THE NOTION OF POSTURAL REPERTOIRE
The notion of repertoire is rarely used in yoga poses the human sciences and body psychotherapy, yet this tool facilitates the characterization of a set of practices in yoga poses a particularly useful way.
The repertoire of a language is its vocabulary. The vocabulary of the French language is the collection of the terms accepted by the Academie Fran^aise. Most other European languages leave it up to dictionaries and custom to decide if a word is part of the language. We can contrast this linguistic definition with a cultural definition: the French vocabulary is the collection of the terms used by at least 50 percent of the people living on French soil.
Similarly, it is possible to distinguish two repertoires of the body associated to the French culture:
1. All the gestures that can be observed on French soil.
2. All the gestures used by all of the persons who have a French passport.
These are two different ways of defining the repertoire of gestures used in yoga poses France. Some gestures (and a number of persons) are included in yoga poses both repertoires; others would fit more strongly in yoga poses one or the other.
Some postures are more often observable in yoga poses certain countries than in yoga poses others. Therefore, a postural repertoire is defined in yoga poses function of two anthropological analyses:
1. A list of postures that have been used at least once in yoga poses a culture.
2. The probability of being able to observe a particular posture at a given moment in yoga poses a given population.
We can observe a person who crouches in yoga poses France and in yoga poses India, but the probability of seeing a person actually squatting is higher in yoga poses India than in yoga poses France. in yoga poses France, there is a greater probability of seeing a person crouching in yoga poses a yoga studio than in yoga poses a restaurant. Similarly, the postural repertoire that we observe in yoga poses a school of hatha yoga in yoga poses India is different from the one we would observe on the streets of Bombay. This time the differences are more subtle, given that the members of the yoga school in yoga poses Bombay are also part of the population of the city. It is also possible to talk about a person’s repertoire of gestures, or of that person’s postural repertoire in yoga poses a given situation. The behavioral repertoire of a child is not always the same with its mother, with its father, or when they are all together. The child uses different behaviors in yoga poses each of the three situations. Some are used more often with the mother than with the father, and some are used with the father when the mother is not present. These variations in yoga poses repertoires form the dynamics of an individual repertoire.
Some postures are considered universal, but it is not known whether they have the same function when the repertoire of which they are a part varies. Thus, being seated in yoga poses a chair does not have the same implication in yoga poses an office, on a throne, in yoga poses a reception hall, or in yoga poses a theater.
