The Pluralist

Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. . . . To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.

—Henry David Thoreau

I knew Vivekananda, when he was here, have read both his books on Hatha Yoga, and did then try (some 6 or 7 years ago) to practice some of the breathing exercises. But I am a bad subject for such things, critical and indocile, so it soon stopped.

—William James

as de michelis has argued, americans have been fascinated by the psychosomatic discipline of yoga since the turn of the twentieth century.¹ The transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson were influenced by Vedantic philosophy, and William James was intrigued by neo-Vedantic yogic practices as promulgated by Swami Vivekananda.² Since then, yoga has become a global phenomenon with approximately 20.4 million Americans regularly practicing the discipline.³ In this essay, I will consider the implications of yoga practice for pragmatist philosophy and, more specifically, for the discipline of somaesthetics as developed by Richard Shusterman.

In an early work, Shusterman notes that “practical somaesthetics” entails practicing psychosomatic disciplines that can improve somaesthetic experience and that such an endeavor goes hand in hand with critical discourse that contextualizes and examines issues concerning somaesthetic philosophies and practices (Pragmatist Aesthetics 262–83).⁴ More specifically, Shusterman has devoted a great deal of time to considering different somaesthetic philosophies and practices in order to draw attention to the manner in which they affect the quality of somaesthetic experience. One aspect of this critical approach is his consideration of the biographies and [End Page 205] philosophies of embodiment of well-known philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, William James, and John Dewey.⁵ The reader finds that Shusterman criticizes approaches that ignore important aspects of somaesthetic experience—for example, he is critical of William James’s puritanical subjugation of the body—and he criticizes more comprehensive approaches—such as Foucault’s extreme sadomasochistic sexuality—that veer away from meliorist ends. Shusterman generally lauds Eastern practices such as Zen Buddhism, yoga, and tai chi since they avoid the problems associated with a strong mind-body dualism and consequently outline more holistic accounts of embodied experience (Thinking through the Body 262–87, 288–314).⁶ These practices are rooted in theoretical frameworks and techniques that allow practitioners to cultivate novel proprioceptive and kinesthetic sensations and generally encourage a more holistic approach to embodiment that is valuable to individuals living in stressfully fragmented societies. Modern postural yoga (MPY) is paradigmatic in this respect since its somatic philosophy, meditative, and postural techniques can produce sensations of somatic integration and feelings of well-being, and can reduce physical and mental stress.

To my knowledge, beyond advocating for their ability to enrich somaesthetic experience, Shusterman and others within the discipline of somaesthetics have not critically considered the implications of practicing disciplines with roots in ancient Eastern cultures in modern contexts.⁷ It seems to be the case that if a practice is sufficiently meliorist in nature, then one simply should practice it so that one may attain a more holistic sense of embodiment. But what does the practitioner make of the theoretical frameworks for development of practices such as qigong, tai chi, and MPY, and, more specifically, how does one square them with the modern scientific understanding of the human body? What does one make of the fact that the postural yoga practice that currently has widespread appeal is grounded in an ancient Vedic philosophy of the body that is largely at odds with that outlined by Western science and medicine, and the fact that a growing amount of scientific research has demonstrated that the effects of yogic postural, breathing, and meditative techniques can be better explained by a scientific approach that replaces classical Indian esotericism? (see Broad). What does a pragmatist have to say about the relationship between these two distinctive approaches to embodiment, and what bearing, if any, does this have on the contemporary yoga practitioner?

Perhaps the ancient somatic philosophies should all be bracketed together, but is it appropriate for...