Being on the mat: Quasi-sacred spaces, ‘exotic’ other places, and yoga studios in the ‘West’

The chapter, "Being on the mat: Quasi-sacred spaces, ‘exotic’ other places, and yoga studios in the ‘West’" was written by Lisa Smith (Douglas College Faculty). Book description: This volume considers the phenomenon of yoga travel as an instance of a broader genre of ‘spiritual travel’ involving journeys to places ‘elsewhere’, which are imagined to offer the possibility of profound personal transformation. These imaginings are tied up in a continued exoticization of the East, but they are not limited to that. Contributors identify various themes such as authenticity, suffering, space, material markers, and the idea of the ‘spiritual’, tracing how these ideas manifest in conceptions and fetishizations of ‘elsewhere.’ To deepen its analysis of this phenomenon, the book incorporates a wide range of disciplines including architecture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, women’s studies, religious studies, and history. While the book’s primary focus is yoga and yoga travel, contributors offer up an array of other case studies. Chapters delve into the complex questions of agency and authenticity that accompany the concept of ‘spiritual travel’ and ideas of ‘elsewhere.’ Chapter abstract: While most Westerners might not be able to provide an in-depth explanation of what exactly it is, yoga is a familiar word, even if it looks significantly different from practices that one might find in India. This chapter draws on a mini ethnography of two yoga studios in Montreal in order to better understand and examine yoga in the ‘West’. The author argues that yoga studios can reveal some of the particularities of self-formation in the West as it relates to the construction of the spiritual and religious subject. Most contemporary yoga studios house all manner of religious and spiritual objects that refer to exotic other places; indeed, it is this connection to ‘other’ places that lends the studio its legitimacy as a sacred space.