Yogi Calisthenics 143
kriyās, which suggests that postural practice was involved in the original Indian
forms of Kriya Yoga.
It is thus possible that Ghosh’s tradition is the second half of the lineage cur-
rently represented by the SRF. It remains unclear what precisely happened in 1916.
If Yogananda had indeed been teaching āsanas at the Ranchi school, he would
have begun his own practice at a much earlier age. Given Yogananda’s athleticism
and spiritual promiscuousness, this would not be surprising. Consequently, the
“discovery” of 1916 was likely one of theory rather than of technique. Immersing
himself in European physical culture and its mind cure and will- centric corollar-
ies, Yogananda must have made connections with the logics of energ y underlying
haṭha yoga. The specificities of physical form differed, but the methods and goals
were ultimately comparable if not identical. Because āsanas as yet enjoyed no sig-
nificant popularity and therefore held little cultural capital in the United States,
it is not surprising that Yogananda made no effort to co- opt āsana forms or ter-
minolog y into his Energization Exercises, choosing instead to adapt the physical
conditioning to his Western audiences by relying on more familiar forms.^37 Had
things been otherwise, the SRF might have found itself in a much different posi-
tion in relation to the mainstream of modern American yoga.
Most fascinating, especially given the complete exclusion of this form of
physical practice from the modern canon of āsanas, is the widespread nature of
the Energization Exercises among Yogananda’s contemporaries and competitors.
Although largely ignoring the likely influences on Yogananda’s method, Singleton
has drawn connections between Müller’s System and the teachings of at least two
other “West Coast Yogis,” namely Yogi Wassan and Yogi Hari Rama, whose pub-
lished manuals contain illustrations of nearly identical exercises.^38 One possible
conclusion— generally drawn by Singleton— is that the popularity of Müller’s
regimen and its offshoots, which yielded the “generic, ubiquitous illustrations
of the kind seen in 1920s Western physical culture manuals,”^39 was not lost on
the upstart Yogis of the same time period. However, if we consider the fact that
Yogananda may have been using this same style of physical practice in India
as early as 1916, as well as the fact that the publication of Yogananda’s Yogoda
pamphlets predates Wassan’s and Hari Rama’s versions, it could be argued that
Yogananda had a much more pronounced influence on American physical yoga
practice than previously supposed. There is, of course, no sure way of determining
who copied whom. One possible hint lies in the naming of Wassan’s “Soroda”
system, which after all sounds suspiciously like “Yogoda.” Granted, none of these
systems appears to have achieved sufficient authority to sway what counts as
“yoga” in the twenty- first century. One nevertheless wonders how the landscape
of today’s postural practice might look if Yogananda had chosen to refer to his
Energization Exercises as āsanas.