Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Bending And Binding: What Builds And Bounds The Ashtanga Yoga Community, Rosealie P. Lynch

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This thesis is an examination of how Ashtanga practitioners engage one another over issues of authority and community boundaries as they define and defend their commitment to a shared tradition. My analysis is grounded in ethnographic research from interviews with 10 Ashtanga yoga practitioners and in multi-sited participant observation conducted in Mysore, India at the Sri. K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute (KPJAYI) and in various Ashtanga yoga practice settings in northwestern Virginia, U.S.A. In each chapter, I draw on practitioners’ practice narratives to analyze the relationship of an individual practitioner to her community and the importance of membership in …