Christa Schwind visits Athens to speak about the philosophical side of yoga that many Americans are unaware of.
Yoga practitioner and teacher of Eastern and comparative religions Christa Schwind will travel to Athens from Colorado on Thursday to host a free yoga session at 2 p.m., followed by a lecture at 7 p.m.
The lecture, titled “Inventing American Yoga: A Social Discourse of Profit and Purpose,” is sponsored by Friends of India, an organization dedicated to promoting knowledge of India in Athens. Topics that Schwind will cover include the relationship between the contemporary practices and the philosophies of yoga represented in ancient Indian scriptures, as well as how media and lifestyle branding have reinvented yoga in America through modes of profit and purpose.
“America is kind of the center of yoga creativity right now,” Schwind said. “But I don’t know how much we’re giving credence to its past, so I want to complicate that and talk a little bit about the political side of it as well.”
Schwind’s interest in yoga sparked during a vacation in Costa Rica, where she had an early morning private yoga session on the beach. Her passion for religious studies stems further than that.
“I grew up abroad, and I was fascinated, for whatever reason, by whatever culture or religion was there,” Schwind said. “I would always go to churches with my friends, so religion has always been something that fascinated me.”
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Brian Collins, professor of Eastern and comparative religion, said he hopes students will have a better understanding of the complexities of yoga’s development in America.
“It’s not a matter of yoga being given to the West or stolen from the East, but rather a complex pattern of cultural exchange,” said Collins, who invited Schwind to Ohio University due to her ability to communicate and her perspective as both a yoga teacher-practitioner and an academic.
Schwind is currently working on her dissertation, “Tracing an American Yoga: Identity and Cross-Cultural Transaction.” It will look at the creative identity of American yoga, which is both rooted in its Indic origins and radically transformed in its U.S. manifestations.
To Hannah Smith, a sophomore double majoring in political science and global studies war and peace, the most exciting aspect of Schwind’s lecture will be the awareness she brings to Athens.
“India has been brought to the foreground of international relations, and it is important to have an understanding of their culture and country as a whole,” said Smith, who joined the Friends of India organization this past August because of her love for international studies. “I am interested to learn about the evolution of yoga and why it seems to be so much more popular now than ever before.”
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