Extract

As an avid on-and-off yoga enthusiast, I was almost giddy to read Paul Heelas's recent book Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism, hoping for some scholarly ammunition to justify the purchase of the hundred-dollar yoga pants I ideologically oppose yet secretly wish to purchase. Throughout the pages, my ideological opposition eventually won out, as Heelas provides an extremely well-researched treatise on contemporary spiritualities of life that encompass holistic activities and practices such as yoga, tai chi, reiki, and art therapy. Heelas dismisses the easy temptation to reduce these activities to the hedonistic consumption thesis that is prevalent in much of the relevant literature by exposing us to the underlying meaning of holistic activities. By examining the ways in which these activities can serve as countercultures to consumerism and capitalist modernity, Heelas moves away from typical conceptions of “airy fairy” spiritualities by exposing a deeper experiential significance of these practices, moving beyond reductionist consumeristic consumption models.

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