Dr. Cecilia dos Guimarães Bastos
“The subjectivity of yoga and meditation practitioners: spirituality in Neo-Hindu retreats and everyday life”

Dr. Cecilia dos Guimarães Bastos

Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany

In trying to understand yoga and meditation practices, I observe the worldviews and lifestyles of practitioners, in which the training in behaviour, in the commanding of impulses and desires, could be seen as a kind of asceticism of body and mind. This kind of asceticism involves a continuous mental effort in observing one’s behaviour and reactions – knowing one’s desires and what triggers reactions. The underlying Hindu philosophy teaches about a less individualistic lifestyle, where the authority of the cosmic order or consciousness is appreciated, as well as the authority of the guru. With that, I aim to analyse their subjectivity as they seek to submit to a guru and a tradition while at the same time practising an exercise in the improvement of the self.