“Western” India, “Tropical” China: a "spirituality of the body" as a propitious factor of cultural meetings in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to provide elements to understand how certain spiritual and corporal practices originated from India and China, have been configured in Brazil, namely Yoga and Tai Chi Chuan. Despite the singularities that characterize each one of these practices, we highlight important similarities between them, either in their constitutive proposals or in their historical trajectories in Brazil. In both cases, the understanding of the body may precede the understanding of the words. Precisely for this reason, such practices are operating as vehicles for intercultural and religious dialogue. The spiritual elements that in these traditions are transmittable through gestures and body postures configure in our point of view, an authentic "Body spirituality", which is characterized by being dynamic and mutant, just as the own human bodies are changeable. We argue that this fluid and dynamic characteristic has allowed an extensive process of reinvention of such practices in Brazil, both within our religious field and within our own corporeality. The peculiar characteristics resulting from this process can only be understood by an analysis of the historical processes that affect the formation of our society.