Abstract
Postural yoga has become a very popular physical activity in the United States. In this process, yoga has also transformed into multiple different forms. In this article, I employ Foucault’s theoretical work to understand how yoga has become appropriated in the U.S. media by analyzing the covers of a popular yoga magazine, the Yoga Journal. My Foucauldian discourse analysis indicated that while the Yoga Journal covers have changed quite significantly over 35 years, the magazine appeared to offer a model for “holistic arts of living” for contemporary (middle class) Americans. These “arts” evolved into a simple life of love, joy, and inner strength in the middle of the modern distractions. However, on the Yoga Journal covers, postural yoga also developed into a practice of finding one’s “true self,” creating a lithe yoga body, and becoming a conscious consumer. When read through the covers of a popular magazine, postural yoga Americanized, feminized, and commercialized into a Western fitness practice increasingly governed by the neoliberal rationale.
Introduction
Postural yoga that has traveled to the global market from India enjoys unprecedented popularity in many Westernized countries. It has been firmly “transplanted” (Bruner, 1996) also in the United States, and it is estimated that 22 million Americans currently practice yoga (Archer, 2012). In addition, yoga classes are offered in more than 80% of American commercial fitness venues. In addition, the majority of American yoga practitioners, 72.2%, are women (http://www.yogajournal.com/advertise/press_releases/10). As a popular fitness phenomenon, yoga has also attracted significant research attention from medicine and psychology as well as from anthropology, history, and sociology. For example, several historians have examined the origin and lineage of postural yoga (e.g., de Michelis, 2004; Singleton, 2010) while anthropologists and sociologists have traced the lived experiences of yoga practitioners (Atkinson, 2010; Impett, Daubenmier, & Hirshman, 2006; Lea, 2009; Lewis, 2008; Smith, 2007; Strauss, 2005). In this article, I analyze how yoga, which was originally an exclusively Indian male body practice (Alter, 2004; de Michelis, 2004; Newcombe, 2009; Singleton, 2010; Singleton & Byrne, 2008; Smith, 2007), has been modified in Westernized popular markets in the United States. More specifically, I employ Michel Foucault’s work to understand how yoga has been appropriated in the covers of the popular magazine, Yoga Journal. I will first highlight how yoga has been articulated within sociocultural exercise research. I will then locate this yoga knowledge within the context of neoliberalism that stipulates the discursive framework for the emergence of the yoga body and the yoga self. Through a Foucauldian discourse analysis, I read both articulable and visible elements of the Yoga Journal covers. To conclude, I will analyze how yoga was connected to the contemporary, neoliberal exercise culture in the United States.
Articulations of Yoga With Discourses of Fitness
In his work, Foucault examined three separate but connected dimensions: power relations, knowledge, and the self. In this article, I employ Foucault’s (2007) work to analyze how power relations and knowledge intersect to create understandings of yoga in one popular media outlet, the Yoga Journal. The Yoga Journal is currently a part of the larger American fitness media industry that has already been a target of previous research. To locate my research within the existing fitness media research, I have organized this section based on my reading of the current dominant discourses circulating in the fitness media. Here I refer to one of Foucault’s major concepts, “discourse” which assumed multiple meanings in his work. For example, in his earlier work, Foucault (1972) defined a discourse as a group of statements in so far as they belong to the same discursive formation that made up of a limited number of statements for which a group of conditions of existence can be defined. He further provided a concept of discursive formation that was established whenever one could describe a system or regularity between objects, statements, concepts, and thematic choices. In discursive formations, Foucault (1978, p. 100) further observed, power and knowledge “are joined together.” Consequently, they played a tactical role in the strategic use of power: It was possible to sustain dominance in force relations by the support of discursive formations. While discursive formations have been articulated through several types of texts, the popular media have provided locations where they percolate to wider audience. Following these Foucauldian insights, I have named the most identifiable discourses of women’s fitness as the aesthetics of the ideal, healthy looking body, and the medical, exercise science research on disease prevention. In addition, as I classify yoga as a mindful fitness practice, it can be assumed that there is a specific way of knowing about these practices that separate them from other fitness practices. I label this discourse here as “mindfulness.”
The Aesthetics of the Ideal, Healthy Looking Body
Previous feminist research demonstrated that in the context of North America and the United Kingdom, but also in Japan, fitness was often promoted as a means for the perfect, thin, toned, and young feminine body shape (e.g., Cole, 1998; Duncan, 1994; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; Eskes, Duncan, & Miller, 1998; Jette, 2006; Kagan & Morse, 1988; Kennedy & Markula, 2011; King, 2003; Lloyd, 1996; Loland, 2000; MacNeill, 1998; Maguire & Mansfield, 1998; Markula, 1995, 2003; McDermott, 2000; Smith Maguire, 2007; Spielvogel, 2002). This research further demonstrated that there was a conflation of physical attractiveness with health (Duncan, 1994; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; Markula, 1995, 2001; Smith Maguire, 2007; Spitzack, 1990). The thin looking body was celebrated as the healthy body, and thus health was determined invariably by the looks of the body. Not only physical health but happiness was connected to the images of the healthy looking, thin bodies that smiled from the magazine pages, fitness publications, and digital video disks. For example, when beaming celebrity yoga devotees marketed yoga as a means for a slimmer body and long, toned muscles in women’s magazines, the yoga practice combined contentment and the fit body (Markula & Pringle, 2006). Featherstone (2010) observed that it was often assumed that body transformations through such techniques as exercise and yoga “will result in a renewed body and self, better able to move through interpersonal spaces and more able to enjoy the full range of lifestyle opportunities and pleasures on offer” (p. 196). Obviously, individual instructors and yoga practitioners could define the goals of yoga differently. In her interview study with participants in a private yoga studio in the United States, Lewis (2008) found that participants deciphered yoga as very different from the “gym” where individuals attended primarily to obtain a better body and compared their results with other gym goers. The yoga studio, instead, provided a protective, “non-competitive” environment. The participants, nevertheless, emphasized that their appearance improved as a result of yoga and enjoyed particularly obtaining “lean strength” without bulking up.
Exercise Is Medicine
Medical science established exercise as an important tool to prevent such costly illnesses as coronary heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. Governmental campaigns such as Canada’s ParticipACTION were designed to urge individuals to take personal responsibility for physical activity to avoid developing these types of diseases and burdening the health care system. The new slogan publicized by American Council of Sport Medicine, “Exercise is Medicine,” further illustrated the dictum of individuals taking the responsibility for preventing possible diseases by adopting a personal exercise regime. The “Yoga in America” market study also positioned “yoga as medicine” to note this representation as the “next great yoga wave” (http://www.yogajournal.com/advertise/press_releases/10). The yoga’s power to prevent illness was now a fact also evidenced through “peer-reviewed” controlled, randomized, scientific research (de Michelis, 2007), and several postural yoga practitioners also reported a connection between yoga and illness prevention (e.g., Lea, 2009; Lewis, 2008). Although governments openly campaigned for increased physical activity levels, the actual exercise services were provided by the commercial fitness industry (or by individuals themselves taking on exercise voluntarily). Therefore, the cost for the state was minimized, and each individual’s exercise conduct was governed through distance by media campaigns such as the ParticipACTION.
When the articulation of “health” (as absence of illness) and physical activity became well established within the existing discursive formation of Western fitness, postural yoga was harnessed to promote the existing cultural logic in the United States. It could be argued that yoga always embedded “health” benefits, but when discussed in connection to clearly diagnosed (Western) medical conditions and supported by Western scientific knowledge (similar to other physical activity research), yoga’s health benefits became aligned with minimization of health risks, individualized healthy lifestyle, and self-care.
