Embodied Reception: South Asian Spiritualities in Contemporary Contexts

Embodied Reception investigates contemporary bodily practices as a mode of transmitting and receiving South Asian religious and spiritual traditions. It explores processes of adoption and adaptation, and the ways in which somatic religious practices are transplanted into new contexts, acquiring new meanings and generating dynamics of their own. Using the concept of ＂embodied reception＂ as a heuristic, the contributors address the dialectic between incorporating religious knowledge by performing bodily practices and opening new avenues for religious meaning-making through bodily experiences.

This collection presents a range of empirical cases: contemplative bodily techniques such as postural yoga, mindfulness, and meditation; ritual practices in modern advaitic satsang; South Indian martial arts; tantric goddess veneration; and contemporary Sāṃkhyayoga practices. The empirical studies span devotional communities, yoga institutions, New Age milieus, and secularized contexts, providing a rich tapestry of contemporary embodied reception in and outside South Asia.

Assembling research on embodied forms of reception in South Asia and in Western countries, this volume advocates for paying close attention to entangled histories of knowledge. Grounded in this empirical outlook, it also speaks to theoretical and methodological debates on travelling bodily practices. The contributions suggest theoretical and methodological frameworks ranging from aesthetics of religion to sociology of knowledge, from ethnographic to cognitive approaches.