Ch7. “You are not the Body”: (Re)Interpreting the Body in and through Integral Yoga
Erin F. Johnston is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University, where she leads qualitative data collection and analysis for the Clergy Health Initiative’s “Seminary to Early Ministry (SEM)” study, the first longitudinal study of divinity school students. Johnston’s research interests lie at the intersection of cultural sociology, social psychology, and the study of religion and education in the US context. She has written about conversion narratives among contemporary Pagans (Sociological Forum, 2013), the aspirational nature of identity in spiritual communities (Religions, 2016), the social dynamics of failure and persistence in spiritual disciplines (Qualitative Sociology, 2017),and emotion management through yoga and prayer (Symbolic Interaction, 2021).
Related
Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and enactive immersion, this chapter argues that “becoming” an Integral Yoga practitioner is intimately bound up with a cognitive and perceptual reframing of the body—one marked by the cultivation of a sense of separation or “bodily detachment.” In the findings, the author highlights several key areas in which bodily detachment is cultivated. In doing so, this chapter attends closely to both the somatic/practical and the symbolic/discursive realms, tracing the dynamic interplay between them. It highlights the importance, in particular, of looking at talk and discourse in situ in order to better understand how religious practices and discourses become personally meaningful.
~~
For updates from the author and access to supplemental materials (interviews, podcasts, syllabi, etc.) when they are made available, please visit Chapter 7.
Home » Blog » Erin F. Johnston
