The Path of Modern Yoga

The modern practice of yoga as a form of exercise developed from medieval haṭha yoga in the 20th century by discarding most of its practices and focussing on asanas, physical postures. At the same time, it acquired an element of aerobic exercise, initially through the adoption from physical culture of Surya Namaskar, the series of postures connected by flowing movements known as the sun salutation. In some modern styles of yoga, these flowing movements have developed into vinyasas, connecting sequences used throughout the yoga session.[2]

The book begins with 5 chapters on Yogendra, a pioneer of yoga as exercise.

The book received some positive reviews. Krysta Gibson, reviewing the book for New Spirit Journal, writes that the book explains "how we went from yoga being a hidden, weird thing hippies and new agers did, to yoga studios on almost very corner". In her view, Goldberg "does a masterful job" of explaining the transformation.[8] The San Francisco Book Review likewise comments that Goldberg describes yoga's "massive transition from spiritual practice to focusing on health and fitness". The review states that Goldberg's case is that "instead of desecrating a sacred tradition, this change moved yoga from solitary and inaccessible to embodied, spiritual, and open to everyone".[9] The trade journal Publishers Weekly calls the book "a richly detailed examination of modern yoga" and suggests that it will appeal to both practitioners and scholars.[10]

The book devotes 7 of its 35 chapters to the yoga guru B. K. S. Iyengar.

Niki Whiting, writing in Spiral Nature Magazine, was more doubtful. She comments that while she admired the research behind it, she struggled with the book, as it isn't an overview of the tradition and poses, nor a history of yoga's changes in the past 40 years, but "a specific history of yoga in the 20th century". She regretted the lack of an Introduction section in the book, and had been hoping for what she thought the subtitle suggested, a more spiritual or theological exploration.[7]

The author and yoga teacher Matthew Remski compares historians of yoga to the fable of the blind men describing an elephant (one finds it flexible and leathery, another like a massive pillar, a third like a rope, a fourth smooth, polished, and cold...): Norman Sjoman[lower-alpha 1] found yoga influenced by South Indian wrestling exercises; Joseph Alter[lower-alpha 2] found it torn between esoteric and scientific; Mark Singleton[lower-alpha 3] discovered a collision of Western physical culture with Indian spirituality. In Remski's view, along comes "Goldberg with a dozen years of dogged research, a sleuthing style metered out in engaging chunks, a deep appreciation for the embodied sensations offered by competing visions of asana practice, a sharp eye for human foibles and historical oddities" and "makes a bold attempt to ride the elephant. As blindfolded as everyone else, he wobbles a bit, but hangs on for long enough to produce something that a lot of people have been waiting for: a penetrating, body-aware cultural history of a modern spirituality, written through richly realized characters." What Remski says he misses in Goldberg's book is answers to questions like what Indian physical yoga was before the transformation.[11]

• Yoga Body, Mark Singleton's 2010 book on the origins of global yoga in physical culture
• Selling Yoga, Andrea Jain's 2015 book on the commercialisation of global yoga
• The Subtle Body, Stefanie Syman's 2010 book on the history of yoga in America

• Goldberg, Elliott (2016). The Path of Modern Yoga : the history of an embodied spiritual practice. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions. ISBN 978-1-62055-567-5. OCLC 926062252.