Summer SchoolMedializations of Asian Religions – Reentering the Body in Yoga, Ayurveda, Mindfulness, and Other Practices

Transculturally transformed ideas and practices associated with Asian religions and spirituality such as Yoga, Ayurveda, Mindfulness or the Martial Arts gained tremendous popularity in highly industrialized societies during the past decades. They can be understood as transcultural confluences in which allegedly Asian notions of conditioning mind and body and allegedly Western trends as the ‘therapeutic culture’ come together. The concepts and benefits of these practices are disseminated and advertised primarily through print media, TV, and the Internet. The summer school will focus on this ‘medialization’ as it has decisively influenced form, content, and circulation of these practices.

What is more, the conceptions and exercises in question revolve around body postures, movements and physiological devices as means to influence, transform, heal or optimize body and mind likewise. The lectures and workshops of our summer school will discuss the means of ‘reentering’ the body as well as reintroduce theories of embodiment and experience. Above all it aims at affording an opportunity for the critical appraisal of these highly successful practices between pastimes, therapies and religious aspiration.

• Monday 27.08.2012, 18:00–20:00: Keynote Lecture I: Mark Singleton, St. John´s College, Santa Fe; Respondent: N.N
• Tuesday 28.08.2012, 10:00–12:00: Workshop on Yoga: Mark Singleton
• Tuesday 28.08.2012, 14:00–16:00: Lecture on Mindfulness: Jeff Wilson, Renison University College, Waterloo; Respondent: N.N
• Tuesday 28.08.2012, 16:30–18:00: Workshop on Mindfulness: Jeff Wilson
• Wednesday 29.08.2012, 10:00–12:00: Lecture on Ayurveda: Ananda Samir Chopra, Heidelberg University; Respondent: N.N.
• Wednesday 29.08.2012, 14:00–16:00: Workshop on Ayurveda: Ananda Samir Chopra
• Wednesday 29.08.2012, 16:30–18:00: Lecture on Martial Arts: Sven Wortmann, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum; Respondent: Michael Bergunder, Heidelberg University
• Thursday 30.08.2012, 10:00–12:00: Workshop on Martial Arts: Sven Wortmann
• Thursday 30.08.2012, 14:00–16:00: Keynote Lecture II: Tulasi Srinivas, Emerson College, Boston; Respondent: Inken Prohl, Heidelberg University
• Thursday 30.08.2012, 16:30–18:00: Preparation of short presentations of student´s results
• Friday 31.08.2012, 10:00–13:00: Discussion, student´s presentation and concluding remarks

Dr. Mark Singleton works on the history of ideas in transnational yoga and currently teaches at St. John´s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. He holds a Ph.D in Divinity from Cambridge University, where he was research assistant to Elizabeth De Michelis in 2003–2004. His latest publication Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2009) charts the development of modern modes of postural yoga practice from c.1875 to c.1940. His publications include thirteen entries on ‘Modern Yoga’ for Routledge´s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2009); a guest-edited yoga issue of the journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity (2007); and a co-edited book with Jean Byrne, Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge 2008).

Dr. Jeff Wilson is an assistant professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at the Renison University College, Waterloo. He is an expert on Buddhist traditions, both Asian and North American. In April 2012 he published a book in which he examines Buddhism in the American South: Dixie Dharma: Regionalism and Identity at a Buddhist Temple in the American South, with University of North Carolina Press. Other recent publications are The Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki: Comparative Religion and Religious Studies with University of California Press (2012), Mourning the Unborn Dead: A Buddhist Ritual Comes to America (Oxford University Press 2009) and Buddhism of the Heart: Reflections on Shin Buddhism and Inner Togetherness (Wisdom Publications 2009). He is the founder and chair of the Buddhism in the West Consultation at the American Academy of Religion.

Dr. Ananda Samir Chopra is a medical doctor, currently working as a researcher at the University of Heidelberg, Germany in a project on the modern history of Ayurvedic medicine. He wrote his doctoral thesis on "Theories of Generation in Ancient Indian Medicine - Three Chapters of the Caraka-Samhita Translated from Sanskrit into German with Annotations and Comments". From 1995 till 2009 he served as medical director of the Ayurveda-department at the Habichtswald-Klinik in Kassel, Germany and has for some time been honorary director of studies at the Tagore-Insitute, Bonn, Germany. Chopra's research-interests include the historical development of Ayurveda as a medical science, contemporary practice of Ayurveda in India and Europe, contemporary Ayurvedic education and the clinical applicability of Ayurveda in Germany and Europe.

