ANTH 1700 - YOGA IN THE HIMALAYAS

Minimum Credits: 6
Maximum Credits: 6
This six-credit intensive course in anthropology and religious studies provides a critical perspective on yoga in the Himalaya. Students travel to the Hanifl Center and Jaberkeht Nature Reserve in the town of Mussoorie, India, to study about and engage in yoga for health and environmental activism. From the Hanifl Center students travel on a series of expeditions. Six days are spent in Rishikesh at Parmarth Niketan Ashram and at Sivananda Ashram. One week is spent on a trek to Gangotri, the source of the Ganga. For seven days student travel to Banaras, and Vrindavan before return to the Hanifl Center and Jaberkhet Nature Reserve. The Ashrams in Rishikesh combine Karma Yoga and Hatha Yoga to effect health reform and develop strategies for engaged ecological activism. Gangotri is iconic in the sacred geography of Hinduism and closely associated with the search for enlightenment that structures yoga in practice. Banaras provides an important context for understanding the historical development of yoga in general. Vrindavan is a city that reflects the institutionalization of Bhakti Yoga as manifest in the adoration of Lord Krishna and provides a context within which to understand the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita. Yoga has become a global phenomenon that enables individuals to engage in forms of practice that improve health and enhance self-awareness (Hatha Yoga), develop holistic, analytical thinking (Jnana Yoga), embody a spiritual disposition (Bhakti Yoga) and sustain the environment through social activism focused on conservation (Karma Yoga). As a multi-dimensional philosophy, yoga is best understood as an ethical system that brings the body, mind, and environment together into a holistic framework that is intended to improve the human condition in terms that are at once cosmological and ecological. This six-week course is designed to provide students with an intellectual and intensively experiential understanding of how the four traditions of yoga in practice are manifest in the mountains of northern India.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis

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