Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an auto-ethnography of a two year yoga teacher training, and ethnographic interviews with other trainees, this paper gives a phenomenological analysis of the embodied transformation of self that characterises becoming a yoga teacher as a particular kind of rite of passage.

Paper long abstract:

What propositions about 'the self' are central to yoga philosophy and practice? How are these philosophies embodied in practice and passed down through particular kinds of pedagogical techniques in certain kind of lineage formations between teachers and students? What particular combination of embodied, inter-subjective and materially mediated relations characterise the teacher training process and the practice of yoga as a physical discipline? How does the novice teacher trainee emerge as a particular kind of transformed person as the outcome of their training?

This paper draws on auto-ethnography and ethnographic interviews with other novice yoga teachers, and their instructors, to explore what the learning journey towards becoming a yoga teacher means in terms of the transformation of the self. The paper situates contemporary yoga teaching practice as a mainstream concern of modern Western life in one of London's most successful and commercially viable studios. The paper therefore makes possible an interrogation of the consequences for the yoga tradition of its articulation with the forces of globalisation and capitalism. What does this articulation mean for the paths that different yoga teachers take as they navigate the terrain of an ethical practice at a particular moment in the UK of growing environmental, social and political/economic crisis?