Content:
PART 1. INTRODUCTION AND ORIENTATION --
1. Historicizing yoga : the life and times of liberated souls --
2. Yoga and the supramental being : materialism, metaphysics, and social reality --
PART 2. YOGA'S MODERN HISTORY AND PRACTICE --
3. Swami Kuvalayananda : science, yoga, and global modernity --
4. Birth of the anti-clinic : naturopathic yoga in a post-Gandhian, postcolonial state --
5. Dr. Karandikar, Dr. Pal, and the RSS : purification, subtle gymnastics, and man making --
PART 3. CONCLUSION --
6. Auto-urine therapy --
the elixir of life : yoga, Ayurveda, and self-perfection --
7. Mimetic skepticism and yoga : moving beyond the problem of culture and relativism --
Notes --
Glossary --
References --
Index.

Challenges the popular view that yoga is timeless and unchanging by examining the history of yoga, focusing on its emergence in modern India and its dramatically changing form and significance in the twentieth century. Alter argues that yoga's transformation into a popular activity idolized for its health value is based on modern ideas about science and medicine. He centers his analysis on an interpretation of the seminal work of Swami Kuvalayananda, one of the chief architects of the Yoga Renaissance in the early twentieth century. From this point of orientation Alter explores current interpretations of yoga and considers how practitioners of yogic medicine and fitness combine the ideas of biology, physiology, and anatomy with those of metaphysics, transcendence, and magical power. --From publisher description.