Yoga, an ancient philosophy and practice undertaken as a path towards self-realisation, was originally written for men, by men living in the East. However, a large and growing number of people in the West now practice some form of yoga, with more than 80% of practitioners being women. Since the 1980s, there has been a ‘feminisation’ of yoga in the West, as female teachers and practitioners tailor its practice to meet the specific needs of women. The practice of yoga has also changed to meet the needs of the modern Western practitioner more generally, such that the primary reasons for practicing yoga are to improve physical well-being and to cope with stress. Nonetheless, for some practitioners, yoga continues to offer philosophical and spiritual direction. The aim of this thesis is to critically examine mid-aged women’s experiences of Iyengar yoga. Focusing on a select group of 35 women living in New South Wales, Australia, the study ultimately seeks to determine whether a process of self-transformation arises from their yoga practice. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus provides a very useful context for describing the study participants’ shared disposition and values. The women’s demographic characteristics, for example, help explain why they were attracted to and maintained a regular yoga practice. An aspect of their habitus is also distinctly feminine, incorporating values of connectedness and holism. The women’s experiences were examined to consider why they were practicing yoga. In an exploration of the processes that emerged from the women’s experiences of Iyengar yoga, a paradox arose concerning the nature of ‘the Self’ that is depicted by yoga philosophy, and ‘the self’ that is portrayed in modern societies. To examine how ideals from the West and the East have come together in the modern practice of yoga, the women’s experiences are compared here with Giddens’ ‘reflexive project of the self’ (a process of self-actualisation) and the broader principles of classical yoga (a process of self-realisation). Western practices, like Giddens’ project, emphasise processes of ‘becoming’: a means to perpetually progress and improve oneself. Eastern practices, however, give priority to states of ‘being’, via the cultivation of awareness to attain experiences of constancy and stillness within. The women’s stories and experiences are integral to understanding the processes of self-transformation that arise from their yoga practice. Their experiences demonstrate that although initially reasons for practicing yoga identify primarily with Giddens’ reflexive project (‘becoming’), through the practice of yoga their experiences become embodied (����being����). The thesis explores the evolving interplay between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ that ensues from experiences of Iyengar yoga, and explains how and why these processes of self-transformation impact on the lives of the women interviewed. / PhD Doctorate

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Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, self-transformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one’s own transformation. Two theoretical approaches are found to have explanatory power for understanding the stages of intensifying interaction that lead to commitment in both Western Buddhist contexts. Lofland and Skonovd’s Experimental Motif models the method of entry into and exploration of a Buddhist Centre’s shared reality. Data from participant observation and interview demonstrates this approach to be facilitated by the organizational and teaching activities of the two Western Buddhist Centres, and to be taken by the participants who eventually become adherents. Individuals take an actively experimental attitude toward the new group’s activities, withholding judgment while testing the group’s doctrinal position, practices, and expected experiential outcomes against their own values and life experience. In an environment of minimal social pressure, transformation of belief is gradual over a period of from months to years. Deeper understanding of the nature of the commitment process is provided by viewing it in terms of religious resocialization, involving the reframing of one’s understanding of reality and sense-of-self within a new worldview. The transition from seekerhood to commitment occurs through a process of socialization, the stages of which are found to be engagement and apprehension, comprehension, and commitment. Apprehension is the understanding of core Buddhist notions. Comprehension occurs through learning how various aspects of the worldview form a coherent meaning-system, and through application of the Buddhist principles to the improvement of one’s own life circumstances. It necessitates understanding of the fundamental relationships between doctrine, practice, and experience. Commitment to the group’s outlook and objectives occurs when these are adopted as one’s orientation to reality, and as one’s strategy for negotiating a lived experience that is both efficacious and ethically sustainable. It is also maintained that sustained commitment is conditional upon continuing validation of that experience.

Michel Foucault characterizes power as ubiquitous and productive in the sense that there is no power-free truth, subject, and knowledge. Moreover, he studies the historical conditions of truth and subject to have an existence in a way that he historicizes them rather than delineating truth as corresponding to reality and subject as a self-subsistent and ahistorical substance. In this respect, his anti-essentialist account of power, truth, and subject is criticized on the account that he excludes the possibility of resistance against power through deconstructing any firm ground which is absolutely free from history and power and thus a promising substratum on which resistance can be substantiated. In this study, I will argue that these criticisms are ill-founded because they are either based on the misunderstandings of Foucauldian account of power or functioning with an assumption that resistance entails essentialist metaphysics as a ground, the assumption which is itself devoid of justification. Moreover, I will claim that it is an anti-essentialist ground&amp / #8212 / an epistemico-ontological ground&amp / #8212 / that supplies Foucault with a basis for substantiating the account of resistance.