Mindfulness as a Discourse
While postural yoga aligned with some westernized articulable fitness discourses, it also differed from many other fitness forms (Markula, 2004; Markula & Pringle, 2006). For example, Lewis (2008) found that yoga practitioners’ prime motivations for practicing were “clarity of mind,” “heart opening,” “internal expansion,” “centring,” “peace,” and “stress relief”—phrases “directly from existing yoga literature” (p. 541) that were also repeated by the yoga instructors in their classes. Other scholars demonstrated that such focus articulated closely with a formation of a certain type of “self.”
In their accounts of the lived experience of yoga, Smith (2007) and Lea (2009), both “researcher-practitioners of yoga” (Newcombe, 2009), promoted a parallel understanding of mindfulness in postural yoga practice: Physical action of yoga provoked an attention of the self whose awareness increased through bodily difficulty. Smith, for example, asserted that yoga was a mode of self-inquiry provoked by the body. For Lea, Iyengar Yoga provided a means for liberating the self to bring unconditioned freedom based on Iyengar’s advice “to search for an authentic self: a truth that is ‘never out of touch with the unchanging, eternal infinite’” (p. 72). Lea drew from Foucault and Deleuze to assert that Iyengar yoga, through awareness of the body, aided in finding a relation to one’s (unchanging) self. This helped practitioners to manage their responses to the “chaotic proliferation world” and provided additional ways in which they created an active relationship with themselves and their lives. In her study, Strauss (2005) found Western yoga practitioners traveling to India with a similar premise: To search for the true, calm, coherent self that was lost in the frenzied consumerism. Lea further emphasized that Iyengar practice clearly differed from Western exercise practices. For example, instead of clear “progress” (that characterizes Western thinking), the emphasis was on continuous practice for cultivating awareness and focusing on action: The yoga teacher helped each individual practitioner to find her own “point of origin in a pose” (p. 82). The constant struggle with the movement practice served to disrupt the “habitual” relation to one’s self allowing for experiences “through relation of care rather than that of knowledge” (p. 85). Lea concluded, thus, that Iyengar yoga practice continually slipped between its liberating potential and its limitations in the search for essential human truth. Iyengar yoga, nevertheless, offered “a series of reference points through which we can evaluate our selves and our practice,” but in order to achieve this, “we must, through the functions of self-critique, struggle and therapy, engage with ourselves in a continual labor of care and skill” (pp. 86–87). This research indicated that the “self” was transformed through constant struggle and evaluation of one’s postural yoga practice.
The accounts of lived yoga experiences conveyed a liberating self-formation process (Lea, 2009; Smith, 2007). They, nevertheless, took place in the micro settings of specialized yoga studios by devoted yoga practitioners. Research on mediated yoga images that reach large audience remains rare, and thus I am interested in the discursive formations of the popular media representations of the Yoga Journal and the type of self they construct. To further understand the formation of (mediated) fitness discourses, I, following Foucault, established their connections to power relations.
Knowledge/Power Nexus and Postural Yoga
Some fitness researchers located the media’s obsession with the ideal, feminine fit body within so-called consumer culture (see Kennedy & Pappa, 2011). For example, Dworkin and Wachs (2009) argued that women’s fitness magazines promoted White, heterosexual, middle-class notions of “‘emphasized femininity’ shaped in relation to hegemonic masculinity” (p. 162) typical in consumer culture. Smith Maguire (2007) added that the ideal feminine body provided a starting point to market an entire fitness lifestyle through which continued consumption of the fitness industry became possible. Dworkin and Wachs further argued that the consumerist promotion of the fit body turned into a neoliberal imperative for constructing “the healthy self” (p. 172). Featherstone (2010) expanded the connection between body transformation and “self-transformation” within consumer culture to claim that “body work” was used to “transform the self, upgrading it to a newer level replete with positive possibilities, in line with the new body” (p. 196). Therefore, postural yoga like other body work could be realized as “the key to a new positive self-image, exciting lifestyle and better quality of life” (p. 197). From this perspective, the newly discovered yoga self was charged with possibilities for enjoying the happiness of a lifestyle defined by the consumerist rationale. These fitness researchers concluded that by promoting exercise practices as the means for the perfect body, “the self” was harnessed by the ideological, oppressive forces of consumer culture.
This research identified the image of the perfect fit body as a tool to promote the dominance of ideology of masculinity. Foucault’s concept of power differed from this binary, “top-down” model of power where powerful groups imposed ideological control, for example, via the media, on oppressed groups. For Foucault, power was relational, not as an essence or an attribute “which would qualify those who possess it (dominators) as opposed to those on whom it is practiced (dominated)” (Deleuze, 1988, p. 24). Power had to be understood as “the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate” (Foucault, 1978, p. 92). Instead of ideological control by dominators, Foucault (1978, p. 94) argued that the force relations were maintained through certain formations of knowledge and thus, discourses functioned as dominant strategies for deployment of force. He further maintained that “power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations” (Foucault, 1978, p. 94). The major dominations were sustained through effects of multiple points in force relations with the support of discursive knowledge production. This insight allowed the Foucauldian exercise researchers to position the dominant fitness discourses in relation to larger power/knowledge nexus. For example, Markula (2001) emphasized that the magazine discourse on the healthy body was not simply an effect of the (male) editors using their power to promote the dominant consumerist, ideological construction of emphasized femininity and to sustain the magazine’s commercial position. When the magazines, unquestioningly, drew their exercise/health knowledge from the existing dominant discourses such as psychology, medicine, and exercise science, they operated as links in a set of larger power relations that worked together to normalize women’s bodies by encouraging individual responsibility for obtaining (or resisting) the healthy looking ideal body.
Anatomo-Politics
Other researchers (Duncan, 1994; Jette, 2006; Markula, 1995) used Foucault’s concept of panoptic power arrangement to examine how fitness magazines sustained women’s interest in the impossible task of creating the perfect body (and consequently, the happy self). The concept of the “Panopticon” referred to ways of imposing “anatomo-political” control directly on individual bodies (Foucault, 1991). This control employed disciplinary techniques at “every level of the social body and utilized by very diverse institutions (the family and the army, schools and the police, individual medicine and the administration of collective bodies), operated in the sphere of economic processes, their development, and the forces working to sustain them” (Foucault, 1991, p. 27). Panopticism operated through multiple locations, remained invisible, yet imposed a form of conduct on the ways humans used space and time to move their bodies. From this perspective, fitness magazines acted as an extension of ubiquitous, invisible power that “normalized” certain type of body (conduct). The fitness media representations “externally” defined the “normal” feminine body. The readers then learned to compare their own deficient bodies to the perfect media bodies. From a Foucauldian perspective, the magazines turned into location of anatomo-political bodily discipline: a part of the panoptic power arrangement where an invisible gaze ensured that the readers self-surveyed their bodily flaws and took personal responsibility to continually work toward (impossible) normalcy. More recently, Francombe (2010) and Millington (2012) demonstrated how “exergames” (video-based exercise gaming such as Nintendo Wii Fit and We Cheer) acted as techniques that disciplined individual bodies into “normal” healthy bodies. Parallel to the “old” media workouts, these exercise forms targeted neoliberal consumer citizens who were to build normal bodies through disciplined “self-care.”
Biopolitics
Foucault (1978) emphasized that the effects of power relations were subject to continual modifications and constant shifts. For example, Foucault (1978, 2007) saw a broader shift from a spatial control of individual bodies to the biopolitical control of the entire population. Biopolitics operated through regulatory practices assigned to a continuum of state apparatus (law, medicine, political economy, and education). Such practices of governance functioned simultaneously with the panoptic power arrangement to shape the individuals’ everyday (exercise) practices. Some fitness researchers assigned the fitness media as part of the contemporary biopolitical apparatus in addition to their anatomo-politics of bodily discipline. For example, Jette (2006) situated the magazine discourse on personal responsibility of healthy exercise during pregnancy as one regulatory practice exercised upon populations. This control, she observed, deepened the medicalization of women’s lives and their dependency of expert advice for “responsible,” risk-free exercise. Foucault asserted that biopolitics was enhanced by the emergence of neoliberalism facilitating the type of power that he called government.
