The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards (41 page)

21
much about the basics:
Starting early in the nineteenth century, scientists tracked carbon dioxide out of unwarranted dread. Buildings were made to maximize ventilation and dilute stale air. People slept with their windows open, even in winter. See Jeff Stein, “How Things Work: An Interview with Michelle Addington,”
Architecture Boston
, March–April 2005, pp. 44–49. The needless fear arose from misinterpretations of the experiments of Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry. In the eighteenth century, he had put small animals under glass jars until they died. The misapprehension arose that the animals had died from their own
pernicious exhalations rather than lack of oxygen. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the forces of social progress united to fight the carbonic peril. The advertised dangers ranged from headaches to death. Interestingly, Paul turned this paranoia on its head, striking a blow for comprehension in an age of muddle. He showed that yogis experienced carbonic acid as a kind of elixir rather than a deadly poison.

21
take fewer breaths:
Paul,
A Treatise
, pp. 8–11. He identified the practice by its correct name,
Kumbhaka
, which in Sanskrit means “like a pot” and connotes filling or holding. For a description, see B. K. S. Iyengar,
Light on Pranayama: The Yogic Art of Breathing
(New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2006), pp. 105–11.

21
“one of the easiest methods”:
Paul,
A Treatise
, p. 13.

21
live in a gupha:
Yogic lore venerated such caves as holy ground. In Paul’s day, sacred gupha dotted the Himalayas and other mountainous parts of India. Inevitably, as yoga grew in popularity, tourists began to seek out the caves. Today, package tours that focus on yoga and meditation often make stops at sacred gupha, after which exhausted sightseers make their way back to luxury hotels and restaurants.

21
“a confined atmosphere”:
Ibid., p. 3.

22
drove his point home:
Ibid., pp. iv, 15–26, 36, 44.

22
let the Punjab yogi survive:
Ibid., pp. 43–44.

22
“promotes a build-up”:
David A. Wharton,
Life at the Limits: Organisms in Extreme Environments
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 77.

22
began a revolution:
His 1851 book languished for years. Then, in 1880,
The Theosophist
, the monthly journal of the Theosophical Society, published in Bombay, began serializing Paul’s book. Soon Indian presses were churning out new versions: a second edition in 1882 at Benares and in 1883 at Calcutta, a third edition in 1888 at Bombay, and a fourth edition in 1899 at Bombay. The printings spread Paul’s naturalism across India and beyond.

23
“as miraculous evidence”:
Lee Siegel,
Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 3.

23
more than 6 percent:
B. D. Tripathi,
Sadhus of India: The Sociological View
(Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1978), pp. 120–24, 217. For other accounts of burial tricks, see Siegel,
Net
, pp. 168–71. For doubts about the Punjab yogi, see Singleton,
Yoga Body
, p. 48.

23
two holy men from India:
Richard Schmidt,
Fakire und Fakirtum im
Alten und Modernen Indien
(Berlin: Verlag von Hermann Barsdorf, 1908), pp. 102–108; Garbe, “On the Voluntary Trance,” pp. 481–82.

23
famous for his precise studies:
Lucile E. Hoyme, “Physical Anthropology and Its Instruments: An Historical Study,”
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology
, vol. 9, no. 4 (Winter 1953), pp. 408–30; Karl Pearson, “Craniological Notes: Professor Aurel von Török’s Attack on the Arithmetical Mean,”
Bibmetrika
, vol. 2, no. 3 (June 1903), pp. 339– 45.

23
in a preliminary report:
Aurel von Török, “Ueber die Yogis oder sog. Fakire in der Milleniums-Aasstellang zu Budapest,”
Correspondenz-Blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie and Urgeschichte
, vol. 27, no. 6 (June 1896), pp. 49–50.

24
sought to revive and modernize Hinduism:
Christophe Jaffrelot, ed.,
Hindu Nationalism: A Reader
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 3–19. In the West, the image of Indian independence tends to focus on Gandhi and his campaign of nonviolence. But many Hindu nationalists called for violent struggle, and the political unrest resulted in a number of riots and killings. See Chetan Bhatt,
Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths
(Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001), pp. 78–79.

24
symbols of all that had gone wrong:
Singleton,
Yoga Body
, pp. 4, 48, 117–18.

24
“an embarrassing heritage”:
Samuel,
The Origins
, p. 336.

24
And it got one:
Urban,
Tantra
, pp. 134–64. Scholars have identified factors beyond science that aided yoga’s modernization. For self-help methods of personal renewal, see De Michelis,
A History
, pp. 116–19. For physical culture, see Singleton,
Yoga Body
, pp. 81–162. For Hindu nationalism, see Joseph S. Alter, “Yoga and Physical Education: Swami Kuvalayananda’s Nationalist Project,”
Asian Medicine
, vol. 3, no. 1 (2007), pp. 20–36.

25
first major experimental investigation:
Alter,
Yoga
, pp. 27, 30–31, 73–108.

25
“sending out youths”:
Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “The Kaivalyadhama: A Review of Its Activities from October 1924 to March 1930,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 4, no. 1 (July 1930), p. 75.

