Cecilia Bastos - Mind, body and subjectivity: the performance of yoga and meditation practitioners

Mind, body and subjectivity: the performance of yoga and meditation practitioners
Cecilia Bastos National Museum - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
In this presentation, I analyse the dimensions of spirituality related to the body and the subjectivities of yoga and meditation practitioners, students of Vedanta that I have been researching since 2009. These are practitioners who maintain a learning connection with a teacher or guru and are dedicated to carrying out a "life of yoga", that is, seeking self-observation as a form of self-knowledge, and of knowing their habits and their own patterns of reaction. In other words, they try to observe how they react to events and to others in order to gain physical and mental balance and to become "free" from samsara (understood as a cycle in which people go through periods of ups and downs, happiness and sadness). These mental exercises are practised with the goal of reaching an ideal state of wisdom that is never really achieved or fully conquered: it is more about looking at their way of life and understanding how they "react" to it on a daily basis (observing where they tend to lose emotional control) than to become that ideal in practice. Furthermore, in both yoga and meditation a process of body modification based on a form of Hindu asceticism is visible, carried out through effort and repetition. I understand that the transformation that their bodies undergo, through physical and mental techniques, implies the adoption of an "orientalised" lifestyle in their worldview and/or way of thinking. Practitioners tend to ritualise life as a whole, bringing new meanings to their multiple experiences and perceiving themselves as continually connected to the cosmos. Seeking to understand the contradictions in their perceptions of their own selves, I analyse the reflexive processes inherent in these practices to understand how practitioners construct their identity. I see their identity as based on an "internal" discipline, a renunciation that suggests asceticism; albeit an asceticism that seems to incorporate an "external" model of the yogic tradition, and one that is internalised through the realisation of disciplines which affects certain emotions and behaviours.