Foucault (2008) examined the development of neoliberalism in several cultural contexts in the early decades of the 20th century (Germany, France, and the United States). Within this arrangement, the governmental apparatus and a “series of knowledges” became further intertwined to support a particular rationale for governance (or “conduct of conduct”; Foucault, 2007). In this neoliberal governmentality, the state intervention was not necessarily reduced, but instead the government became modeled based on “the market” rationale. For instance, the government’s social programs were shaped according to the commercial models of industry to increase individual citizens’ “freedom” to act for themselves. In American neoliberalism, the individual was embraced tighter by the capitalist enterprise. The individual’s “culture” became a form of capital itself: Instead of a producer or a consumer, he became the entrepreneur of himself, a “market site” for economic competition. When each individual was drawn into the “enterprise” culture, a new form of governmentality emerged. Foucault (2008) asserted that the “state [will] ensure that no one is excluded from this game in which [the individual] is caught up without ever having explicitly wished to take part” (p. 202). Technologies that focused on governing the conduct of individuals by creating a certain type of desirable self enabled the increased individualization of governance.
Neoliberal government preferred an individual who was both a rational economic actor and “free” to take responsibility for his or her self-care (Foucault, 2008). This logic effectively engaged both individual’s body and herself as targets for governmentality with new set of rules of conduct and ways of using power. The fitness media research revealed that exercise practices were increasingly sold by appealing to individual’s responsibility for “self-care.” “Self-transformation” emerged as a desirable and “normal” goal for physical practice like exercise. Following Foucault, Miller and Rose (2010) further highlighted how the self was harnessed within the neoliberal rationale by decreasing the perceived control of the government. In this context, the individual freedom was translated into autonomous selves who now chose to fulfill their social responsibilities at micro-level communities (families, workplaces, schools, leisure associations, and neighborhoods) instead of participating in the national macro-level politics. In this context, postural yoga might offer a (media based) community for individuals to fulfill themselves while freely choosing to care for their bodies and minds. Miller and Rose further noted that the role of experts 1 changed within neoliberal societies. Instead of directly consulting, for example, health experts (e.g., psychologists, personal trainers, physiotherapists, and physicians), individuals were to become experts of their own self-care by relying on advice from the Internet, self-help lines, “exergames,” or other (media) sources. This did not necessarily mean less dependency on experts’ knowledge, but it created a perception that one chose to freely adopt educated and knowledgeable relations to the health and well-being of one’s own body, mind, and form of conduct. Choosing to engage in continual physical labor and self-care in postural yoga with the help of Yoga Journal, for example, could be interpreted following the neoliberal rationale for the “self-enterprising” individual liberated to maximize her healthy lifestyle. Miller and Rose continued that these techniques of government created a distance between formal political institutions and the “autonomous” individuals who, paradoxically, utilized their freedom toward the direction of a neoliberal mentality of “choice.” Governance, Miller and Rose argued, took place indirectly through distance to further persuade that the neoliberal living was, indeed, free choice independent upon politics. They pointed to the mass media as one set of means to govern in distance that translated “the goals of political, social and economic authorities into the choices and commitments of individuals” (p. 214). For example, the popular fitness media could be effectively used for the purposes of governing in distance as they penetrated deep into everyday life where the power networks became increasingly complex and disassociated from direct governmental rationality.
In this study, I aim to expand the previous exercise scholars’ analyses of the simultaneous operation of anatomo-politics and biopolitics of neoliberal society through my reading of the Yoga Journal that was founded in 1975. My study, thus, contributes to Foucauldian exercise analysis in two main ways. First, the existing literature focused on reading recent exercise media representation through selected, smaller samples. On the other hand, the existing cultural scholarship on yoga traced the historical formation of yoga within the United States before 1970s. In this study, I aim to provide a consistent analysis of how yoga has been represented on the Yoga Journal covers from 1970s to the current decade. Second, existing Foucauldian exercise scholarship demonstrated the effects of power directly on the exercise consumer’s body, but did not elaborate on the exact knowledge formation that normalized a body type and thus, supported certain type of power relations. I, therefore, aim to employ Foucauldian framework to identify the articulation of yoga discourse and the presentation of the yoga body. In addition, I am interested in how the yoga self has been structured within the intersections of the visible presentations of the yoga body and the articulations yoga. Foucault’s work on neoliberal governmentality allows me to highlight both the formation of the fitness power/knowledge nexus and its effects on construction of the yoga selves over three decades of publication of the Yoga Journal.
Analysis of Discursive Formation
There are several specialized yoga magazines that target devoted yoga practitioners. Among these publications, the Yoga Journal, founded in 1975, has the largest paid circulation with 360,000 subscriptions and nearly 2 million readers (http://www.yogajournal.com/advertise/press_releases/10). As the Yoga Journal is the oldest and arguably the most prominent popular yoga magazine, it can act as an influential cultural force that shapes the understandings of yoga within the American cultural context. Its covers can, thus, provide telling examples of how yoga is known in the U.S. fitness market. As the Yoga Journal is available for consumers in most supermarkets, its covers provide a popular representation of yoga also for many non-yoga practitioners, and thus indicate how postural yoga is positioned within the larger American cultural context. I analyzed 224 journal covers from February 1975 to September 2010 displayed on the Yoga Journal website (http://covers.yogajournal.com/gallery.html). The Yoga Journal published six issues annually until 2006 when it changed to seven yearly issues. Currently, it is published 9 times a year.
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
Foucault, who identified as a historian of thought, highlighted how a particular discourse, or a way of knowing, evolved over time. I am interested in what discourses have constructed yoga within 30-year period of the neoliberal U.S. market. To analyze this knowledge formation, I draw from Foucault’s (1972, 1987, 1991; Deleuze, 1988) insight that the tactical use of knowledge includes both articulable discourses and visible nondiscursive elements to sustain certain power diagram such as neoliberalist governmentality. I am further interested in how governing through distance might be possible through a tactical use of both articulable and visible elements of postural yoga knowledge and a concomitant formation of the self. As I aim to analyze how (fitness) knowledges intertwine with postural yoga practice in an influential site of the popular media, following Markula and Silk (2011), I use a modified version of Foucault’s method to analyze my clearly specified sample of texts. 2
An Analysis of the Articulable
My discourse analysis is based on Foucault’s (1972) definition of discursive formation as a detectable system of regularity between objects, enunciations, concepts, and thematic choices that then form groups of statements characterizing the formation. By analyzing the concepts and thematic choices, the researcher can then detect the statements belonging to a particular discursive formation. Foucault began by considering how an object of knowledge (such as madness as an object of psychopathology) emerged through delimitation and specification. My object here is postural yoga that has also emerged through delimitation and specification, but this development has already been identified through previous literature, and thus my focus is not to demonstrate this process again in my study. The enunciations refer to sites where the object is talked about. In addition, Foucault would ask who is talking about the object in these sites. I have chosen a particular enunciation (the Yoga Journal covers) to analyze my object. While it provides only one voice of the yoga industry, I can, nevertheless, analyze the concepts that arise from these sites and through them, examine further thematic choices or theories that emerge to form the groups of statements in this particular, popular site of yoga. Finally, to understand this discursive formation, I also need to consider the possible strategies for their existence through an analysis of power relations: How have certain groups of statements become to dominate the popular representations of yoga within neoliberalism?
An Analysis of the Visible
Foucault (1972) emphasized that the articulable discourses shape their objects, but the visible, nondiscursive aspects such as individual bodies and physical practices are integral elements in knowledge formation. Foucault further indicated that these visible elements can be employed as disciplinary techniques designed to produce “docile bodies.” Such docile bodies (Foucault, 1991) are continually transformed and improved to become “useful,” productive but controlled citizens through the effective use of space, time, and movement. The disciplinary exercise produces a body with a certain look. Previous research on women’s exercise has demonstrated that the fit, disciplined body looks thin, toned, and young. In my analysis, I am interested whether the same type of body characterizes the Yoga Journal representations of the yoga body. As an additional part of the analysis of the visible formation, I focus the type of exercises pictured on the covers.
