Yoga in Australia: an ethnographic study of Gita International in Melbourne

This thesis is based on an ethnographic study of Gita International, one of Melbourne’s oldest continuously-run Yoga schools, conducted from May 2010 until December 2011. Its aim is to explore how and why an “Eastern” spirituality such as Yoga was able to be transferred from its cultural base in India to Melbourne, Australia in the 1950s and successfully established in the predominantly Anglo-Australian society of the time. Yoga subsequently grew in popularity in the increasingly multicultural community, as indicated by of the large number of Yoga groups, schools, styles and teachers in Melbourne today. I argue that the successful establishment of Yoga in Melbourne is due to the narrowing of the cultural distance between Yoga as practised in India and the Australian socio-cultural context through a hybridisation process which includes four dimensions: the de-emphasis over traditional Indian philosophic Yoga sources; the re-casting of the representation and role of the guru as conceived in India; the re-conceptualisation of the traditional Indian Yoga ashram into an idealised spiritual home; and the adaptation of the traditional Indian Yoga lifestyle and practices to dominant cultural idioms associated with the Australian lifestyle - exercise, fitness, health and well-being. This study contends that adaptations of the yogic lifestyle and practices were necessary and strategically enacted by the founder and subsequent directors of the school to overcome the cultural distance potentially experienced by the Australian Yoga practitioners at Gita International in relation to the unfamiliar doctrines and practices of the Indian Yoga tradition when encountered in an Australian socio-cultural context. The successful narrowing of the cultural distance of the yogic lifestyle enabled Gita International to assimilate Yoga into the host socio-cultural environment and promote the long term commitment of its members to both the yogic practices and to Gita International.