It was with great sadness that Jason Birch and I closed the door of the Hatha Yoga Project office last night (8th October, 2020) at SOAS University of London. It has been a fantastic five years and we must thank our colleagues, James Mallinson, Mark Singleton, and Daniela Bevilacqua, immensely! We would also like to acknowledge the enormous support offered to us through the tireless efforts of research assistants based at the École française d’Extrême Orient, Pondicherry, initially Dr. S. V. B. K. V. Gupta and, in more recent years, Dr Priyanka Avula, and Ramya Rajagopal.
This is not the end in terms of material outputs by the project, far from it. It is likely that the first critical editions, monographs, and films will be published by the end of this year.
We have lots of fun back stories to share and hope to drop snippets occasionally here on The Luminescent. So, here's the first one: who was the model for the favicon of the Hatha Yoga Project website (http://hyp.soas.ac.uk)? Guesses are welcome!
As part of the finalé, the Hatha Yoga Project team members contributed to a virtual panel hosted by the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies. This event was chaired by Dr Suzanne Newcombe, Open University and Inform. I was pleased to be invited to discuss some of the impact of the project on the yoga community and public, more broadly. This was in particular relation to my role as curator of the exhibition, Embodied Liberation, at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS and other outreach events and projects conducted over the five years, 2015–2020.