Results
Typical to popular magazine covers, the Yoga Journal covers displayed text advertising the content over a background of a large color pictorial. While most covers pictured photographs, the early editions, particularly, exhibited conceptual or realist artwork. In the first sight, many of the covers were not openly connected to yoga as physical practice. For example, various Western (yoga related) “experts” with smiling faces occupied the cover space. In 1999, however, the cover pictorials changed entirely to depict a (Western) yogi in tight fitting exercise outfits performing an asana.
Based on my analysis of the articulable and visible elements on these covers, I identified three broad groups of statements that characterized yoga: fostering social awareness, awakening the mind through bodily practice, and creating a lithe performing body. Each group was produced through several themes (see Table 1).
Conscious Arts of Yoga Living
Together, these groups of statements and themes substantiated “conscious arts of living” through yoga. In 1985, the Yoga Journal adopted a self-identification as “a magazine for conscious living.” This slogan was changed to “a magazine for conscious living and health” in 1988. Although no such slogan currently markets the magazine, conscious living continues to be emphasized albeit in a different manner. This substance drew support from such Western scientific discourses as psychology, medicine, political science, ecology, and economics. The groups of statements regarding “the conscious arts of living”—the mind, the body, and social awareness—often overlapped, carried each other, and permeated the discursive formation simultaneously. One group might have been more heavily emphasized at certain time. For example, grossly generalizing I could say that social awareness was a more prominent feature on the early volumes. Instead of disappearing, however, it assumed different, more “individualized” meanings starting from mid-1990s. The body became a more visible cover element from late 1990s on, but the cover texts consistently featured “the mind.” Nevertheless, the most notable feature of the covers was how the three groups of statements were continually weaved together to promote changing meanings for the substance of “conscious living.” Instead of organizing my results chronologically, I have, thus, chosen to map separately how each group of statements—the social awareness, the mind, and the body—were formulated over the decades.
Social Awareness
While conscious living of a yogi in the early decades of the Yoga Journal included a strong dimension of political, ecological, and communal awareness, this aspect of yoga has probably undergone the most visible change on the covers. Several themes—religion/spirituality, peace, culture, and nature—assembled into the “conscious living” to connect yoga with larger social issues. This way, entities that seemed to remain somewhat distant from each other were aligned (Miller & Rose, 2010) to formulate a certain way of thinking about postural yoga in the American (neoliberal) society. Social awareness also established a discourse distinct from the other exercise forms that, according to the previous literature, were dominated by the discourses of aesthetics of the healthy looking body and/or exercise as medicine.
The majority of the covers in the 1980s and in a large segment of the 1990s displayed head and shoulder photographs of gurus, 3 various experts, or artworks with very little reference to the physically active body. On these covers, the Yoga Journal introduced its readers to different cultures, philosophies, and religions in addition to ecology, community, education, and parenting. In the last decade, the magazine’s philosophy changed from awakening one’s social awareness to a focus on changing one’s self through yoga. One of the later covers illustrated this shift, as it urged the reader to “change yourself, change the world” (December 2007)—working toward the peaceful yoga self was also to change the world. To further highlight the transformation from social awareness to individualized practice of yoga, I discuss the main themes of the social awareness discourse.
Creating an American Yoga Community
In its first two decades, the Yoga Journal covers exhibited a close connection to yoga’s origin, Indian culture. In addition to highlighting different swamis, yogis, and gurus, India as a country, its philosophers, arts (dance, music, and poetry), and food were visible aspects of the covers. The magazine also devoted a special issue to “Mother India” (June 1977) and promoted travel to India. Alternative healing techniques from India, particularly Ayurveda, were often mentioned on the covers. Gradually, however, the cover discourse detached yoga from India and began openly to recognize a particularly American yoga culture. Instead of drawing from the “correct” lineage of the various Indian yoga gurus, the magazine started to celebrate multiple types of yoga. Some of these referred to a particular style of executing the asanas (e.g., Ashtanga, February 1999; Anusara, August 2004; Hatha yoga, June 1987; Kundalini, December 1983, October 1985; and Kripalu, December 1991), others to forms associated with two popular gurus who, while Indian origin, were practicing and living in the West: B. K. S. Iyengar (e.g., August 1981, February 1984, August 1984, October 2005, February 2006, and October 2006) and Bikram Choudhury (February 1981, April 2000, and December 2003). The Yoga Journal interpreted the Americanization of yoga as a positive development and began to trace the history of American yoga practice (April 1990, June 1993, and June 1996). While the losses and gains of such a transformation were pondered (December 2006, February 2000, and November 2002), American yoga practice was found so well developed that it might reverse the previous cultural flow to change yoga in India (August 2002). While America was observed to love yoga (October 2005), a 2002 (December) cover asked whether commercialization, in particular, was good “karma” for yoga. The commercialization of Americanized yoga was debated through a discussion of Bikram Choudhury’s, who was also tentatively labeled as “yoga’s bad boy” (April 2000), plans to franchise his yoga enterprise (December 2003; Bikram has now franchised his branch of yoga that is often known as the “hot yoga”). At this point, there was some problematization of yoga being openly led by neoliberal market forces. The neoliberal sentiments continued to subtly territorialize the element of social awareness.
The “American yoga community” adopted “individualization” typical to neoliberalism when the social awareness shifted from national concerns to concerns of individual’s immediate surroundings. I focus on two examples here: the shift from feminist concerns to the “feminine” yoga body and the shift from national level political “community” to the microcommunity of one’s immediate environment. When first established, the Yoga Journal connected political men’s and women’s movements to yoga in America. Through depictions of different gurus and male experts, men dominated the 1970s and 1980s discursive formation of the magazine covers, but the cover statements also openly problematized stereotypical masculinity (e.g., December 1986 and June 1991) and published an issue highlighting Robert Bly’s controversial statements about the evolution of masculinity (October 1984). This “politicized” discussion of the nature of masculinity has since faded and shifted from problematizing the social construction of masculinity to persuading individual men to practice yoga (March 2007; see also Strauss, 2005). In its early years, the magazine devoted entire issues also for women’s concerns (June 1978 and June 1982) and later continued to celebrate women’s special spirituality (April 1983 and February 1988) and even to goddess-like healing power (June 1986 and February 1991). Although the Yoga Journal covers visibly feminized over the last decade, the discussion of the women’s movement or feminism decreased. The last mention of the women’s movement was from 1998 when the magazine pondered how feminism might surrender to the spiritual action of yoga practice (December 1998). The Yoga Journal dialogue shifted from national men’s and women’s movements to individualized concerns of finding a calm yoga self by building a healthy (feminine) yoga body. With feminization of the cover discourse, there was also a change from feminist issues to women’s health issues addressed through medicine (e.g., chronic fatigue, osteoporosis, breast cancer, and host flashes).
Together with gender issues, the Yoga Journal promoted involvement in and responsibility for one’s immediate communities. While multiple (alternative) world cultures and religions were introduced, there was a simultaneous focus on “micro-moral” (Miller & Rose, 2010) domestic communities such as neighborhood community (October 1981, April 1987, and December 1993), workplace or family, and parenting (October 1979, December 1982, and October 1997) as a part of conscious yoga living. In its earlier decades, the Yoga Journal also aligned itself openly with “New Age” (February 1980 and August 1981) to discuss such healing techniques as quartz crystals (February 1985), cards (April 1992), the new dream movement (December 1996), and even commented on UFOs (August 1994). Strauss (2005) found a creation of community central to “New Age” philosophy and in this light, community engagement was shaped as an alternative to the dominant society. According to Miller and Rose (2010), neoliberalism also favored lifestyles that emphasized individuals’ autonomy for caring for the communities around them. Thus, it paved a way to further individualization of neoliberal societies where each participant assumed responsibility, not only for their selves but their immediate surroundings. Discussion of these “microcommunities,” nevertheless, disappeared from the covers during the last decade.
