International Women's Day and World Book Day all in one week
What a treat! I have some book recommendations for you.
Friends, as you know, I’m running my online course, Women in Yoga: an exploration, starting 18th March. It runs for 4 weeks, on Tuesday evenings, online, 7-9pm UK time. If you can’t make it live, there will be recordings available.
There is one low-cost bursary place left. If you would like to take part and require a low-cost place, please do use it.
Books! Women!
This week I gave a talk to the British Wheel of Yoga in celebration of International Women’s Day, on World Book Day.
If you’re a BWY member you can watch the recording of this session in their online members area, for free.
In honour of both, I’m going to tell you about some of the books I mentioned, that I recommend to you, too. These are four great reads if you’re interested in the history of modern yoga in general, and women in yoga specifically.
The Goddess Pose: the Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West (2015) by Michelle Goldberg. Indra Devi (1899-2002) was born in Latvia (part of the Russian Empire), and lived in India, China, America, and, finally, Argentina. The fact that she lived at this time, in these places, makes her life and this account of it super interesting. She lived through both Russian revolutions and the first part of the book details how she navigated through such tumultuous times as a circus performer and actress.
Significantly, in 1938, Devi was the first foreign woman to be taught yoga by T. Krishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace. When she left after a year, Krishnamacharya asked her to teach yoga where ever she went. In the 1940’s she set up the first yoga studio in Hollywood, LA, and was known for teaching stars like Greta Garbo (maybe even Marilyn Monroe). Later in her life she became a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba and was responsible for his popularity in the west.
If you’re interested in yoga but find the usual history books a bit dry, this book is a refreshing and informative relief. It is a well researched and in-depth account of someone who was, whilst somewhat of a public figure, also quite hard to pin down. Devi changed her name several times over the years and, Goldberg notes, ‘remains elusive in death’. The Goddess Pose is one of those books I recommend again and again.
Madame Blavatsky: the Mother of Modern Spirituality (2012), a biography by Gary Lachman, is, similarly to The Goddess Pose, fascinating and important. Blavatsky (born in Russia) co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 and is part of, and partly responsible for, what Lachman calls our ‘contemporary widespread interest in a direct, immediate knowledge and experience of spiritual reality’. Whilst this experience is not exclusively the concern of modern yoga, it is a large part of it. Some scholar-practitioners like to trace modern yoga’s beginnings to Swami Vivekananda and his appearance at the 1893 Chicago Parliament of World Religions. But I prefer to look to Blavatsky: ‘if Blavatsky’s offering to our modern spiritual consciousness was to be suddenly removed, it would drag along with it practically everything we associate with the very notion of modern spirituality’. This biography of Blavatsky really paints a picture of the spiritual and cultural landscape into which modern yoga emerged in late 19th and early 20th century.
Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis (2019) by Suzanne Newcombe and Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (2010) by Mark Singleton: both texts are more academic than the biographies of Devi and Blavatsky. I read them with a highlighter and pencil in hand. Singleton and Newcombe are yoga studies academics and offer original, historical, insight into modern yoga.
Singleton has two great chapters that detail the relationship between physical practice and gender. In chapter 7 ‘Yoga as Physical Culture II: Harmonial Gymnastics and Esoteric Dance’ Singleton argues that these movement modalities created a cultural space, which yoga moved into, in the early-mid 20th century. And, as you probably know, gymnastics and dance were practices largely for women so, it follows, that yoga also became an activity for women. Of course, it is more complex than my summary. There’s a great picture on page 159, that demonstrates the point, of a women called Adonia Wallace who, in 1935, won ‘Best figure in the British Isles’ and was featured in Health and Strength Magazine (July 1935). The poses she’s pictured doing are, as Singleton states, ‘instantly recognizable as the advanced postures of postural modern yoga’. She is not, in fact, doing yoga, but a form of Swedish gymnastic movements that were linked together in a flowing sequence (sound familiar?).
Newcombe’s book is similarly original and enlightening and demonstrates how, in the UK, yoga was not necessarily popularised by the counter-culture hippies in the 1960s. It was practiced, and taught, largely by women across the UK and it was a relatively un-revolutionary, ordinary part of middle class life thanks things like adult education programmes and yoga on TV, amongst others.
It is a detailed and dense book but worth reading if yoga history is your thing. It reminds me of the time I told my Grandma that I was training to be a yoga teacher (all those years ago) and she proceeded to demonstrate her tree pose, and remarked how she did yoga in the 70s in the village hall. And there was me, thinking I was being rebellious and original.
I’ll talk more about these texts, topics, and individuals, on my online course:
Women in Yoga: an exploration
Early Bird bookings open until Wednesday 12th March 2025: £210 (full price £260). If you have any questions about the course please do get in touch.
In person yoga classes at Calderdale Yoga Centre, Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire
Yin Yoga, Fridays 6-7.15pm
4th April
Future dates monthly, tbc.
I contributed to a book, The Yoga Teacher’s Survival Guide: Social Justice, Science, Politics, and Power, edited by Theo Wildcroft and Harriet McAtee. My chapter is titled ‘Trauma, Yoga, and Spiritual Abuse’. Other contributors include Donna Farhi, Jules Mitchell, and Jivana Heyman. If you’re a yoga teacher, I highly recommend reading. You can buy your copy here from Bookshop.org (aff link).