Constructions of Self and Other in Yoga, Travel, and Tourism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction: A Journey to Elsewhere

   • Lori G. Beaman, Sonia Sikka

   Pages 1-8

3. Journeys That Go Nowhere: Eurocentric Prejudice and the Refusal to Hear

   • Sonia Sikka

   Pages 9-17

4. Journey Through the Third Space: Performing Aboriginal Identity Through Historic Re-Enactment Sites

   • Pamela Lee

   Pages 19-28

5. Transformative Encounters: Destabilising Human/Animal and Nature/Culture Binaries Through Cross-Cultural Engagement

   • Alexis Reichert

   Pages 29-36

6. Eat, Pray, Love and Tourism Imaginaries

   • Ellen Badone

   Pages 37-43

7. Displacing the Domestic: The Elsewhere of Transcendence

   • Meera Baindur

   Pages 45-53

8. Urban Journey: A Woman’s Guidebook to Self-Discovery in Berlin

   • Despina Stratigakos

   Pages 55-63

9. Religious Tourism Through a Gender Lens

   • Mary Jo Neitz

   Pages 65-72

10. Time, Space, and the Fantasised Other in Me

    • Géraldine Mossière

    Pages 73-80

11. A Ticket to Self-Discovery: Situating Yoga in Yoga Travel

    • Manvitha Singamsetty

    Pages 81-89

12. Being on the Mat: Quasi-Sacred Spaces, ‘Exotic’ Other Places, and Yoga Studios in the ‘West’

    • Lisa Smith

    Pages 91-100

13. Namaste: The Perilous Journey of ‘Real’ Yoga

    • Lori G. Beaman

    Pages 101-110

14. Back Matter

    Pages 111-117

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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.’   

• Yoga
• Buddhism
• Spirituality
• Tourism
• Meditation
• Spiritual transformation
• Religious tourism
• Authenticity
• Spiritual travel
• Yoga travel

• Dept of Classics, Rm 10125, University of Ottawa Dept of Classics, Rm 10125, Ottawa, Canada

  Lori G. Beaman

• University of Ottowa , Ottowa, Canada

  Sonia Sikka

Lori G. Beaman is the Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada and Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is also Principal Investigator of the Religion and Diversity Project, an international research team. 


Sonia Sikka is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her recent research involves comparative studies of religious identity and secularism in Canada, India, and the United States. Her publications include Living with Religious Diversity (2015) and Multiculturalism and Religious Identity (2014) (both edited with Lori G. Beaman), as well as Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference (2011).

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