American Yoga Community, International Politics, and “Alternative” Cultures
In addition to domestic issues such as gender equality, the Yoga Journal covers introduced the readers to different religions, healing cultures, and alternative political systems. Healing and religion were often intertwined into an “alternative” culture. Notably, indigenous Native American culture (February 1978, June 1988, February 1991, and February 1995) was displayed relatively visibly alongside shamanism (October 1983, February 1989, December 1990, and August 1992) and Chinese traditional medicine (April 1986 and August 1997). These alternative practices often included a spiritual aspect (e.g., Taoism and Buddhism), and the Yoga Journal also featured the world’s major religions such as Judaism (October 1984 and April 1986) and Christianity (June 1983 and December 1986). Based on the cover discourse, these spiritual and religious practices were not openly promoted as a part of yoga practice, but as forms of kindred philosophical approaches to a lifestyle. Although yoga was not necessarily established as a religious practice, possible contradictions between the yoga spirituality and “religion” were addressed: “Does yoga conflict with religion?” (February 2001) asked one cover. Nevertheless, the discussions of different religions (or New Age) no longer appear on the Yoga Journal covers.
In addition to cultures of alternative healing and spiritualities, the Yoga Journal commented on political issues around the world: A part of the conscious living of a yogi was to be aware of (some) international politics. The topics, nevertheless, aligned closely with American foreign policy. One such political issue was the situation in Tibet (and also Burma April 1993 and December 2003). A special issue, “Tibet: Portrait of People in Exile” was published in 1985 (October), and Tibet was again discussed in a decade later (April 1993). The Dalai Lama (February 1982 and February 1990), his foundation (February 1997), and his art collection (December 2000) were featured on several covers. The plight of Tibet was also accentuated by its being part of Communist China that was often perceived as an enemy to U.S. culture. Another communist enemy to the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was also introduced to the readers through a special report (December 1984) unrelated to yoga practice per se. In a later issue, the magazine returned to report on yoga in the USSR (June 1991). There was no mention of Russia since the USSR was dismantled. The Yoga Journal also openly commented on nuclear war (June 1982), parenting during the nuclear age (December 1982), and provided “Visions of a Peaceful Planet” (February 1985). During the last decade, Yoga Journal covers seldom commented on international politics or the U.S. foreign policy. If they did, they switched from the world’s situation toward domestic and individual issues that resulted from American foreign policy. For example, when terrorism became the major threat in the United States after 9/11, yoga was provided as a “spiritual response to war on terrorism” (August 2004). Later, the journal covers promoted yoga as an individualized remedy for the war-torn minds of returning U.S. soldiers (August 2010). Connecting with world peace or international politics as a part of conscious living of a yogi was gradually replaced by building “a peaceful mind.” I return to this development later in this article.
Connecting With Nature, Earth, and Ecology
One consistent theme on the Yoga Journal covers was connection between yoga, nature, and the earth. The individual yogi’s conscious behavior was intertwined with larger concerns of the state of the planet. For example, the readers were urged to connect with nature (e.g., August 1984) to create a special “person–planet relationship” (December 1980). The cover illustrations reinforced this connection when they depicted individuals meditating (December 1980, April 1995, and February 1998) or performing an asana (February 1982, June 1983, August 1983, April 1985, and June 1995) on the beach, in the forest, or a field. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, saving the planet (October 1988 and February 1998), deep ecology (October 1988, December 1989, and June 1990), and illnesses resulting from pollution and toxic substances (October 1990 and December 1990) provided cover statements. Similar to other social awareness issues, (deep) environmentalism was also connected to the mind/spiritualism/wisdom to characterize the yoga approach. For example, “green politics” had a “spiritual dimension” (April 1988). In her research, Strauss (2005) found a parallel connection between ecology and yoga. She noted the shared elements of universal understanding of the need for managing life, spirituality, and a personalized relationship between an individual and the planet through which each individual was required to take action to improve the current situation. Similar to other aspects of the social consciousness, the cover discourse has changed from deep ecological concern to an individual consumer’s responsible ecological behavior. For example, in the 2000s, the covers targeted the individual consumer who could help nature by purchasing items of ecofriendly fashion (June 2006, April 2007, and May 2008), consuming less (December 2006), or following a “green diet” (May 2009 and September 2009).
In summary, consistent with the increased emphasis on individual “self-care” in American neoliberal consumer society, the element of social awareness transpired toward an individualized awareness in the discursive formation of the Yoga Journal covers. The early interest in awakening the readers to international politics, other cultures, and ecology, nevertheless, remained as aspects of individualized consumer awareness (e.g., more conscious consumption of eco-friendly products), coping with the stresses of consumer society (building a “peaceful mind”), or using yoga to cope mentally with contemporary threats by foreign cultures (e.g., terrorism). Following Foucault (2008), the social domain was rendered economic through individualization. Social awareness, nevertheless, continued to inform the conscious living of a yogi, but in a depoliticized manner (Miller & Rose, 2010). Social awareness also provided American yoga with a unique discursive formation to distinguish it from other exercise forms even if only traces of such concerns remain in the best practice of an individual yogi.
The Awakened Mind
The accounts of the mind and mindfulness strongly informed the Yoga Journal cover discourse: Yoga was practiced with a certain attitude and the resulting yoga self directed the connection to the world. This group of statements linked the Yoga Journal cover representations with the discourse of mindfulness detailed in the previous yoga research (e.g., Lea, 2009; Smith, 2007; Strauss, 2005). The mind was awakened through bodily practice, but also through meditation, to assume a certain type of yoga self. This mindfulness also assigned yoga as one technology for the neoliberal self who was both a rational economic actor and responsible for his or her self-care (Foucault, 2008). Additional “soulfulness” obtained through spirituality and a “healthy” mind with the aid of alternative (psychological) therapies completed the discourse of the yoga mind. This aspect of the yoga lifestyle, thus, assembled alternative psychology and spirituality with the construction of the self. These statements acted as “reference points” through which individual yoga practitioners constantly evaluated their selves when struggling toward a positive yoga self (Lea, 2009). At the same time, they emerged as “freely” chosen alternatives toward neoliberal self-transformation (Foucault, 2008).
Finding the Authentic Self Through Yoga
In the early years, such themes as the individual’s path of life (April 1991 and December 1993), from birth to death (November 1975, July–August 1976, and June 1980) dominated the Yoga Journal covers. This path was led by a loving (May–June 1976, June 1990, April 1992, and October 2000) and open “hearted” person (August 1979, June 1980, February 1983, and March 2008) with a peaceful mind (May–June 1976, October 1987, and October 2003). “Breath” awakened the mind for calmness, peacefulness, openness, and sensitivity. Meditation as a tool for creating a yoga self dominated the cover discourse (e.g., February 1975, July–August 1976, June 1981, December 1988, April 1995, October 1996, October 1999, October 2000, February 2001, June 2002, April 2003, November 2003, March 2007, June 2007, September 2007, February 2008, August 2008, September 2008, October 2008, December 2008, November 2009, and June 2010). In this sense, the early cover discourse aligned with Patanjali’s original text Yoga Sutras that detailed an eight-stage program to guide one toward the union of the self and universal. The original yoga system began with guidelines for moral living and then proceeded to offer advice on physical practice and breathing techniques and finally provides guidelines on reaching different states of mental attention through meditation (e.g., Strauss, 2005). The “authentic,” correct yoga practice was characterized by a close connection to India and the early cover discourse recommended building the “authentic” yoga self according to the original Indian model. Nevertheless, the Yoga Journal covers also resonated with Lea’s (2009), Smith’s (2007), and Lewis’s (2008) findings of lived experiences of building the yoga self based on bodily practice of yoga. The cover texts emphasized, similar to Smith (2009) and Lea (2009), that the transformation into the yoga self was achieved through “mind-body (practice)” (February 1977, February 1978, April 1992, and March 2010) that improved “inner strength” (April 1976).
