132 Biography of a Yogigoes on to liken these performers to Western “freaks” and invoke other popular
images of Indian Yogis as dirty and misshapen ascetics, whose abilities, while curi-
ous, do not represent anything “which is of the slightest interest to the man or
woman seeking to maintain a healthy, normal, natural body.” Indeed, the author
reveals that he does know the traditional purview of haṭha yoga by specifying that
his is not that kind of book. It would not “tell you how to assume seventy- four
types of postures, nor how to draw linen through the intestines for the purpose
of cleaning them (contrast this with nature’s plans) or how to stop the heart’s
beating, or to perform tricks with your internal apparatus.” It strives only toward
“making man a healthy being— not to make a ‘freak’ of him.”^18
Such protestations took aim at an audience that wanted the Oriental mystique
and authority of yoga without having to embrace the realities of Indian Yogis or
their practices. Their tastes were exotic, but not too exotic. This was an audience
not quite prepared for the Vedanta Society’s hygienic methods— the intestinal
cleansing technique (dhautī) referenced by Ramacharaka is a traditional practice
in premodern haṭha yoga and is explicitly cited in Abhedananda’s book— nor for
the “fantastic contortions” taught by Bernard.
However, in 1920, about a year after the Los Angeles Times made the above
evaluation of Bernard’s operation and a few months before Yogananda would
arrive in Boston, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran an edition of its society section,
penned by a Mme. X, titled “Gymnastics after Dinner Mark True Follower of
Yo g i .”^19 The column, which eventually meanders into topics such as new open air
dance locales, fundraising for the Girl Scouts, and a burdensome tax on antiques,
begins with the following :
Are you a Yogi? Have you a real Yogi mat, thickly wadded, and with big
Thibetan tassels at the corners to hold it down? And do you spread it out in
your drawing room after dinner, and, with your guests, as Yogi as yourself,
do you thereon turn somersaults, bend your back until your head touches
your heels, and indulge in various other supple and symbolic contortions
which manifest the coordination of the body and soul?
If not, you are not the very highest height of fashion in the east. I don’t
mean the remote east, where the Yogis are supposed to hang out, but that
nearer and dearer east, a little beyond the sunrise, whence come so many
of our cheerful follies... . You can, of course, be a quiet yogi, and sit on
the floor, with your head on your knees, your arms clasped around your
shins, your eyes closed, your whole being absorbed in contemplation of
the infinite and eternal. But for a dinner party this is not so social a form
of Yogiism as the other, though after some sumptuous feasts it would be a