24. What is the Role of Diet in Yoga?
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes - Theodora Wildcroft
Theodora Wildcroft [+ ]
The Open University
Theodora Wildcroft, PhD, is a researcher investigating the democratization and evolution of physical practice as it moves beyond both traditional and early modern frameworks of relationship. Her PhD was a significant advance in the analysis of contemporary yoga pedagogies. Her research continues to consider the democratization of yoga post- lineage and meaning making in grassroots communities of practice. She is an associate lecturer at the Open University, UK; a former coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies; an editor of the BASR Bulletin; an honorary member of the British Wheel of Yoga; a member of the IAYT; and a continuing professional development trainer and consultant for Yoga Alliance (US). Her monograph Post- Lineage Yoga: From Guru to #MeToo is available from Equinox Publishing Ltd. (2020).
Barbora Sojková [+ ]
University of Oxford
Barbora Sojková holds a DPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Sanskrit) from the University of Oxford where her research focused on human-animal relationships in Vedic Sanskrit literature. She works as an academic librarian at the All Souls College, Oxford, and as a Sanskrit cataloguer at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. She is a certified yoga teacher and trainer focusing on history and philosophy of yoga.
Description
Premodern yoga treats diet as of ritual, ethical and practical importance, but although most practitioners would have been lacto-vegetarian in more recent times, this is not universal. In modern times, the diet recommended to and by yoga practitioners has a similar range and diversity, but interestingly, the reasoning for these dietary practices has changed.