In this episode, we speak with Philip Deslippe (UC Santa Barbara) about his research on the modern history and construction of Kundalini Yoga, the controversies surrounding the late guru Yogi Bhajan, as well as the role and positionality of the scholar and historian of yoga.

Speaker Bio

Philip Deslippe is a historian of American religion with a background in American Studies and literature. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he is writing a dissertation on the early history of yoga in the United States from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Philip has published articles on the history of modern yoga in academic journals such as the Journal of Yoga Studies, Amerasia, and Sikh Formations, and in popular venues including Yoga Journal, Air and Space Smithsonian, and the Indian news site Scroll.

Links

• YS 102 | Modern Yoga in the West
• Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage (Dyson 2020)
• "From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga" (Deslippe 2012)
• www.philipdeslippe.com
• https://ucsb.academia.edu/PhilipDeslippe