The emergence of popular yoga as a cultural field
A crucial part of being marginalised is that you cannot or will not take a normal 9 to 5 job. It is interesting that many in the counter-cultures and sub-culture milieu today have turned their oriental practice’ into a way of living.59 They turned their acquired amateur skills in meditation, Tai-chi, chakra massage, Tantric healing and yoga into a profession. Most often these yoga instructors became self-employed or free-lancers offering classes, retreats and courses. They made a profession out of their difference by writing books and offering asana, meditation and relaxing breathing classes to the public. Seen from a sociological point of view this entrepreneurial inventiveness has significant implications. The yoga sign was now signified as accepted knowledge and this knowledge-skill had become a product. Yoga had entered the market and this catapulted the yoga sign into a dynamic process of changes. It had to meet the demands of the consumers of the market – the yoga sympathisers.
Furthermore it established a cultural field of popular yoga. Cultural fields are cultural arenas dominated by know-how specialists. Well-known examples of cultural fields are medicine, law, literature and sport. Within a field recognised experts define, categorise, accumulate and transact knowledge and skills, which are specific to and owned by them; in our case, Yoga knowledge as symbolic capital. In pre-modern India yoga culture was often a subsystem of the cultural field of liberation . However within the powerful forces of modernity, the yoga sign would become totally re-configured and charged with the symbolic values of modernity. We have already seen how the habitus of spiritualism and romanticism formed the yoga sign and its symbolic-value.
This pose safely stretches the deep hip muscles at the back Monkey Pose Yoga of the pelvis that may restrict movement. Purpose: To strengthen the back and facilitate fuller Monkey Pose Yoga use of the legs to provide space in the sacroiliac area. Contraindications: Fused ankylosing spondylitis, Chiari malformations, bridging spondylitis, cervical spinal stenosis.
Props: A yoga mat, a blanket, and a belt. Avoiding pitfalls: Belt your legs so they are about hip-width apart, not wider or narrower than that. Keep your shoulders back and do not overuse your arms. If you get up into the pose and find your shoulders around your ears and your chest collapsed, come down and start over. This pose is about expanding the inside of you, and supporting yourself with the muscles of your spine.