Sven Wortmann, M.A. is a research assistant at the Religious Studies Department of Protestant Theology / Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions" at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum. His areas of research are Buddhism, Late Vedic Religion, Jainism, Interreligious Perception and Didactics in Sanskrit Education.

Prof. Michael Bergunder is a professor of History of Religions and Mission Studies and the Faculty of Theology at Heidelberg University since 2002. His fields of research are theory and methods in history of religions and intercultural Theology / Mission Studies, new religious movements and esotericism in a global context as well as Pentecostal / charismatic Christianity and history of South Asian Christianity. His latest publications are dealing with Ritual, Caste, and Colonial Discourse in South India (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010) and Studying Global Pentecostalism. Theories and Methods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

Dr. Tulasi Srinivas is an assistant professor at the Emerson College in Boston. In her research she focuses on the cultural politics of religion and the processes of cultural globalization through an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of ideology, experience and subjectivity. Her book Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism through the Sathya Sai Movement (Columbia University Press 2010) tells the promising and problematic story of a rapidly globalizing Indic sect. She is currently working on Threshold of Faith: Reframing Innovative Religion and Ambivalent Globalization in Bangalore City, a manuscript that explores the nature of religious meaning and knowledge in Hindu temples in an era of intense globalization.

Prof. Inken Prohl holds a professorship at Heidelberg University since 2006 in Religious Studies. Her recent interests are modern and transformed forms of Buddhism in Japan, Germany and the US. Her perspective on these fields is that of ‘material religion’ that examines the materiality of objects in religious contexts and their relation and role in these discourses. Together with John Nelson she edits the The Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions, (Leiden: Brill, in print). The results of her field work about the Shintô-Organisation in Japan are published in Religiöse Innovationen. Die Shintô-Organisation World Mate in Japan, (Berlin: Reimer 2006). Since 2011 she is the head of the post graduate programme “Text-Anthropologie” of the collaborative research center SFB 933 “Materiale Textkulturen”.

Application

The Participation of the Summer School is limited to 25 Students. If you would like to take part please send an application to Prof. Inken Prohl. Your Application should include a CV and a letter of motivation. The application deadline is July 15, 2012. The fee has to be paid until July 25, 2012.

Fees

• Students enrolled at the Institute for Religious Studies, Heidelberg University: No cost
• Students enrolled at Heidelberg University: 80 Euro
• Students enrolled at other universities: 150 Euro

The fees include a supporting programme!

Banking Arrangements

Please make all payments to:

Universität Heidelberg 
Baden-Württembergische Bank 
BLZ 600 501 01 
Konto (account number) 7421 5004 36 
SWIFT/BIC: SOLADEST 
IBAN: DE69600501017421500436 
Purpose/Verwendungszweck: Fond 28362 Religionswiss

Please be sure to indicate "Fond 28362" in the "purpose" area of the transaction. Please ensure also that you are listed as the owner of the bank account making the transfer.

Sleeping Accommodation

The student association of the Institute for Religious Studies will organize accomodations at fellow students' residences. After your application has been accepted you will be contacted by the students association for further information.

Summery

• Participation limited to 25 Students
• Applications to: 

  inken.prohl@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de

• Application Deadline: July 15, 2012
• Payment Due: July 25, 2012
• Fees: 0€/80€/150€
• Sleeping Accommodations will be organized at fellow students' residences

Application

Prof. Dr. Inken Prohl 
Universität Heidelberg 
Institut für Religionswissenschaft 
Akademiestraße 4-8 
69117 Heidelberg 
Germany

Coordination

Dimitry Okropiridze

Venue

Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies 
Room 212 
Voßstraße 2 
69115 Heidelberg 
Germany

Young scholars from various disciplines participated at the Summer School of the Institute of Religious Studies at Heidelberg University. Together, they discussed questions of “reentering the body” through allegedly Asian bodily practices as well as connected theories of embodiment and experience.