In the 2000s, the discussion of the self focused on advising how to find one’s true self underneath the chaos of the commercialized world. This trend, also suggested by Strauss (2005) and Lea (2009), can be illustrated by a recent Yoga Journal cover that promised to help “find focus in a world of distraction” (September 2010). Although the “search for the self” was a reoccurring theme, it became even more central during the last decade of the Yoga Journal’s existence. Finding one’s self was represented as a process or continual path (see also Lea, 2009) of simplifying one’s life against the abundance of consumer society (October 1997 and December 2006). By adopting simplicity, one was to discover the strength of one’s “true, inner self” hidden underneath the social pressures of life. For example, one cover advised to “outwit” one’s ego (the socially created layer of the self) to find one’s “true self” (March 2006). “Uncovering” one’s “true self” necessitated learning to “transform” difficult emotions (February 2004 and April 2004) such as anger (April 2002), fear (April 1988, April 1999, and August 2005), and guilt (August 2009). With increased “inner poise” (September 2010), the yogi was able to find certain “detachment” (June 2004) from the world’s buzz to enjoy, at the same time, happiness, joy, and contentment in everyday life (August 2004 and June 2005). The inner poise also resulted in self-acceptance (which also led to body acceptance; June 2006) that the person had been lacking due to a previous inability to anchor one’s actions into a solid, calm, true self. Parallel to Strauss’ (2005) findings, the Yoga Journal covers offered “self-realization” as a “phenomenon for individuals seeking emancipation from the bound of modern society’s materialism” (p. 138). When denouncing consumerism, the yoga self sought to locate herself outside the neoliberal governance. However, the search for the true self also indicated a shift toward an autonomous neoliberal individual who engaged in voluntary self-regulation (Foucault, 2008) to maximize her quality of life through an artful assembly of a specific “lifestyle.” Miller and Rose (2010) further characterized a neoliberal citizen as a creature of personal happiness and freedom. Indeed, to be freed from the distractions of consumerism, the yoga self was continually encouraged to find happiness, to be happy inside (August 2004 and May 2010), be happier than ever (December 2006), to be the “happiest” (December 2007), to create “happiest life” (February 2008), to “practice happiness” (May 2008) “at every age” (September 2009), or asked to ponder what makes her happy (March 2010). The theme of happiness differed from the “looking good, feeling good” theme (Duncan, 1994; Markula, 1995; Smith, 2007) that promised psychological well-being as a result of a better looking body. The Yoga Journal covers advocated that happiness was, indeed, achieved through bodily practice of yoga, not because of the improved body shape necessarily but because it allowed the yogi to find her the calm, stable, and true self.
The ideal modern yoga self was further characterized by a number of positive psychological qualities such as optimism, positivity (April 2002), forgiveness (April 2001), contentment, joy, compassion (February 2005 and June 2005), calmness, honesty (May 2008), courage (August 2008), and creativity (December 1979, December 1985, October 1991, February 2006, October 2006, September 2007, August 2005; November 2008, and October 2009). Because creativity was a prominent aspect of the yoga self, the early Yoga Journal covers made visible connections to art, particularly Indian dance, music, and poetry (June 1977, August 1979, February 1979, December 1985). Indian musicians and dancers (but also other artists) were also pictured on covers. This connection almost disappeared in the 1990s. Individual “creativity” reemerged in the late 2000s when the discourse of mindfulness drew reference from western psychology. The psychological concepts enabled a closer relationship with another prominent neoliberal knowledge base, the discourse of effective management.
The openhearted, calm but energetic self (October 2007) resembled a focused (June 2010), organized, and successful (May 2006) business professional who confidently (June 2005, August 2010) managed crisis situations (June 2005), provided conflict resolutions (October 1992), made decisions (June 2006), and managed time (September 2007). For example, one cover promises advice on “How you slow down without getting off the fast track” (October 2002). The Yoga Journal covers also made occasional direct connections between the business world and yoga practice (August 1988, April 1994, October 1994, August 2001). The “heart’s wisdom” of yoga aligned one’s actions with a particular set of “inner values” (October 2003) to change one’s everyday behavior toward a calmer, more efficient yet creative, and focused neoliberal citizen who was, nevertheless, to find joy in his chosen lifestyle.
Alternative Psychology
The Yoga Journal introduced its readers to a number of further psychological issues. For example, yoga assisted in curing diverse psychological conditions ranging from stress to addictions. 4 Although such an illness discourse might anchor yoga with the exercise as medicine discourse, the connection was complex. While yoga practice was offered as a main therapy for these modern day ailments, the Yoga Journal, particularly in its early decades, also aligned itself with several alternative, “holistic therapies” (April 1976) and as such positioned itself in opposition to “traditional” psychology and the “therapy obsessed American culture” (June 1992). Such “psychologies” as sacred psychology (October 1985), psychic healing and parapsychology (August 1986), transpersonal psychology (October 1987), Tibetan psychiatry (October 1988), and body-centered psychotherapy (February 1994) were introduced to the readers. The Yoga Journal, while renouncing “traditional” psychological expertise, relied heavily on the advice by alternative psychologists featured prominently on its covers. When individual yoga practice constituted the main curative practice, the readers, concurrently, were to become educated “experts of themselves” (Miller & Rose, 2010, p. 215) who attended to their own conditions.
During the 2000s, the neoliberal premise of “self-expertise” became further emphasized as the covert display of different types of experts on the covers waned. The magazine still advertised yoga as a medicine for psychological conditions, but expert involvement became more indirect. Instead of alternative “psychologies,” the Yoga Journal started to report on scientific research on the mind (e.g., April 2001, October 2001, and June 2010) to validate yoga’s healing power (see also Strauss, 2005). This switch of knowledge base aligned yoga closer with Westernized medical understanding of health as an absence of illness.
Spirituality
Spirituality was a visible theme on the early Yoga Journal covers. Instead of educating readers on spirituality of yoga, the Yoga Journal cover discourse tended to articulate spirituality in general terms by connecting it to issues of social awareness discourse (July–August 1976, April 1981, February 1983, and December 1988). For example, gay spirituality (August 1980), women’s spirituality (April 1983 and February 1988), spirituality of a place (October 1986), spirituality of green politics (April 1988), spiritual values of business (April 1994), spiritual parenting (October 1997), bringing spirituality to work (December 1997), and particularly, spirituality in (sexual) relationships (June 1987, April 1989, August 1989, and August 2004) were highlighted on the covers. The discussion of spirituality died almost entirely in the 2000s and was replaced by a more individualistic ethics of knowing one’s self (March 2008).
In summary, creating a calm, peaceful yoga self who was in control of his or her emotions was considered an important part of yoga practice. While a continual transformation was emphasized, it denoted a search for the “true self” that can be contacted through meditation and physical yoga practice. Within the neoliberal context, the yoga self found happiness in managing his or her everyday life in a “business-like” manner (e.g., conflict resolution, decision making, and effective time management) to avoid the frantic consumerism. The yoga specific terms such as love, happiness, and heartfulness were effectively intertwined with contemporary living in American neoliberal culture: Yoga as an alternative healing practice for contemporary ills (e.g., stress and anxiety) was transformed into a way of finding personal happiness by coping more effectively and calmly with the current requirements of the American culture.
The Performing Body
The yoga body became a visible aspect of the Yoga Journal covers only in late 1990s. 5 However, several themes were assembled together over the years to characterize the body that complemented the yoga self. The visible representations of the yoga body, similar to the media representations of other fit bodies, drew elements from aesthetics of the healthy looking body. The “looks” was, nevertheless, intertwined with advice on correct performance, prevention of physical illnesses, and with sexuality. These themes characterized a distinct yoga body.
