Introduction 7
of physical fitness and the modern pre- occupation with sculpted bodies perform-
ing g ymnastic exercises cannot be traced back further than a couple of centuries?
The answer may very well lie in the identity of the Yogi— or rather in the shifts of
his identity that have allowed one kind of yoga to gradually morph into another.
After all, modern postural yoga in not simply calisthenics. Or, if it is, it is
often not calisthenics for their own sake. As Jain has demonstrated, postural yoga
constitutes a body of religious practice in its own right.^10 The crucial shift occurs
when the divinization of the body, such as it may be in a secularized context, is
taken from the sphere of culturally specific esotericism and transformed into a
universal human potential. Indeed, examining Yogis rather than yoga in this early
period forms the crucial link between modern postural yoga and its diverse pre-
modern heritage.
Interestingly, while the term “yoga” is recognizable to most Americans today,
this would not have been the case at the turn of the century. On the other hand,
as we saw earlier, “Yogi” was firmly associated with certain images and cultural
stereotypes of exotic Oriental persons. For this reason, though we do find refer-
ences to yoga in contemporary sources, the term is not imbued with the same
cultural cachet or meaning that it carries today. Much more frequent are refer-
ences to “yogi schools,” “yogi philosophy,” and even “yogi g ymnastics,” none of
which necessarily share a consistent set of characteristics other than their origin in
the teachings of these mysterious visitors from the mystical Orient. In this sense,
modern forms of yoga practice emerge out of the intellectual work undertaken
by early transnational Yogis to convert the racialized conception of the Oriental
Yogi— together with his mystical philosophy and seemingly magical powers—
into a universalized understanding of human psycho- somatic development and
spiritual realization. In other words, the de- Orientalization of the Yogi, who is
first and foremost the man with superpowers, brings about the universalization
of the potentially superhuman.
Of course, to accept this argument one must first accept this definition of the
Yogi. As White and Pinch have demonstrated, superhuman power— sometimes
worldly, sometimes cosmic— can be seen as a constant throughout the Yogi’s
South Asian history. However, throughout this period the Yogi is seen as funda-
mentally Other. He is the lone ascetic, the tantric practitioner under the cover of
night, the mercenary, the bogeyman used to scare small children. Socially speak-
ing, Indian Yogis have always existed on the margins. Epistemologically speak-
ing, this liminality is mirrored in their perceived identity. As Stuart Sarbacker
has argued:
This teleolog y [of worldly power] can be termed as numinous, mean-
ing that it is a deliberate cultivation of powers and capacities that are