title: A therapy to live by: public health, the self and nationalism in the practice of a north Indian yoga society.
abstract: In this article I focus on the relationship between concepts of self and health in modern North India. Drawing on field research in a popular yoga society, I argue that yoga therapy, as practiced by the Bharatiya Yog Sansthan of Delhi, provides a reconceptualization of what can be meant by public health. Using studies that challenge both the essentialist and epistemological facticity of the self, I show how the discourse and practice of yoga is implicated in, and derived from, a complex search for self definition in terms of health; health which is conceived of as a public regimen that seeks to reconnect that which modernity has broken apart: mind and body.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Alter
mesh_terms: D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D019222:Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D011634:Public Health; D015013:Yoga / Q000523:psychology