Focusing on practices as well as ideas associated with Asian religions and spirituality such as Yoga, Ayurveda, Mindfulness or Martial Arts, this Summer School explored two main questions. On the one hand, the speakers and participants examined transcultural transformations that take place when allegedly Asian notions of conditioning mind and body and allegedly Western trends such as “therapeutic culture” amalgamate. On the other hand they discussed how various forms of medialization in the dissemination and advertisement of these practices and ideas through print media, TV, movies, and the Internet, influence form, content, and the circulation of these practices.

On Monday, August 27, 2012, the Summer School started with the first keynote lecture by Dr. Mark Singleton on "The Body at the Centre: Contexts of Modern Postural Yoga". In reconstructing the contexts in which modern postural yoga originated, the scholar from the St. John´s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico showed how the interpretative frame of postural yoga changed over time, when yoga postures and ideas merged with other physical practices and discourses in specific historical contexts. He concluded with the statement that not only are there many yoga-s in various contexts and settings, but also, that there are many bodies to be entered in yoga practice as the concepts and images of bodies changed over time.

The second day of the Summer School, August 28, 2012, began with the Summer School's first workshop, held by Dr. Singleton. Together with the speaker, the participants discussed theoretical questions related to the investigation of yoga and debated in which ways yoga practices can be regarded as religious practice. After this inquiry into the field of yoga, Dr. Jeff Wilson followed and presented his work on mindfulness. In his lecture he presented the origins of mindful practices in the field of Buddhism and their global dissemination. Through the lens of various case examples such as mindful eating, the assistant professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at the Renison University College, Waterloo showed how these practices that were once related to self-discipline, self-management and body control are now situated in the wider field of spirituality. In this new context they are often stripped of their Buddhist rhetorics and marked as practices without rules and for everyone. In his subsequent workshop Dr. Wilson presented different print media material on the topic of mindful practices as well as advertisements to take a closer look at how these practices are mediated.

The third day of the Summer School, Wednesday, August 29, 2012, was dedicated to the case examples of Ayurveda and Martial Arts. In the morning, Dr. Ananda Samir Chopra began with his lecture and workshop on Ayurveda. He focused on the early sources available for the study of Ayurveda and the process of professionalization of the Ayurveda medicine according to a Euro-American biomedical model in the 19th- and 20th -century. He then continued to present how the following movement of Ayurveda practices to Europe and America has been the result of a conscious translation initiated by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Especially in Europe, Ayurveda practices have thereafter been implemented in the field of “alternative and complementary medical systems”. Newly framed as “spiritual practices of wellbeing and wellness”, Dr. Chopra argued, this notion of Ayurveda has subsequently been reimported to India, where this notion of Ayurveda as Wellness has not been present before. In the evening Sven Wortmann, M.A. gave his talk on martial arts. After mapping the field of martial arts with a special focus on Chinese material arts in the Ming and Qing-Dynasty (1368-1911), he continued to discuss the presentation of various martial arts styles in different movies such as Karate Kid (2010) and Ip Man (2008) with a close look at the embedded religious rhetorics and aesthetics.

On Thursday morning, August 30, 2012, Sven Wortmann's continued with a workshop on martial arts that was mainly dedicated to the question of martial arts as religious practice and the distinctive “genderscapes” that come into play in martial arts movies. After a lunch break Dr. Tulasi Srinivas gave the Summer School's second keynote lecture on “Cultural Translation, Embodied Morality, Religious Pluralism and Globalization”. Through the lens of her work on the Sathya Sai Baba Movement, the assistant professor at the Emerson College in Boston discussed recent approaches to globalization, cosmopolitanism, religious pluralism and embodiment. Her main interest lies in reconstructing the “how” of transcultural translation processes as well discussing the theoretical and methodological implications.

The Summer School's last day, Friday, August 31, 2012, was reserved for student presentations, and concluding remarks. The Summer School was held from August 27 to 31, 2012 at the Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies. It was organized by Prof. Dr. Inken Prohl , professor at the Institute of Religious Studies at Heidelberg University.