In this episode, we talk with scholar-practitioner Jacqueline Hargreaves about her work with the Hatha Yoga Project, her unlikely background as an engineer that first brought her to India, and her life as a nomadic yoga researcher with her partner Jason Birch. Jacqueline shares some wonderful stories about her work including a rare audience with Mysore's Royal Family and the discovery of a lost manuscript thousands of miles from India in a very unlikely place. We also discuss her upcoming online course, YS 114 | Rāja Yoga: History, Theory, and Practice which will be co-taught with Jason Birch.

Speaker Bio

Jacqueline Hargreaves is an Engineer, senior Yoga Teacher, and independent researcher who examines the contemporary meeting place between historical Yoga practices and their application in the modern world. She is a founding member of the Journal of Yoga Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal, and the co-founder of The Luminescent, an independent open-access educational platform for publishing cutting-edge, original research from primary sources. She has travelled throughout India for fieldwork into the origins of Haṭhayoga and studied meditation extensively, including mindfulness-based meditation and intensive Zen practice in a remote part of Japan.

Hargreaves collaborates with scholars, artists, and scientists to communicate research on both premodern and modern facets of Yoga. Most recently, she curated the exhibition Embodied Liberation I and II at the Brunei Gallery in London for the Hatha Yoga Project (SOAS University of London). In collaboration with the AyurYog Project (University of Vienna), Jacqueline curated the Untangling Traditions series and designed a web-based visual and interactive timeline for premodern yoga and Āyurveda. 

Hargreaves is currently producing a documentary film, which aims to bring to life the unique content of the postural practice preserved in an eighteenth-century Sanskrit yoga text, Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, through a visual reconstruction of its extraordinary section on āsana.

Links

• The Luminescent (www.theluminescent.org)
• Journal of Yoga Studies (www.journalofyogastudies.org) 
• Embodied Liberation - The Textual, Ethnographic and Historical Research of the Hatha Yoga Project (www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/embodied-liberation/) 
• AyurYog Timeline (ayuryog.org/timeline) 
• Hatha Yoga Project (hyp.soas.ac.uk)
• Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati: A Precursor of Modern Yoga (hathabhyasapaddhati.org)