1st Edition
Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies
The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary resource, which frames and contextualises the rapidly expanding fields that explore yoga and meditative techniques. The book analyses yoga and meditation studies in a variety of religious, historical and geographical settings. The chapters, authored by an international set of experts, are laid out across five sections:
- Introduction to yoga and meditation studies
- History of yoga and meditation in South Asia
- Doctrinal perspectives: technique and praxis
- Global and regional transmissions
- Disciplinary framings
In addition to up-to-date explorations of the history of yoga and meditation in the Indian subcontinent, new contexts include a case study of yoga and meditation in the contemporary Tibetan diaspora, and unique summaries of historical developments in Japan and Latin America as well as an introduction to the growing academic study of yoga in Korea. Underpinned by critical and theoretical engagement, the volume provides an in-depth guide to the history of yoga and meditation studies and combines the best of established research with attention to emerging directions for future investigation. This handbook will be of interest to multidisciplinary academic audiences from across the humanities, social sciences and sciences.
Chapters 1, 4, 9, 12, and 27 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
PART I: INTRODUCTION TO YOGA AND MEDITATION STUDIES
1. Reframing Yoga and Meditation Studies
Karen O’Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe
2. Decolonising Yoga
Shameem Black
3. Meditation in Contemporary Contexts: Current Discussions
Ville Husgafvel
4. The Scholar-Practitioner of Yoga in the Western Academy
Mark Singleton and Borayin Larios
5. Neoliberal Yoga
Andrea Jain
PART II: HISTORY OF YOGA AND MEDITATION IN SOUTH ASIA
6. How Yoga Became Yoga: Yoga and Meditation up to the Classical Period
Kengo Harimoto
7. Buddhist Meditation in South Asia: An Overview
Florin Deleanu
8. Tantric Transformations of Yoga: Kundalinī in the 9-10th century
Olga Serbaeva
9. Early Hathayoga
Mark Singleton
10. Yoga and Meditation in Modern Esoteric Traditions
Julian Strube
11. Hindu Ascetics and the Political in Contemporary India
Raphaël Voix
12. Yoga and Meditation as a Health Intervention
Suzanne Newcombe
PART III: DOCTRINAL PERSPECTIVES: TECHNIQUE AND PRAXIS
13. Yoga and Meditation in the Jain Tradition
Samani Pratibha Pragya
14. Daoist Meditation
Louis Komjathy
15. Islam, Yoga and Meditation
Patrick D’Silva
16. Sikhi(sm): Yoga and Meditation
Balbinder S. Bhopal
17. Christianity: Classical, Modern, and Post-Modern Forms of Contemplation
Michael Stoeber and Jaegil Lee
18. Secular Discourse as a Legitimating Strategy for Mindfulness Meditation
Masoumeh Rahmani
PART IV: GLOBAL AND REGIONAL TRANSMISSIONS
19. Yoga and Meditation Traditions in Insular Southeast Asia
Andrea Acri
20. Yoga in Tibet
Naomi Worth
21. The Political History of Meditation and Yoga in Japan
Hidehiko Kurita 22.
Yoga and Meditation in Korea
Kwangsoo Park and Younggil Park
23. Yoga in Latin America: A Critical Overview
Adrián Muñoz
24. Anglophone Yoga and Meditation Outside of India
Suzanne Newcombe and Philip Deslippe
25. The Yogic Body in Global Transmission
Sravana Borkataky-Varma
PART V: DISCIPLINARY FRAMINGS
26. Philology and Digital Humanities
Charles Li
27. Observing Yoga: The Use of Ethnography to Develop Yoga Studies
Daniela Bevilacqua
28. Yoga and Philosophy: Ontology, Epistemology, Ethics
Mikel Burley
29. On ‘Meditational Art’ and Mandalas as Objects of Meditation
Gudrun Bühnemann
30. The Psychophysiology of Yoga: Characteristics of the Main Components and Review of Research Studies
Laura Schmalzl, Pamela Jeter and Sat Bir Khalsa
31. Meditation and the Cognitive Sciences
Asaf Federman
32. Inclusive Identities – The Lens of Critical Theory
Karen-Ann Wong
33. Yoga: Between Meditation and Movement
Matylda Ciołkosz
34. Sound and Yoga
Finnian M.M. Gerety
Biography
Suzanne Newcombe is a senior lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, UK, and Honorary Director of Inform, an independent charitable organisation which researches and provides information about minority religions and is based at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London, UK.
Karen O'Brien-Kop is a lecturer in Asian Religions and Ethics at the University of Roehampton, UK.
The Routledge Handbook includes solid introductory essays on the word meditation as it applies to various historic stages of Hindu yoga, Buddhist meditation, and Tantric visualization, as well as within Daoism, Sikhism, and Islam. [...] With this volume, Newcombe and O’Brien-Kop aim to expand the focus of meditation studies to show the diversity of South Asian meditation, including discussions of teachers writing in Telegu, Tamil, Malayalam, and other languages and texts including not only texts about meditation but also songs, poems, letters, and popular devotions. These discussions show the multiplicity of Hindu and South Asian forms of meditation and yoga, engaged in interreligious encounter with Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity. The volume also includes essays on meditation and yoga in other parts of Asia (Korea, Japan, Indonesia) and in Latin America. [...] this handbook will be a valuable classroom resource for starting discussions, footnoting term papers, and formulating research projects. It will familiarize readers with different forms of meditation in diverse contexts—their names and definitions—and serve as an example of quality historical and conceptual scholarship for students. The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies will guide both novice and advanced researchers to the scholarship needed to broach an understanding of the phenomena of meditation. Overall, a helpful reference work. -- Alan Brill, Seton Hall University. Journal of Contemplative Studies