Newcombe/Yoga in Britain, 4. Middle Class Women Join Evening Classes

This chapter focuses on those attending yoga classes in the adult education context during the 1960s, primarily married, middle-class women. The venue of adult education evening classes provided a safe environment for women to achieve some respite and reorientation towards their lives. Yoga as exercise in adult education contexts also drew upon established forms of female physical education. The popularity of yoga in this period can be partially explained by the strength of a social pressure that women as responsible for their own health and that of their entire family. Yoga was promoted as a way to make women better wives and mothers while encouraging, in a socially acceptable way, feelings of freedom and autonomy.