Between sports and subjective spirituality: Nordic yoga practitioners' perspectives on yoga, religion, and spirituality

The topic of this dissertation is Nordic yoga practitioners’ perspectives on yoga, religion, and spirituality, based on a questionnaire and interviews. In the monograph I explore who the Nordic yoga respondents are, why they have started (and continued) a yoga practice, and their attitudes and alignment to traditional religion, non-religion and subjective spiritualities. In the contemporary popular view, yoga is typically associated with postural yoga as a fitness – or exercise activity that mainly engages the physical body (Jain 2015). Popular culture presents yoga as a health-promoting activity which enables the individual to better withstand stress, and as an aid in a culturally mandated quest for self-development and self-improvement. However, as it emerges in my material, yoga is also understood as a mind-body practice that connects the mental and the physical (and perhaps spiritual) aspects of a person in a way other forms of exercise do not. Respondents’ practices encompass everything from sitting meditation and expressions of personal devotion, to intensely physical, secular asana practice. An important aspect of this dissertation is yoga respondents’ “conversion” stories. There are many reasons why respondents have started a yoga practice, but health and social connections emerge as most common. Traveling is also an unexpectedly important factor in respondents’ yoga encounters. For most practitioners, yoga is not connected to religion. The category religion is primarily understood as organized, institutionalized world religion (in this case Lutheran Christianity) and as staid and undesirable – even among the respondents who self-define as Christian. Most respondents, however, are "nones" and/ or subjectively spiritual. In the yoga material, non-religion and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. However, yoga respondents take inspiration from yoga spirituality/ philosophy and modern, western Buddhism much more than from New Age or alternative spirituality. In addition to better health and quality of ...