Abstract

BASTOS, Cecilia. New Age, body and subjectivity: the performance of yoga and meditation practitioners. Soc. relig. [online]. 2022, vol.32, n.60, pp.7-7. ISSN 0326-9795.

In this article, I discuss the dimensions of spirituality related to the body and subjectivities of yoga and meditation practitioners, both the Vedanta students that I have been researching for a long period of time, as well as a meditation and yoga group which I came across with in a social media platform. I understand that the transformation that their bodies undergo, through physical and mental techniques, involves the adoption of an “Orientalised” lifestyle in their worldview or way of thinking. Practitioners tend to ritualise life as a whole, giving new meanings to their multiple experiences and perceiving themselves as continually connected to the cosmos. Seeking to understand the contradictions in their perceptions of self, I discuss the reflexive processes inherent in these practices in order to understand how practitioners build their identity. I consider their identity as based on an “internal” discipline, a type of renunciation that suggests asceticism; an ascesis that seems to incorporate an “external” model of the yogic tradition, but which is internalised through the performance of disciplines that naturalise certain emotions and behaviours.

Keywords : body; meditation; New Age; subjectivity; yoga.