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The Subtle Body

By Stefanie Syman

Product Image: The Subtle Body

The Subtle Body

Only 1 item left in stock
Description
In The Subtle Body, Stefanie Syman tells the surprising story of yoga's transformation from a centuries-old spiritual discipline to a multibillion-dollar American industry. Yoga's history in America is longer and richer than even its most devoted practitioners realize. It was present in Emerson's New England, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was fashionable among the leisure class. And yet when Americans first learned about yoga, what they learned was that it was a dangerous, alien practice that would corrupt body and soul. A century later, you can find yoga in gyms, malls, and even hospitals, and the arrival of a yoga studio in a neighborhood is a signal of cosmopolitanism. How did it happen? It did so, Stefanie Syman explains, through a succession of charismatic yoga teachers, who risked charges of charlatanism as they promoted yoga in America, and through generations of yoga students, who were deemed unbalanced or even insane for their efforts. The Subtle Body tells the stories of these people, including Henry David Thoreau, Pierre A. Bernard, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Christopher Isherwood, Sally Kempton, and Indra Devi. From New England, the book moves to New York City and its new suburbs between the wars, to colonial India, to postwar Los Angeles, to Haight-Ashbury in its heyday, and back to New York City post-9/11. In vivid chapters, it takes in celebrities from Gloria Swanson and George Harrison to Christy Turlington and Madonna. And it offers a fresh view of American society, showing how a seemingly arcane and foreign practice is as deeply rooted here as baseball or ballet. This epic account of yoga's rise is absorbing and often inspiring-a major contribution to our understanding of our society.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
illustrated
Number of Pages:
408
Release Date:
2011-05-24
Publication Date:
2011-05-24
Publisher:
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3PL
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0374532842
ISBN13:
9780374532840
Weight:
660 g
Height:
152 cm
Width:
229 cm
Thickness:
24 cm

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Very good
Almost no signs of wear. Book pages have no markings, accessories are intact and all other media are in good condition.
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