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The religious, social and cultural contexts of yoga

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This volume explores aspects of yoga over a period of about 2500 years. In its first part, it investigates facets of the South Asian and Tibetan traditions of yoga, such as the evolution of posture practice, the relationship between yoga and sex, yoga in the theistic context, the influence of Buddhism on early yoga, and the encounter of Islam with classical yoga. The second part addresses aspects of modern globalised yoga and its historical formation, as for example the emergence of yoga in Viennese occultism, the integration of yoga and nature cure in modern India, the eventisation of yoga in a global setting, and the development of Pata¤jali´s iconography. In keeping with the current trend in yoga studies, the emphasis of the volume is on the practice of yoga and its theoretical underpinnings.

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Baier, Karl
Prof Dr Karl Baier is Head of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna. His research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century alternative religion, occultism and modern yoga.

Preisendanz, Karin
Prof Dr Karin Preisendanz holds the Chair of Indology at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies of the University of Vienna, Austria, and specialises in the history of South Asian philosophy and classical Ayurveda.

Maas, Philipp André
Dr Philipp A. Maas is Research Associate at the Institute for Indology and Central Asian Studies, University of Leipzig. His work is focused on Pata¤jali´s Yoga in premodern South Asia and in modern academic research, on Indian philosophy and on Ayurveda.

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