MA Yoga Studies

SOAS University of London

The MA Yoga Studies sets out to introduce the student to the roles of yoga and yoga practice in modern society. Yoga practice has long ceased to be exclusively a spiritual technique of the religious elite. Today, yoga is often pursued for the physical benefits it confers, for its potential in well-being as well as for personal development. It is practiced in a wide variety of contexts, in different spaces and for different purposes and has thus become prominent in an array of public discourses. In doing so, yoga is no longer exclusively the domain of individual practice. Its practitioners today encounter yoga in settings often connected to wider issues in society, such as social justice, gender, abuse, race and commercial exploitation. The MA Yoga Studies explores these issues in depth. In order to confer a robust understanding of the issues that shape contemporary yoga practice, it maps first the historical roots of yoga and analyses its many links with the Buddhist and Jaina traditions with which is has always been in close conversation. The student is then guided through key themes that have come to define the roles of yoga in modern society, often viewed through a global lens.