Yogi Calisthenics 139
Yogananda was familiar with Müller’s work, and possibly modeled many of the
Energization Exercises on its anatomical forms, Mit System is most likely not the
“book about muscle- building through mental power” to which Satyananda refers.
It would not be unreasonable to assume that Yogananda owned more than a
single book. Singleton has suggested that the Yogoda system owes much to New
Thought, specifically the work of Jules Payot and Frank Channing Haddock.^31
Although Yogananda must certainly have adopted much from New Thought
during his lengthy sojourn in the United States, Satyananda’s account confirms
that he was in fact implementing the principles of mental body- building in India
before he was immersed in the New Thought scene in any significant way, as such
materials were at this time only beginning to filter into India. Haddock’s Power of
the Will was first published in 1907, so it is not impossible that Yogananda might
have secured a copy.
Haddock’s work does include a few lightly calisthenic exercises that resemble
some of the leg and arm swinging that one finds in Müller’s book. However, the
similarities between the exercises prescribed by Yogananda and by Müller are far
more numerous, and thus it makes little sense to assume that Yogananda would
have appropriated them from Haddock rather than from the original source. In
Figure 4.2 Yogananda’s “Exercise for Waist” from his Yogoda or Tissue- Will System of
Physical Perfection (1925)