The Making of Modern Yoga

Mark Singleton · Cross-Cultural Synthesis (2010)

First attested

2010Published in 2010 by Oxford University Press, fundamentally shifting academic yoga studies.

The scholarly revelation that modern postural yoga is a 20th-century transnational synthesis.

In Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice (2010), scholar Mark Singleton showed that the standing asana sequences that define global modern yoga are not unbroken ancient Vedic practices, but a creative early-20th-century synthesis. Developed under Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV at the Mysore Palace by T. Krishnamacharya, traditional Hatha breathwork was fused with European physical culture (including Swedish gymnastics and British military drills) to promote Indian anticolonial physical strength.