Paper short abstract:

The forest yoga phenomenon is a new well-being trend in 2020's Finland. Drawing from the fields of folklore and landscape studies, I will analyze the relationships between the forest landscape, the forest yoga practitioner's body and the imagined 'Kalevalaic' past's presence in the practice.

Paper long abstract:

Forests have been represented as 'sacred' places for Finns in national-romantic discourses for centuries. Currently, these discourses are increasingly brought forth again, as peoples' growing awareness of the climate crisis and ecological catastrophes, fragmenting spiritual identities, imageries of popular culture, and the mobility restrictions during the pandemic have generated new urban lifestyles. Local forests are seen and experienced, on one hand, as sources for individual well-being, and places for creating ecologically driven nature connectedness on the other. The historical folklore materials such as Baltic-Finnic oral poetry or folk beliefs are utilized in these practices.

In this paper, I will scrutinize the use of folklore in the new Finnish forest practices. I will especially concentrate on the forest yoga phenomenon that is a new well-being trend that has taken shape in 2010's Finland. This branch of modern yoga is based on well-known hatha yoga poses and meditation, but the practitioners link it with Finnic oral traditions. The forest yoga practice refers to the transnational new spiritual trends that are gaining popularity especially among urban and middle-class women globally.

In forest yoga, forests are seen as transtemporal spaces in which the materiality of forest is interpreted as an interface that connects the space and the yogi's body to the imagined distant and 'Kalevalaic' past of Finnishness. Furthermore, the forest landscape is interpreted as having otherworldly dimensions such as connections to the 'underworld'.