5. James Mallinson | The History and Practice of Haṭha Yoga

In this episode, we speak with Dr. James Mallinson (SOAS,
University of London) about his travels through India, meeting
his guru, his journey to becoming an Indologist, his pioneering
research on the history of yoga and yogīs, key findings from the
Haṭha Yoga Project, and more.

Speaker Bio
Dr. James Mallinson is Reader in Indology and Yoga
Studies at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on the
history and current traditional practice of yoga through the
methods philology, ethnography and art history. He is currently
in the final year of the Haṭha Yoga Project, a five-year
six-person research project on the history of physical yoga
funded by the European Research Council. The project’s core
outputs will be ten critical editions of Sanskrit texts on
physical yoga and four monographs on its history and current
practice. 


In addition to numerous articles and chapters, Dr. Mallinson’s
publications include Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics, 2017,
co-authored with Mark Singleton) and The Khecarīvidyā of
Ādinātha, a Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of an
Early Text on Haṭhayoga (Routledge, 2007). The latter is a
revision of his doctoral thesis, which was supervised by
Professor Alexis Sanderson at the University of Oxford, where Dr.
Mallinson also read Sanskrit as an undergraduate. 


Dr. Mallinson has spent more than ten years living in India with
traditional ascetics and practitioners of yoga, and at the 2013
Kumbh Mela was awarded the title of Mahant by the Rāmānandī
Saṃpradāya, which was documented in a BBC film entitled West
Meets East, featuring his childhood friend and actor Dominic
West. 



Links


YS 108 | Roots of Haṭha Yoga

The Haṭha Yoga Project

https://soas.academia.edu/JamesMallinson 

West Meets East BBC Documentary