The Lithe, Youthful, Feminine Body in High Performance
A yogi performing an asana (or a posture) appeared only on few covers during the 1970s and they almost vanished in 1980s only to return as the main visible cover feature in the late 1990s. From the late 1980s, instruction on the physical practice of yoga became more visible and it multiplied when the visible presentations of the covers changed to depict models performing various yoga asanas. The most common advice assisted with the performance of demanding yoga asanas such as backbends or balancing poses such as headstands, shoulder stands, and handstands. 6 These asanas required significant skill and strength beyond most average consumers. In contrast, the seated prayer pose with no extreme balance, strength, or flexibility was featured in several covers possibly to emphasize the quest for the calm, controlled, content yoga self in addition to skillful physical performance. In addition to representing asanas, yoga was advocated as a training tool for improved sport performance (October 1978, December 1981, October 1982, and October 2001). Instructions for the best asanas for different sports (running, cycling, golf, tennis, surfing, and downhill skiing) were offered. 7 The high performance requirements resulted in an increased concern for yoga-specific injuries. Yoga was no longer considered invariably good for everyone. The back, the knees, and the neck appeared the most injury prone as several covers offered advice for these specific areas (June 1999, June 2003, March 2008, and August 2010). At the same time, yoga was also understood to provide a relief for previously tense and sore shoulders and to create a “happy” and supple spine. The performing body distinguished the Yoga Journal from other fitness journals that displayed perfect bodies (no physical skill). The discourse of the aesthetics of the healthy looking body, nevertheless, entered also into the Yoga Journal covers.
When the yoga body featured as the most visible cover element, advice on how to “tone” specific body parts such as arms, core, and “abs” multiplied. While in 2001 (May), the Yoga Journal still wanted to distinguish yoga from the “common” body toning by “debunking” “the myth of 6-pack abs” (healthy abdominals are strong, not hard), the rest of the covers guided readers for “strong, toned abs,” or “core” similar to (women’s) fitness magazines (e.g., October 2000, December 2003, August 2007, August 2005, September 2009, December 2009, February 2010, and March 2010). Mimicking other fitness magazines (e.g., Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; Markula, 1995), the covers focused on (women’s) problem spots. For example, they promised to help the readers to “firm their glutes” (June 2007) and to build “strong legs” (September 2007). With the emphasis on the “looks” of the body, the covers also turned visibly more “feminized.”
Since 1999, all covers featured a yogi performing an asana and since April 2003 all the cover models were women. They were typically thin, White women in tight fitting (often White) unitards or tops and tights performing spectacular deep backbends, side twists, side planks, or arms stands that required exceptional balance and/or flexibility. Their looks exemplified the ideal, fit feminine body, and with no visible muscularity, they also verified the promise to produce “lean strength” without bulk (Lewis, 2008). If there were any ethnic markings, they were minimized in favor of the thin, youthful performing body. 8 Despite the thin, feminine bodies, slimness (December 1982) was seldom discussed before 2000. On one hand, the magazine wanted to communicate that yoga suits (women) of all sizes despite picturing thin cover models. For example, a 1994 (November) issue offered “Yoga for round bodies;” one cover made “one woman’s case for curves” (December 1996) and another assured that yoga is “not just for the lean and lithe,” but also “works for bigger bodies” (December 2003). On the other hand, yoga was offered as an effective weight loss (December 2000 and February 2010) or “detox” (April 2007) tool. As demonstrated earlier, yoga was also to provide self-acceptance and thus, to help the practitioner to love her body (August 2006). One woman testified on the cover: “Before yoga I hated my body, now I have a lot more respect for it” (June 2004). Although exquisite performers, the looks of the feminine yoga body did not differ from the representations of other fit bodies and thus, the discourse of aesthetics of the fit feminine body.
In addition to visual presentation of the thin, skillful models, the covers presented aging as a “problem.” Already in 1983 (October), one cover advised on how to “stay young” by practicing yoga and the “age concern” appeared infrequently in the 1990s only to multiply during the 2000s (April 2000, April 2002, August 2005, February 2006, June 2007, and August 2008). Yoga was provided as a tool to slow down aging, but also as suitable for practitioners of all ages: Through yoga, one could combat the fear of aging (February 2006) or age gracefully (August 2008). Although the emphasis on aesthetic appearance became more visible, celebrities seldom appeared on the covers. Some exceptions were singers Sting (December 1995) and Sarah McLachlan (October 2010) who also appeared on the cover voted the best all-time cover.
Yoga as a Holistic Medical Treatment
The Yoga Journal covers offered yoga as medicine already before the currently popular exercise discourse of illness prevention. Yoga was established as a treatment for numerous physical conditions from AIDS to scoliosis. 9 As with the psychological illnesses, yoga appeared to provide an alternative, more holistic treatment than western medicine. The expert advice was indirect: Most of the experts pictured in the covers were either providing an alternative healing technique or psychological advice, not instruction of curing physical illness. The neoliberal yogi was to use “self-expertise” (Miller & Rose, 2010) through yoga practice to tap into the curative power of yoga. In addition to illnesses, the Yoga Journal covers assured that yoga eased women-specific conditions of menstruation and premenstrual syndrome (July 1986, August 1999, and February 2005), pregnancy (July 1975, July 1982, February 1978, July 1980, June 2000, and November 2001), childbirth (October 1977, February 1978, July 1980, July 1981, and April 1997), and menopause (February 1996 and December 2003).
While the magazine continued to offer yoga as an “alternative” cure, during the last decade, it established connections to medicine and science. From 1999 (December) onward, results from medical science were increasingly used to further validate yoga’s physical healing power (see also Strauss, 2005). For example, scientific research revealed that handstands were good (October 2000), that yoga helped treat chronic fatigue (April 2001), built better bones (May 2001), and stop weight gain (November 2005). The Yoga Journal covers suggested also combining western science with eastern wisdom for its advantage (February 2003 and November 2003) and even boldly pondered if the proven capacity of yoga to “cure” might now transform American medicine (May 2010). As I analyzed only the covers, not the content of the magazine, it is unclear how yoga influenced the powerful scientific discourse of western medicine. Therefore, while health in the Yoga Journal covers was seen “holistically”—through conscious living and awareness of one’s body, mind, and the social surrounding one stayed healthy—the references to medical research to validate yoga’s healing power locked it within the western discursive formation of fitness where physical activity was healthy only if scientifically proven to prevent various illnesses. With scientific validation, yoga was now added to the list of “medicines” with other neoliberal exercise practices.
Sexuality
Another consistent theme across the decades of the Yoga Journal cover articulations of the yoga body was its connection to sex and sexuality. An early issue on “bodymind sexuality” featured an artwork of a dark man doing a deep backbend naked in moonlight. The pose visibly exposed his sexual organs and was, thus, quite directly illustrative of the sexuality of the content. This cover was voted as the Favorite Vintage cover in the recent selection of best Yoga Journal covers of 35 years. In most cases, yoga practice was seen to facilitate intimacy in (heterosexual) relationships through practice of partner or couple’s yoga (e.g., April 1981, December 1997, and May 2001). Sex was also linked with other yoga staples of love and spirituality to construct “sexuality” that consisted of both body and mind practice (e.g., February 1978 and June 1987).
