2. Daniela Bevilacqua | Hindu Asceticism and Haṭha Yoga

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Daniela Bevilacqua (Post-Doc
Research Fellow, SOAS) about her background in History and
Anthropology, her doctoral work on the Rāmānandī Sampradāya, her
ethnographic fieldwork for the Haṭha Yoga Project, and the role
of yoga among sādhus today in contemporary India.

Speaker Bio
Daniela Bevilacqua is a South-Asianist who received
her PhD in Civilizations of Africa and Asia from Sapienza
University of Rome and in Anthropology from the University of
Paris Nanterre. Her PhD research was published by Routledge under
the title, Modern Hindu Traditionalism in Contemporary India: The
Śrī Maṭh and the Jagadguru Rāmānandācārya in the Evolution of the
Rāmānandī Sampradāya. She is now a Post-Doc Research Fellow at
SOAS, working for the ERC-funded Hatha Yoga Project (2015-2020).


Through her groundbreaking fieldwork in India, Daniela looks at
the present practices of Haṭha Yoga among sādhus belonging to
“traditional” samprādayas connected with the physical practice of
yoga and austerities. The purpose of this research is to confront
ethnographic material with textual and historical evidences to
reconstruct the development of these practices.

Links


YS 103 | Yoga and Hindu Asceticsm, Past and Present

"Let the Sādhus Talk. Ascetic understanding of Haṭha Yoga and
yogāsanas"

Modern Hindu Traditionalism in Contemporary India (Routledge,
2019)

Yogasana | Embodied Liberation II | Brunei Gallery | SOAS
University of London (YouTube video)

https://www.instagram.com/dhanya_83