MA Traditions of Yoga and Meditation 15PSRH046-A19/20 Assignment 2 Word count: 2737 “Yoga” has a wider range of meanings than nearly any other word in the entire Sanskrit lexicon. David Gordon White (2014, p. 2) There are perhaps few words in the modern English language as vague and woolly as the notion of ‘spirituality’. Jeremy Carrette and Richard King (2005, p. 30) Introduction The following essay explores the extent to which it is possible to practise, teach and study yoga in ways which do not reinforce its rebranding in a western context as a ‘psychologised spirituality of the self’ (Carrette and King, 2005, p. 114), driven by ideologies of capitalism and (neo)colonialism. As a starting point for each question we try to answer in this essay, we adopt Carrette and King’s point of view within their book Selling Spirituality and then explore where this view is in the historical background of the practice of yoga and what the other possible viewpoints are. To make this paper readable for the general audience, it is crucial to start with the definitions of the main concepts mentioned in the topic, keeping in mind that some of these concepts have more than one definition (see the epigraphs) and others do not have any agreed upon definition at all (e.g. the term ‘psychologisation’ is not a consensual concept [Teo, p. 1547]).