25. What is the relationship between Yoga and Āyurveda?
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes - Theodora Wildcroft
Suzanne Newcombe [+]
Open University and Inform, King's College London
Suzanne Newcombe is a senior lecturer in religious studies at the Open University and honorary director of the charity Inform, based in theology and religious studies at King’s College London. From 2015 to 2020, she was part of the European Research Council– funded project “Ayuryog: Entangled Histories of Yoga, Ayurveda and Alchemy” in South Asia, which examined the histories of yoga, Ayurveda, and rasaśāstra (Indian alchemy and iatrochemistry) from the tenth century to the present, focusing on the disciplines’ health, rejuvenation, and longevity practices. She is the coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (Routledge, 2021) and the author of Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis (Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2019).
Description
During the 20th century, yoga and āyurveda became closely linked as indigenous systems of promoting health and healing, united in their contrast to colonial “western” medicine. Their association became even more intimate from the 1970s onwards as global countercultures championed both yoga and alternatives to Western medicine.