Encountering Satyananda Yoga in Australia and India : reflections of a complex, postcolonial, gendered subject

The fascinating world of Satyananda Yoga opened up for me during a weekend retreat at a time of great upheaval in my life, when I was feeling personally and culturally isolated after migrating from England to Australia. Led by an Indian guru, Swami Niranjanananda of the ancient Saraswati lineage, Satyananda Yoga offers a well-organised, comprehensive, holistic framework for wellbeing and the exploration of the self. I was attracted to Satyananda Yoga not only because of its Indian lineage, but because I needed healing; yet the fact that Satyananda Yoga is an Indian tradition was never irrelevant for me, and the object of my research – Satyananda Yoga – turned out to be as complex as I who was seeking it. This research aims to make sense of my encounter as a complex, postcolonial, gendered subject with an Indian spiritual tradition, Satyananda Yoga. My encounter with Satyananda Yoga took place in Australia and India between March 2003 and March 2008. As a person of Indian origin, I considered yoga to be part of my cultural heritage. My experiences of racism have however been such that I often felt inhibited in accepting the elements of yoga, such as mantra and bhakti (the channelling of the intellect and emotions for spiritual realisation), which were an integral part of my upbringing. My experiences of racism also led me to initial formulations of my research in binary terms, and I approached Satyananda Yoga as an heir and a stranger. As the heir, I felt honoured and I sought to claim what I considered to be rightfully mine. As a stranger, I felt alienated, hurt and angry that so much of my cultural heritage had been denied to me through my experiences of the racist educational systems and Eurocentric cultures which have surrounded me for so much of my life. This inadequate dichotomy was challenged by my interactions with other practitioners and initiates of Satyananda Yoga, complicating my encounter with Satyananda Yoga still further. Within the context of the vigorous growth and blossoming of Satyananda Yoga across the globe, I examine the adoption of Satyananda Yoga by people from many diverse cultural, ideological and religious backgrounds. In a Eurocentric world, with historical and present-day racist and xenophobic structures and institutions, I question how it is possible for numerous forms of yoga, including Satyananda Yoga, to hold such a significant global position. How has it been possible for thousands of people to go against the tide of Western cultural imperialism in order to seek guidance from the philosophical tradition of the East? This thesis is built around a story, my story, embedded in a stream of reflections. It has been important, however, not to merge or blur my personal narratives and the academic discourses, which are two kinds of reflections. To capture this, throughout the thesis I present my story as such in italics, to signal to the reader the different states of this part of the text, a self immersed in the story, mindful of the demands for reflexivity, honesty and resonance that such a narration places upon the researcher. Utilising autobiographical and ethnographic research methods, and anthropological, yogic, postcolonial and feminist analysis, I examine my postcolonial encounter with Satyananda Yoga in Australia and then in India, as well as the encounters of other initiates of Satyananda Yoga with this Indian spiritual tradition, both within and across different cultural contexts. My encounter with Satyananda Yoga has involved undertaking the process of learning Satyananda Yoga and its regular practice, undertaking initiation, carrying out pilgrimages to Satyananda sites in Australia and in India, regular spiritual practices (sadhana) and three times attending the Sat Chandi Mah Yajña (an esoteric tantric practice in honour of Devi Ma, the cosmic mother) in India. I draw on Victor Turner’s elucidations of liminality and communitas in order to scrutinise the sacred dimension of my engagement with Satyananda Yoga, and Homi Bhabha’s presentation of the political dimension of liminality, the ‘third space of enunciation’, to examine cross-cultural issues that also emerged within this encounter. The migration of my family from England to Australia, which was problematic for me in many ways, finally enhanced my yogic training by taking me to levels that I might not have otherwise reached. Satyananda Yoga offered me a space for healing during this crisis, as well as a structure for recovery from multiple past traumas, including the undermining impact of colonialism. My explorations with fellow Satyananda Yoga students, teachers and initiates extended my education and helped me to examine yoga from vantage points that I might not have ordinarily considered. Finally, being open to the liminal spaces in my diaspora and engaging in a reflexive process in order to offer multiple perspectives – although sometimes contradictory – on what I have learned, observed and integrated into my life has made it possible for me to keep my multiple selves alive