12. Does Yoga Liberate or Constrain?
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes - Theodora Wildcroft
Ruth Westoby [+]
SOAS, University of London
Ruth Westoby is a doctoral candidate at SOAS University of London and she teaches for
SOAS YogaStudies Online. Ruth’s thesis is a historical textual study of the yoga body in
Sanskrit sources on early haṭhayoga identifying the functional paradigms of the body that
explain how yoga works. As a practitioner Ruth has collaborated on the reconstruction of
historical textual sequences of postures, contributing to the development of a new
methodology: embodied philology. Ruth’s 2021 article, ‘Raising rajas in haṭha yoga and
beyond’, appears in Religions of South Asia, also published by Equinox. Her research interests include yoga, the body, gender, textual history and critical theory.
Description
In the premodern period yoga is freedom (mokṣa) from the causal doctrine of retributive reaction (karma), the round of repeated death and birth (saṃsāra) and suffering (duḥkha). In modern contexts, yoga is presented, and experienced, as release from ill-health. Paradoxically however the opposite view is also valid: becoming liberated may entail constraining behaviours and practices.