In the early decades, the magazine seemed to struggle somewhat between the relationship of sex and spirituality. For example, in 1989, the magazine presented a two-part series on the compatibility of sex and spirituality, the body, and the mind (April 1989 and October 1989). Further advice was drawn from Indian philosophy, the gurus (e.g., October 1985), and the practice of tantra. For example, the February 1983 issue featured tantra, sex, and spirituality on its cover accompanied by a young Indian couple facing each other in a prayer pose. There were two other covers (April 1981 and June 1994) that pictured an Indian couple and an Asian couple with scant clothing facing each other in a yoga asana with texts such as “couples, love, sex” and “sacred sex.” In these covers, the sexual secrets of yoga practice were connected to other than White people. The one cover (December 1997) on which a White couple engaged in partner yoga depicted the man lifting a woman in an acrobatic, skillful pose without a similar sexual connotation as the Asian and Indian couples portrayed. In the 2000s, the tantra returned to the cover articulations (February 2000 and June 2006), while the journal continued frequent advice on sex life, this time focusing more on creating loving relationship to one’s partner (e.g., May 2001, August 2003, October 2004, August 2005, February 2006, and February 2009). The Yoga Journal also contemplated life without sexual relations (December 2002) and introduced the pleasures of celibacy (April 1987), but such advice was rare in comparison with the advice on how to enhance one’s partnership through yoga informed sex life.
In summary, yoga’s ability to heal physical conditions, to improve the body’s functioning and looks, and enhance one’s sexual relations dominated the bodily discourse of the Yoga Journal covers. Taking care of the body, in addition to the mind, became a more visible aspect of the yoga lifestyle on the magazine covers. While the later covers exclusively portrayed thin, lithe, skillful women, the articulable segment of the Yoga Journal covers deemed yoga suitable for everyone and emphasized its potential to provide the “conscious living of yoga lifestyle.” The visibility of the body, nevertheless, connected yoga closer with the fitness discourses of aesthetics of the healthy looking body and exercise as medicine.
Conclusion
Based on its cover discourse, the Yoga Journal endorsed a model of holistic formulation of arts of living for contemporary (middle class) Americans increasingly lost in the complex world. The awareness of the mind, the body, and social consciousness were at the heart of such living and yoga practice informed, transformed, and then maximized all three facets of the arts of living. The discursive formation of yoga emerged quite different from the media representations of other fitness practices that almost exclusively focused on creating a better looking and/or healthier body (e.g., Duncan, 1994; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; Jette, 2006; Markula, 1995). Previous research also demonstrated that the media representations of the fit, feminine body were tools for anatomo-political control that created docile bodies through incessant self-surveillance and for biopolitical control that assigned healthy exercise as individual women’s responsibility. Yoga acquired a substance distinct from these types of representations when social awareness and “mindfulness” (in addition to the body) supported “conscious living.” But did this substance free yoga from neoliberal control?
According to the Yoga Journal covers, “conscious living” required a strong connection to awareness of social, cultural, and environmental issues such as ecology, knowing about different religions and cultures, and caring for peace and community. As one cover summarized, “Connect with yourself, community, the world” through the self-regulatory practice of yoga (December 2006). A voluntary engagement with such issues could be seen as resistance to neoliberal control that “depoliticized” the connection between the micro-level individual concerns and national level macropolitics (Miller & Rose, 2010). It was noticeable, however, that the elements of social awareness were gradually individualized to “self-care:” ecological consumption of fashion, eating organic foods, and taking care of one’s health. In addition, the Yoga Journal promoted specifically an American yoga community. When the earlier cultural connections outside the United States vanished, the magazine celebrated yoga’s increased multiplicity and seemed to accept the resulting commercialization of yoga. Such diversification might have “liberated” yoga from adherence to “authentic” practice and the strict obedience to “correct” teachings of selected “real” gurus. Nevertheless, although social awareness was a foundation for the distinct “yoga community” in the United States, this discourse maintained neoliberal governance not by openly excluding the political and social but by harnessing them within its own rationale.
The yoga self that was characterized by happiness, love, joy, and inner strength was another feature that distinguished the Yoga Journal discourse from the discourses of popular fitness. While fragments similar psychological dimension (e.g., happiness and feeling good) appeared within the popular fitness promotion, they usually intertwined with the quest for the ideal feminine body (e.g., Eskes, Duncan, & Miller, 1998; Markula, 2001; Smith, 2007). On the Yoga Journal covers, the self comprised an independent part of yoga lifestyle. Similar to Lea (2009), the Yoga Journal covers advocated yoga as a tool for discovering one’s true, unchanging self lost in the frenzied consumerism. Such a focus could be seen as “liberating” the yogi from consumerist panoptic self-surveillance of her body shape. However, the yoga lifestyle was designed to maximize happiness through educated “self-care.” This type of yoga promotion reinforced the logic of the self-enterprising individual who was only “liberated” to freely take responsibility for following the neoliberal rationale of self-care. The yoga self was, thus, tightly implicated within the neoliberal enterprise (Foucault, 2008).
The themes characterizing social awareness and the yoga mind drew yoga subtly but tightly within the net of the neoliberal governmentality. The yoga body could be less controlled by anatomo-politics because it entered the discourse formation relatively late. The analysis, nevertheless, revealed a yoga body shape that was feminine, thin, lithe, flexible, and retained its youthfulness similar to other women’s (fitness) magazine cover representations (e.g., Duncan, 1994; Jette, 2006; Markula, 1995). The normalization of the singular ideal yoga body was likely to encourage continuous self-surveillance, and thus bring yoga within the anatomo-political control. The Yoga Journal covers differed from the stereotypical representations of the fit, feminine body by picturing an active body practicing demanding yoga asanas. This could be seen to disrupt the focus on bodily appearance common in other fitness magazines. However, the asanas depicted on the covers were typically performed at very advanced level and would require prolonged disciplined practice of yoga. Foucault (1991) explained how precise use of space, time, and strictly prescribed exercise acted as disciplinary techniques of docility. The skillful cover models exemplified perfect precision, control, correct timing, and effortless movement as well as the perfect “looks.” Over the three decades, the Yoga Journal cover representations gradually connected yoga with both the governmental control (by individualizing social concerns and by emphasizing voluntary responsibility for self-care by the autonomous individual) and the anatomo-political control (by disciplinary control of the normalized yoga body) of neoliberal society.
It was apparent, however, that yoga was openly positioned as an alternative practice to Westernized culture on the Yoga Journal covers. For example, yoga acted as an alternative healing practice to several Western physical and mental illnesses. However, as Strauss (2005) observed earlier, on the Yoga Journal covers, yoga’s healing power became “authenticated” and “modernized” with creditable scientific research results. Therefore, yoga’s alternative position was frequently confirmed by the Western medical and psychological knowledge. These knowledges supported the dominance the neoliberal rationale for individualized fitness and health (e.g., Markula, 2001). Similarly, the yoga lifestyle was constructed as an alternative to the consumerist society, but this quest transformed into conscious consumption of “natural,” organic, or “ecological” products as a part of the individual’s search for a happy and effective life in the current neoliberal society.
Based on my reading of the Yoga Journal covers, the discursive formation of yoga, in many ways, was interlinked with power diagram of neoliberal governmentality. At the same time, this analysis might also explain some of the popularity of postural yoga in the United States: It has settled well in its current cultural neoliberal context as an option for Western individuals to adopt the form of conduct defined through building the healthful looking body and through discovering the happy, true, and calm self and its connection to yoga community (see also Strauss, 2005).
My reading of postural yoga has been based on selected popular media texts. Consequently, there might be a multiplicity of yoga practices that are not located within the discursive formation revealed in this article. These “marginalized” knowledges, however, did not populate the Yoga Journal covers. It is also necessary to engage in further analysis of the actual content of the Yoga Journal to provide further nuances to the discursive formation of the cover texts. In order to avoid the neoliberal formation of yoga, the practitioners should adopt a yoga substance different from the one revealed in this article. The diverse yoga venues and other yoga media might provide further spaces for alternative voices within the American yoga community. On the other hand, many practitioners might not want to challenge the discursive formation of yoga but rather, are looking for self-empowerment within the parameters of the neoliberal rationale of individual self-care. In this case, the mere need for physical practice for such purposes in the current American society should be of great research interest.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions. The author is particularly indebted to Jim Denison for his valuable support.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.