Paper short abstract:

This paper situates yoga within a greater evolution of wellness practices in the neoliberal era. Drawing on ethnographic encounters in households in the US, the paper proposes that yoga can help facilitate intimate relations within the home.

Paper long abstract:

The rise in individualised wellness practices since the 1980s—including fitness, 'healthy' eating, and mindfulness—is arguably linked to the neoliberal expectation that the self must be fit enough to adapt to the increasingly privitised political economy. Using ethnographic data from middle class households in Providence, RI, this paper situates yoga within larger middle class wellness practices that have surged in this era. Within this ethnographic context, yoga is a somewhat unique practice that links the 'fit' body to a sense of greater mindful or spiritual wellness. Yoga emerges as a site for empowerment and dissent within the neoliberal social order without wholly rejecting the era's demand for self-discipline. This paper argues that one of the overlooked facets of this dissent is the embodied relationality of yoga, particularly within domestic encounters. In several of the households studied, yoga emerged as a unifying relational encounter, linking participants not so much to their inner selves or yoga communities, but rather to their spouses and children. Yoga is presented as a backstage bodily practice of domestic space that helps bridge the gap between the concurrent need for solitude and familial intimacy in an individualist society.