Talk:Natarajasana

Picture
While I certainly enjoy the current picture, it is of an advanced variation of the pose. Would it be possible to replace this one with a standard and less flashy version and move this down to the variations section? It also seems like this picture was inserted to promote the photographer.Iṣṭa Devata (talk) 00:24, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Signature pose

 * "As the signature pose of Iyengar, the most acclaimed master of postural yoga, Natarajasana became the representative yoga pose of the late 20th century... Iyengar saw himself as Nataraja's avatar. And he clearly (sometimes desperately) wanted us to see him as the incarnation of Nataraja. So he came close to conflating the yogin and the dancer." — Elliott Goldberg, The Path of Modern Yoga

Goldberg's statement that Natarajasana was Iyengar's signature pose is important to this article, given Iyengar's pioneering role. That of course does not mean that nobody else did the pose (how could it, that'd be absurd), but it does mean that a major scholar of modern yoga considers it important. It is certainly an encyclopedic matter that a guru of modern yoga made this pose his signature, and it is certainly relevant to that claim to show that his best-known work has been published with a photo of him in the pose on its front cover. After all, the publishers had over 200 poses to choose from, even leaving aside Goldberg's statement on the matter. By the way, Goldberg selected a different photo of Iyengar in the same pose for the cover of The Path of Modern Yoga (you can see that photo over there at the head of that article) — he could have used a picture of any of the other gurus he describes, in any asana — so he put his money where his mouth was. We're easily within the fair-use limits here. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:30, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Cover image
@Chiswick Chap What makes me uncomfortable about the current cover image (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natarajasana#/media/File:Mr-yoga-lord_of_dance_4.jpg) is that it uncomfortably reminds of Western appropriation of yoga. Particularly when the website where it comes from is about marketing and selling the author's book (https://mryoga.com/). Making the cover image a version that's used for marketing / selling a "Mr. Yoga" book may get too close to an impression of cultural appropriation.

The article also says that "Goldberg argues that the pose, like several others, was introduced into modern yoga by Krishnamacharya in the early 20th century, and taken up by his pupils such as B. K. S. Iyengar, who made the pose a signature of modern yoga" (so while Krishnamacharya introduced it, Iyengar played a big role in popularizing it).

You have a good point about avoiding using a non-free image though. But it might be better to pick a different cover image. How about this one? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natarajasana#/media/File:Indian-dancer-nataraja.png) Llightex (talk) Llightex (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for discussing. The first thing to say is that I considered the images available on Commons carefully before selecting one for the lead and others to support the text. I added the non-free image of Iyengar in the pose after deliberating whether we could use anything that had been so strongly associated with the marketing of a major yoga brand, deciding that we could use it with care, alongside a scholarly comment, attributed explicitly to the scholar, Elliott Goldberg.


 * I am not averse to selecting another image, if we can find a suitable one, though as it happens I find the current one entirely appropriate, since yoga as exercise has for 100 years now been a product not of a simple process of "cultural appropriation" but of an extended to-and-fro dialogue between Indian and Western practitioners and gurus --- we've already mentioned Iyengar, who made use of the West to propagate his brand, and Krishnamacharya, who made use of Western and Indian styles of gymnastics, an Indian style of storytelling, and elements from Indian tradition to create a rather radically new form of exercise, while several of his pupils (including Pattabhi Jois and Indra Devi as well as Iyengar) went to the West to seek fortune and fame. So there is no reason to worry that the West has somehow appropriated some pure tradition, there wasn't one, and the West was far from being either the initiator or the only means of propagation of yoga as exercise. As such, the current image, of a woman in a New York studio demonstrating the pose, is as representative of the synthetic modern tradition as anything could be - something with an Indian name, an origin in Indian dance, and a Western practitioner pretty well sums up what the whole thing is about. By the same token, the image of the Bharatanatyam dancer is actually not even yoga, and certainly not modern yoga as exercise, so it would be quite wrong to use that as the lead image. Hope this helps: if you read a bit more about the background, especially the "cultural appropriation" and "yoga as exercise" history articles, you will perhaps start to see things in a wider perspective. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
 * This is very helpful, thanks for your detailed explanation! Llightex (talk) 01:28, 30 May 2023 (UTC)