Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the sensing body in an Amsterdam yoga school. Tattva Yoga classes modulate movement and / in space to produce a particular atmosphere with which students attune, revealing the sensory and affective mechanics which underpin embodied subject cultivation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper articulates the sensory and affective mechanic of classes taught in an Amsterdam yoga school. In centering posture practice as a means for ethical, therapeutic, and spiritual transformation, Tattva Yoga practices constitute self making techniques in which practitioners “use the body to go beyond the body”. While considerable work interrogates the subjectivities encouraged by particular yoga discourses, practices, and forms, relatively little considers the experiential dimension of the classes in which these practices are taught. Tattva Yoga provides an ideal case for such attention, with its reputation for classes blending rigorous physical exercise and spiritual teachings into what students refer to as a “rollercoaster” experience.

An autoethnographic account of one Tattva Yoga class traces how the teacher’s modulation of moving bodies and space produces a particular atmosphere with which students attune in through sensory labor. The result is the continuous oscillation between intensity and release that characterizes the Tattva Yoga “rollercoaster”. Attending to the sensory and affective mechanics of the class reveals that Tattva Yoga’s practices for personal transformation generate and deploy the body through the use of décor, music, temperature, light, and scent, as much as through choreography of bodily postures and incorporation of teachings on yoga philosophy. The case underscores the importance of attention to the body as a locus of not only somatic and discursive efforts but of sensations, movement, and fluctuating intensities.