff: SOAS University of London . 27 February 2022 . SOAS . https://web.archive.org/web/20220227071807/https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff110973.php . 27 February 2022 . live.
  4. Singleton . Mark . Preface to the Serbian edition of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice Mark Singleton Translated by Nikola Pešić (Belgrade: Neopress Publishing, 2015) . Academia.edu . 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220217034954/https://www.academia.edu/17411279/Preface_to_the_2016_Serbian_edition_of_Yoga_Body_The_Origins_of_Modern_Posture_Practice_ . 17 February 2022 . live.
  5. Web site: Why Review Standards? . Yoga Alliance Standards Review Project . 8 February 2019. 7 November 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210813230644/https://yastandards.com/mark-singleton/ . 13 August 2021 . live .
  6. Web site: Yoga: The Art of Transformation . . 8 February 2019 . 2013 . https://web.archive.org/web/20170505212803/https://www.si.edu/exhibitions/yoga-the-art-of-transformation-4911 . 5 May 2017 . live.
  7. Web site: The Hatha Yoga Project . SOAS . 17 May 2019.
  8. Web site: Mark Singleton . Yoga Campus . https://web.archive.org/web/20211215173738/http://hyp.soas.ac.uk/ . 15 December 2021 . live .
  9. Newcombe . Suzanne . Suzanne Newcombe . Review of 'Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives' Mark Singleton & Jean Byrne, eds. . The Journal of Contemporary Religion . 2009 . 24 . 3 . 368–370 .
  10. Book: Shearer, Alistair . The Story of Yoga : from Ancient India to the Modern West . The Story of Yoga . . 2020 . 978-1-78738-192-6 . 251–253 . 1089012347.
  11. Book: Syman, Stefanie . The Subtle Body: the Story of Yoga in America . The Subtle Body . . 2010 . 978-0-374-53284-0 . 119-120, 182, 185, 238, 272 . 456171421.
  12. News: Appiah . Kwame Anthony . 4 September 2018 . From Yoga to Rap, Cultural Borrowing is Great; The Problem is Disrespect . . 27 February 2022.
  13. Goldberg . Michelle . 23 August 2014 . Iyengar and the Invention of Yoga . . 20 November 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220115065847/https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/iyengar-invention-yoga . 15 January 2022 . live.
  14. Web site: 21 June 2020 . Yoga in the West . 27 February 2022 . . https://web.archive.org/web/20220227070331/https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/yoga-in-the-west/12359840 . 27 February 2022 . live .
  15. Mallinson . James . James Mallinson (author) . 9 December 2011 . A Response to Mark Singleton's Yoga Body by James Mallinson . 18 May 2019 . Academia.edu . This is a revised version of a paper given at the American Academy of Religions conference in San Francisco on 19 November 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220203180204/https://www.academia.edu/1146607/A_Response_to_Mark_Singletons_Yoga_Body . 3 February 2022 . live.
  16. Coward . Harold . Book Review: "Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice" . Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies . January 2010 . 23 . 62–65 . 10.7825/2164-6279.1469 . free .
  17. Web site: Burgin . Timothy . 28 June 2010 . Yoga Body by Mark Singleton . 8 February 2019 . Yoga Basics.
  18. Web site: Miller . Jill . Are Yoga Poses Ancient History? . Gaiam . 8 February 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20211005163741/https://www.gaiam.com/blogs/discover/are-yoga-poses-ancient-history . 5 October 2021 . live .
  19. Web site: Remski . Matthew . Matthew Remski . Mark Singleton Responds to Critics Who Didn't Want to Understand His Book . Matthew Remski . 16 February 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220217033917/http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/mark-singleton-responds-to-critics-who-didnt-want-to-understand-his-book/ . 17 February 2022 . live.
  20. News: Singleton . Mark . 6 October 2014 . Honoring B.K.S. Iyengar: Yoga Luminary . 8 February 2019 . . https://web.archive.org/web/20220110045052/https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/honoring-b-k-s-iyengar-father-modern-yoga/ . 10 January 2022 . live.
  21. 27 February 2014 . Religious Studies Review . 40 . 1 . 65–67 . 10.1111/rsr.12118 . 0319-485X . Religious Studies Review .
  22. Perkins . Miriam Y. . Gurus of Modern Yoga ed. by Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg (review) . Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality . 2015 . 15 . 1 . 143–145 . 10.1353/scs.2015.0023. 143327933 .
  23. Jacobsen . Knut A. . Gurus of Modern Yoga, written by Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg . Numen . Brill . 62 . 5–6 . 7 September 2015 . 0029-5973 . 10.1163/15685276-12341401 . 673–676.
  24. Hauser . Beatrix . "Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg, eds., Gurus of Modern Yoga" . Asian Ethnology . 2016 . 75 . 1 . 227 . 10.18874/ae.75.1.13 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210816102356/https://bibliographie.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10900/114373/Hauser_037.pdf . 16 August 2021 . live.
  25. Pingatore . Kimberley . Gurus of Modern Yoga, edited by Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, v + 386 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-993870-4, US$99.00 (Hardcover); ISBN 978-0-19-993872-8, US$29.95 (Paperback) . Religion . Informa UK . 46 . 1 . 11 September 2015 . 0048-721X . 10.1080/0048721x.2015.1076301 . 124–127. 146932091 .
  26. Deslippe . Philip . Mythical Posturing: Hagiography, History, and Scholarly Judgment in Recent Works on Modern Yoga and Hinduism in America . . 2018 . 21 . 3 . 103–109. 10.1525/nr.2018.21.3.103 .
  27. Web site: Sims . Neil . Book Review of Roots of Yoga, Translated and Edited by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton . The Indian Philosophy Blog . 8 February 2019 . 30 December 2017.
  28. Web site: Remski . Matthew . Matthew Remski . 10 Things We Didn't Know About Yoga Until This New Must-Read Dropped . 12 April 2017 . . 2019-05-21 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200118101239/https://indianphilosophyblog.org/2017/12/30/book-review-of-roots-of-yoga-translated-and-edited-by-james-mallinson-and-mark-singleton-reviewed-by-neil-sims/ . 18 January 2020 . live.
  29. Munoz . Adrian . James Mallinson y Mark Singleton (trad., ed. e introd.), Roots of Yoga, Londres, Penguin Books, 2017, 540 pp. . Estudios de Asia y África . 2018 . 53 . 1 . 230–232 . es. 10.24201/eaa.v53i1.2337 . free.
  30. Web site: Rosen . Richard . Richard Rosen (yoga teacher) . The Roots of Yoga . 15 May 2017 . You and the Mat . 26 April 2019.
  31. Web site: Roots of Yoga PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books . . 2019-05-21.

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