Introduction to the History of Modern Yoga

Please join Laura M. Dunn, PhD for a webinar on the history of modern yoga in the West. During this webinar, Laura will discuss important historical processes and issues that have given rise to “modern yoga.” This includes figures such as Swami Vivekananda and Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, events such as British colonization, and modern phenomena such as Western esotericism, capitalism, and psychology. This webinar aims to raise important questions about modern yoga’s spiritual and practical aims as well as provide insights about its future developments.

Laura M. Dunn, Ph.D., is faculty at the Graduate Theological Union, Naropa, and Windward Community College, and coordinator of the Jesuit School of Theology’s writing program. She is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Dharma Studies. Her areas of expertise are: modern yoga, Śākta-Tantra, and modern nondual Tantra. In her current research, Laura draws from visual culture, sociology, and aesthetics to illuminate the affective and embodied nature of tantric contemplative practices in modernity. Her monograph, Visualizing Power, is an interdisciplinary meditation on immersion into the tantric image of Parā Śakti, which appraises the capacity for tantric visualization practices to mediate the spatio-temporal distance between self and other. She is a Presidential Scholar, Newhall Fellow, and Interreligious Collaborative Research Fellow.