Tracing the Path of Yoga

Stuart Sarbacker

You can watch the recording of this event on YouTube .

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The SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies is excited to be hosting a celebration of Stuart Ray Sarbacker’s new book: Tracing the Path of Yoga . The book is a comprehensive and theory-rich investigation of the history and philosophy of yoga, from its Indian origins to the contemporary context.

Stuart Ray Sarbacker is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Oregon State University. He is the author of Samādhi: The Numinous and Cessative in Indo-Tibetan Yoga , also published by SUNY Press, and (with Kevin Kimple) The Eight Limbs of Yoga: A Handbook for Living Yoga Philosophy .

In this book, he argues that yoga can be understood first and foremost as a discipline of mind and body that is represented in its narrative and philosophical literature as resulting in both numinous and cessative accomplishments that correspond, respectively, to the attainment of this-worldly power and otherworldly liberation. Sarbacker demonstrates how the yogic quest for perfection as such is situated within the concrete realities of human life, intersecting with issues of politics, economics, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as reflecting larger Indic religious and philosophical ideals.

For this event, Stuart Ray Sarbacker will be joined by Karen O’Brien Kop and Suzanne Newcombe.

Suzanne Newcombe is a senior lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, UK, and Honorary Director of Inform, an independent charitable organisation which researches and provides information about minority religions and is based at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London, UK.

Karen O’Brien-Kop is a lecturer in Asian Religions and Ethics at the University of Roehampton, UK. Karen has a forthcoming book on Bloomsbury Academic called 'Rethinking Classical Yoga and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality'.

This event will be bookable via our Eventbrite page.