Practicing on the platform: an autoethnography of presence in the zoom-mediated ashtanga yoga 'mysore room'

Abstract

The global Covid-19 pandemic has caused massive disruption to social practices of nearly every kind, impelling groups and institutions to migrate in-person activities onto digital videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom. A major concern within contemporary media studies is to understand how this now-paradigmatic form of communication is reconfiguring “communities of practice” as they move onto the platform and seek to recreate the felt, collective “presence” of embodied interaction. However, little attention has been paid to interactive physical practices, including athletics, dance, and various somatic therapies that rely on non-verbal forms of communication, including touch and breathwork. My "hybrid autoethnographic" study focuses on Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, a method of modern postural yoga practice that has, since the 1970s, expanded from its point of origin in Mysore, India to become one of the most prominent transnational practice systems. By undertaking extensive participant observation in the hybrid-reality "Mysore Room" and ethnographically tracking how the broader community has adapted to rolling cycles of respiratory crisis, I situate the phenomenon within a history of "transomatic mediations" that have carried the method as body-to-body knowledge across a range of media technologies.