9. Jason Birch | Manuscript Hunting and the History of Medieval Yogas

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Jason Birch (SOAS, University
of London) about his early training in yoga and Indology, the
early 2000s yoga scene in Rishikesh, Sanskrit manuscript hunting
in India, his Oxford thesis on the Amanaska, Rāja Yoga
traditions, the history of āsana, the significance of the
Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, Krishnamacharya and the legendary "Yoga
Koruṇṭa", embodied philology, and more.

Speaker Bio

Jason Birch is a post-doctoral researcher fellow at SOAS,
University of London. After completing a first class honours
degree in Sanskrit and Hindi at the University of Sydney under
Dr. Peter Oldmeadow, Jason was awarded a Clarendon scholarship to
undertake a DPhil in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford,
under the supervision of Prof. Alexis Sanderson. His dissertation
(submitted 2013) focused on the earliest known Rājayoga text
called the Amanaska and included a critical edition and annotated
translation of this Sanskrit work along with a monographic
introduction.


He is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at SOAS working
on the Haṭha Yoga Project, a 5-year ERC funded project which is
now in the final year of completion. His particular area of
research for the project is the history of physical yoga on the
eve of colonialism. Jason is currently editing and translating
six principle texts on Haṭha and Rājayoga, which will soon be
available for publication. 


He also collaborates with Jacqueline Hargreaves on The
Luminescent, an online hub for sharing yoga research. 



Links


The Proliferation of Āsana-s in Late-Mediaeval Yoga Texts
(Birch 2018)

The Yoga of the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati: Haṭhayoga on the Cusp of
Modernity (Birch & Singleton 2019)

http://hyp.soas.ac.uk/

https://soas.academia.edu/jasonbirch

https://www.theluminescent.org