In this episode, we speak with return guest and teacher Dr. Daniela Bevilacqua to discuss the publication of her latest work, From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus’ Understanding of Embodied Practices (2024). We discuss the origins of the book as part of the research and output of the infamous SOAS Hatha Yoga Project (2015-2020), her methodology as an ethnographer working in India, the various sampradāyas, the role of yoga and the question of who are the yogis amongst sādhus today, and many stories and details from her years of conducting research in India. 

Speaker Bio

Daniela Bevilacqua is an Indianist specialized in Hindu asceticism, investigated through an ethnographic and historical perspective. She received her PhD in Civilizations of Africa and Asia from Sapienza University of Rome and in Anthropology from the University of Paris Nanterre. She worked as a post-doc research fellow at SOAS, for the ERC- funded Haṭha Yoga Project (2015–2020). She is currently a researcher at CRIA (ISCTE-IUL) in Lisbon as PI of the project “Performing the Sacred: Ethnographies of Transgender Activism in the Kinnar Akhara”. She authored Modern Hindu Traditionalism in Contemporary India (Routledge 2018), From Tapas to Modern Yoga. Sādhus’ Understanding of Embodied Practices (Equinox 2024), edited volumes, and written several articles and book chapters on topics related to Hindu religious tradition, gender, and embodied practices.

Links

• From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus’ Understanding of Embodied Practices (2024)
• YS 103 | Yoga and Hindu Asceticsm, Past and Present
• YSP 2. Daniela Bevilacqua | Hindu Asceticism and Haṭha Yoga