Experiencing the Body in Yoga Practice

Experiencing the Body in Yoga Practice: Meanings and Knowledge Transfer inspires more mindful and contemplative qualitative research on body and knowledge transfer in bodily practices in hatha yoga. The book explores the work of the mind, as well as the role of emotions and body sensations in perceiving reality and in reflecting on it. Procedures and research methods are an extension of our mind, which wants to reach into the social reality to describe it objectively. It usually refuses body and emotions. The techniques of sampling and representativeness are also tools of the mind. Using these tools, our contact with social reality produces emotions and feelings of the body. These phenomena surrounding the mind and body often go unnoticed during research and are only partially reported in the conclusions. Experiencing the Body in Yoga Practice: Meanings and Knowledge Transfer examines this gap. It presents the application of a contemplative way of thinking and proceeding in qualitative social research and a first-person perspective, focusing on experiencing lived body and knowledge transfer in hatha yoga. It analyzes how the mind focuses and stops working, proceeds in the finite province of the meaning of yoga, how the body produces emotions and deals with them during yoga sessions, and how the knowledge is transferred by using the body in some linguistic and cultural context. The book will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists who want to concentrate on and analyze the experiences of the body from contemplative and phenomenological perspectives. It is also key reading for all practitioners dealing with body and bodywork, such as in sports, recreational activities, physical education, rehabilitation, physical work, educational activities, etc.

Krzysztof T. Konecki is a full professor at the Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz, Poland. He is the editor-in-chief of Qualitative Sociology Review and is president of the Polish Sociological Association. Aleksandra Placzek is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Lodz, Poland. Dagmara Tarasiuk is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Lodz, Poland.

Introduction Part I: Experiencing the Body and Transfer of Knowledge 1. Experiencing the Body in the Process of Transferring Bodily Knowledge. Linguistic Cultural Formulas 2. Producing Knowledge Together. Dialogue of Bodies in the Practice of Hatha Yoga. 3. Body in Space, Space in Body. Experiencing Bodily Knowledge at a Place and Time of Hatha Practice. Part II: Recognizing Emotions and Their Role in Reconstructing the Definition of Self 4. Experiencing Emotions in Hatha Yoga Practice. 5. Experiencing the Body in Therapeutic Sessions of Hatha Yoga. PART III: Hatha Yoga as a Reality 6. Concentration as a Problem of the Socialized Mind. The Practice of Hatha Yoga as a Laboratory of the Concentration of the Mind. 7. Hatha Yoga Practice as the Finite Province of Meaning. Phenomenological Explicitation from the First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives. 8. Savasana as a Sub-province of Meaning Conclusions Methodological Appendix Bibliography