25
“He never wanted”:
Interview, O. P. Tiwari, secretary, Kaivalyadhama Yoga Ashram, Lonavla, India, June 27, 2007.

25
threw himself into the nationalist struggle:
Here I follow the review of Gune’s early life as recounted by Mandhar L. Gharote and Manmath M. Gharote,
Swami Kuvalayananda: A Pioneer of Scientific Yoga and Indian Physical Education
(Lonavla, India: The Lonavla Yoga Institute, 1999), pp. 11–22. Early in his career, Gune took the name Swami Kuvalayananda
as a literary pseudonym. Since it was not a formal monastic title, I refer to him throughout this book as Gune.

26
a wealthy industrialist:
Pratap Sheth was a rich Hindu nationalist and a whirlwind of philanthropy. In 1914, he founded the Khandesh Education Society, a private group that supported schools for Indian youth. In 1916, he founded the Indian Institute of Philosophy, which advocated yogic study. He also funded Balkrishna Shivram Moonje, one of the most militant early figures of Indian independence. To a remarkable degree, Sheth’s agenda of putting social activism over asceticism prefigured the goals that came to characterize Gune’s life as well as the reformulated yoga, making him a major if unknown figure in its rise. Pratap Sheth, sometimes written as Pratapseth, was also known as Agarwal Motilal. For a biographical sketch, see Anonymous, “Motilal Manekchand Agarwal,” in Waman P. Kabadi, ed.,
Indian Who’s Who 1937–38
(Bombay: Yeshanand & Co., 1937), p. 479. For wider portraits, see Gharote and Gharote,
Kuvalayananda
, pp. 14–15, 24, 156, 158; G. R. Malkani,
A Life Sketch of Srimant Pratapseth: The Founder of the Indian Institute of Philosophy
(Amalner, India: Indian Institute of Philosophy, 1952). For his funding of Moonje, see Narayan Gopal Dixit, ed.,
Dharmaveer Dr. B. S. Moonje Commemoration Volume: Birth Centenary Celebration, 1872–1972
(Nagpur, India: Centenary Celebration Committee, 1972), p. 74.

26
benefactor again came to the rescue:
Gharote and Gharote,
Kuvalayananda
, p. 24.

26
unique for the day:
A modern bibliography on the science of yoga lists Gune as the lead author on forty-eight papers—far more than any other investigator back then. See Trisha Lamb,
Psychophysiological Effects of Yoga
, International Association of Yoga Therapists, Prescott, Arizona, 2006), pp. 77–80.

26
“We cannot make”:
Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “Editorial Notes,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 3, nos. 3 and 4 (July–October 1928), second impression, 1931, p. 168.

26
maintained a virtual taboo:
The word “Tantra” appears nowhere in the pages of
Yoga Mimansa
during the decades in which Gune ran the journal, according to a computer search of its texts that I performed in February 2010. Nor does the word appear in Gune’s 1931 book, Swami Kuvalayananda,
Popular Yoga Asanas
(Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1974).

27
found that the poses:
Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “Blood Pressure Experiments,” “A Few More Figures of Blood Pressure,” and “Yogic Poses and Blood Pressure,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1926), second impression 1932, pp. 92–128.

28
a pioneering set of measurements
:
Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “Determination of CO
₂
and O
₂
,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 4, no. 2 (November 1930), pp. 123–57; “O
₂
Absorption and CO
₂
Elimination in Pranayama,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 4, no. 4 (October 1933), pp. 267–89.

28
“The idea that”:
Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “Physiological and Spiritual Values of Pranayama,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 4, no. 4 (October 1933), p. 312.

28
sent free copies:
Interview, O. P. Tiwari, secretary of Kaivalyadhama Yoga Ashram, Lonavla, India, June 27, 2007.

29
a hero of the nationalist intelligentsia:
One tribute came in March 1930 from Motilal Nehru, founder of what would become India’s most powerful political dynasty. The family produced three prime ministers. In a letter, Nehru said Gune had shown that yoga could withstand “the fierce light of modern sciences” and—in a dig at colonialism—found it to be “well in advance of all that has so far been discovered in the West.” He said every Indian had a duty to support Gune “and afford him a full and fair opportunity to realize his ideals for the physical and cultural uplift of India.” See Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “Editorial Notes: Pandit Motilal Nehru’s Note,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 4, no. 1 (July 1930), p. 3.

29
recommended the calming effect:
Gharote and Gharote,
Kuvalayananda
, pp. 57–58, 64–65, 96–99; Joseph S. Alter,
Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 18–19.

29
yoga in classes of mass instruction:
Gharote and Gharote,
Kuvalayananda
, pp. 21, 88–95.

29
“peculiarly fitted”:
Anonymous (but clearly J. G. Gune), “Kaivalyadhma—An Appeal,”
Yoga Mimansa
, vol. 2, no. 4 (October 1926), second impression, December 1932, p. 294.

29
“probably had a more profound impact”:
Alter,
Gandhi’s Body
, p. 68.

29
played a skillful role:
James Manor,
Political Change in an Indian State: Mysore 1917–1955
(Columbia, MO: South Asia Books, 1978), pp. 1–27, 73–94; De Michelis,
A History
, pp. 196–97.