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The objectives of this study were to explore (a) the relationships between dream reflective awareness and different types of impactful dreams, (b) the relationships between waking reflective awareness and dream reflective awareness following loss and trauma, and (c) the self-transformative potential of reflective awareness within dreams. We conducted a 2 (loss/trauma experiences) X 3 (timeframe: within the preceding 6 months, within the preceding 6-24 months, within the preceding 3-7 years) cross-sectional study to examine reflective awareness within impactful dreams and the changes in subsequent waking reflective awareness. The major results suggested that (a) only transcendent dreams were highly related to explicit dream lucidity (i.e., lucid mindfulness); (b) a continuity between pre-dream waking mindfulness and intra-dream self-awareness was specific to mundane dreams; (c) the experiences of loss or trauma and the timeframe of such experiences both predicted depersonalization within dreams; and (d) depersonalization within dreams was predictive of subsequent decreases in waking mindfulness. In sum, the present study replicated prior studies of the self-transformative effects of impactful dreams, demonstrated the continuity between dreaming and waking reflective awareness, and clarified the ways in which reflective awareness within dreams may affect post-traumatic growth.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, self-transformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one’s own transformation. Two theoretical approaches are found to have explanatory power for understanding the stages of intensifying interaction that lead to commitment in both Western Buddhist contexts. Lofland and Skonovd’s Experimental Motif models the method of entry into and exploration of a Buddhist Centre’s shared reality. Data from participant observation and interview demonstrates this approach to be facilitated by the organizational and teaching activities of the two Western Buddhist Centres, and to be taken by the participants who eventually become adherents. Individuals take an actively experimental attitude toward the new group’s activities, withholding judgment while testing the group’s doctrinal position, practices, and expected experiential outcomes against their own values and life experience. In an environment of minimal social pressure, transformation of belief is gradual over a period of from months to years. Deeper understanding of the nature of the commitment process is provided by viewing it in terms of religious resocialization, involving the reframing of one’s understanding of reality and sense-of-self within a new worldview. The transition from seekerhood to commitment occurs through a process of socialization, the stages of which are found to be engagement and apprehension, comprehension, and commitment. Apprehension is the understanding of core Buddhist notions. Comprehension occurs through learning how various aspects of the worldview form a coherent meaning-system, and through application of the Buddhist principles to the improvement of one’s own life circumstances. It necessitates understanding of the fundamental relationships between doctrine, practice, and experience. Commitment to the group’s outlook and objectives occurs when these are adopted as one’s orientation to reality, and as one’s strategy for negotiating a lived experience that is both efficacious and ethically sustainable. It is also maintained that sustained commitment is conditional upon continuing validation of that experience.

As a lecturer in the module Orthodontics in the study programme Bachelor of Oral Hygiene, the construct innovative facilitating of learning is the one I adopted as I embarked on a self-transformative journey. This dissertation focuses on the professional development of my practice and the self (me). The self-transformative journey taken was not taken independently but with my students who became my co-travellers and co-constructors engaging in a learning process. Engaging in a learning process meant journeying in the steps of the Action Research cycle(s) and being especially observant of Herrmann’s Whole-Brain® thinking theory and other learning theories such as constructivist learning, cooperative learning, self-regulated learning and the like. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria 2020. / pt2021 / Humanities Education / MEd / Unrestricted

This thesis offers an expository examination of the intersection of yoga’s modern tapas (austerity) practice and the framework of storytelling, contrasting and comparing these two ideals, by exploring the evolution of the term tapas and uncovering how it is mirrored by the hero(ine)’s journey identified by Joseph Campbell and other scholars. For humanity to evolve into a higher state of self-awareness and create a world where peaceful co-existence is possible, individuals must embark on an inner journey. Through this journey, our inner world evolves, which in turn can lead to more enlightened behavior and contribute to a more harmonious global community. To address humanity’s broader issues, a possible construct to guide the individual journey is at the intersection between yoga’s modern tapas and the framework for storytelling, as I explore through developing a tapas experience framework, to offer a compelling transformational journey and path forward for the practitioner.

An individual who converts from one religion to another undergoes a significant change in their worldview. Not only do they need to accept a new belief, but they also accept the changes that come along with it, such as a change in ethics and morals, rituals and acts of worship, and sometimes even in appearance. The convert is therefore expected to translate their previous worldview into a new one, thereby transforming their worldview and adding new aspects to their identity. Although other terms relating to various aspects and modes of cultural translation have been proposed in Translation Studies, such as “translation as transposition” and “translation as rewriting” as found in Conway (2012), we will soon see how converts fit neither of these categories, since they have neither migrated, nor do they require anyone else to translate their experiences on behalf of them between certain communities. To fill this gap in the research, a new term and theory has been proposed: translation as self-transformation. In order to analyze the newly proposed theory of translation as self-transformation, two main questions must be addressed: namely, what is translation as self-transformation, and how does translation as translation as self-transformation take place in the context of Canadian and American Muslim converts? To answer these questions, literature in relation to culture, identity, and worldview, as well as the notions of Bildung, and more specifically, alienation and appropriation, has been analyzed. Furthermore, research methodologies such as questionnaires and focus groups are employed in order to gather empirical data from Canadian and American Muslim converts regarding their thoughts on the notions of culture and identity, as well as how religion falls among them. Additionally, they are asked questions regarding their own conversions and, therefore, their own processes of translation as self-transformation. Furthermore, it is also possible to analyze the important and unique role that converts are able to play as mediators and cultural translators between communities, given their experience of having lived as part of both the non-Muslim and Muslim communities in Canada and America. The findings of the research then suggest that converts do indeed undergo a process of translation as self-transformation. Furthermore, they are able to act as mediators and cultural translators between the non-Muslim and Muslim communities. However, their ability to translate effectively depends on two factors: 1) that they neither alienate their own culture nor appropriate another culture; and 2) that the community that they translate for is willing to be receptive of such a translation. Such work may pave the way for future research on topics such as islamophobia in the West and how improved translation between the two communities may lead to establishing a better understanding and appreciation between both communities.