Jason Birch is a scholar of medieval

haṭha yoga Hatha yoga (; Sanskrit हठयोग, International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ''haṭhayoga'') is a branch of yoga that uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word ह� ...

and a founding member of

SOAS The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

's Centre for Yoga Studies. His research includes locating and translating early yoga manuscripts, and preparing

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range i ...

s, such as of the '' Amaraugha''.

Biography

Jason Birch gained his bachelor's degree in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

and

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

. He won a Clarendon Scholarship to attend

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and aro ...

to study the ''Amanaska'', the earliest

rāja yoga In Sanskrit texts, ''Rāja yoga'' () was both the goal of yoga and a method to attain it. The term was later adopted as a modern label for the practice of yoga in the 19th-century when Swami Vivekananda gave his interpretation of the Yoga S ...

text, under

Alexis Sanderson Alexis G. J. S. Sanderson (born 1948) is an English indologist and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. Early life After taking undergraduate degrees in Classics and Sanskrit at Balliol College from 1968 to 1971, ...

. He completed his DPhil there in 2013. In 2014 he joined the

Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Oxford () is a cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world; it has buildings in every ...

as a research fellow. From 2015 he took part in the five-year Haṭha Yoga Project at

SOAS University of London The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

, where he has been translating and editing Sanskrit texts on

and rāja yoga. He is a founding member of SOAS's Centre for Yoga Studies. His partner is the yoga scholar-practitioner Jacqueline Hargreaves, co-founder of the open-access platform for yoga research ''The Luminescent'', and a founding member of the peer-reviewed ''Journal of Yoga Studies''.

Works

Articles

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Book chapters

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Books

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References

External links

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Interview about the Hatha Yoga Project

The Luminescent
!----> {{Yoga scholars Yoga scholars