Jason Birch is a scholar of medieval

hatha yoga Haṭha yoga is a branch of yoga which uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel the vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ ''haṭha'' literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some haṭha ...

and a founding member of

SOAS SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) 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 are ...

's Centre for Yoga Studies.

Biography

Jason Birch gained his bachelor's degree in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

and

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

. He won a

Clarendon Scholarship The Clarendon Fund Scholarship is a scholarship at the University of Oxford. All Oxford University applicants to degree bearing graduate courses are automatically considered for the Clarendon Scholarship. Established in 2000 and launched in 200 ...

to attend

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

to study the ''Amanaska'', the earliest

rāja yoga In Sanskrit texts, ''Rāja yoga'' (; राजयोग) was both the goal of yoga and a method to attain it. The term also became a modern name for the practice of yoga in the 19th-century when Swami Vivekananda gave his interpretation of th ...

text, under

Alexis Sanderson Alexis G. J. S. Sanderson (born 1948) is an 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, Alexis Sande ...

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

Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, founded in 1997, is a recognised independent centre of the University of Oxford, England. It develops academic programmes of education, research and publishing in Hindu studies. It aims to encourage the Hindu ...

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

SOAS University of London SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) 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 are ...

, where he has been translating and editing Sanskrit texts on

haṭha yoga Haṭha yoga is a branch of yoga which uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel the vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ ''haṭha'' literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some haṭha ...

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''.

Biography

Works

Articles

Book chapters

References

External links