Paper short abstract:

The forest yoga phenomenon is a new well-being trend in 2020's Finland. Drawing from the fields of folklore and religious 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:

The forest yoga phenomenon 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, for example by renaming the yoga poses after the characters of the national epic Kalevala or by associating features of the forest landscape with certain 'Kalevalaic' images. The forest yoga practice refers to the transnational new spiritual trends that are gaining popularity especially among urban and middle-class women globally.

Through scrutinizing field work materials and the book Metsäjooga (Jokiniva 2018), I will analyze the relationships between the forest landscape, the yogi's body and the 'Kalevalaic' past's presence in the practice. In forest yoga, forests are seen as transtemporal spaces in which the materiality of the 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'. I argue that the image of the forest in these kinds of new spiritual practices is highly influenced by the transnational flows and tendencies to sacralize nature and 'self' (e.g., Lynch 2007). The images are thus deeply affected by the romantic views on nature and selfhood as well as the British-American (colonialist) ideas of 'wilderness spirituality', transnational environmental and neopagan movements, and popular culture.