The Westernization, scientification, and technologization of yoga have led to a dissociation from elements of its original culture, favoring an empirical approach aligned with the biomedical language. These epistemological shifts have resulted in the loss of yoga as a path to soteriological knowledge, reducing the oral and symbolic aspects of the Vedic tradition to practices that are often decontextualized or inadequately interpreted. This study aimed to present certain aspects of the epistemology of this tradition and, based on its understanding, offer possible contributions to the improvement of yoga practice within the SUS (Brazil's Unified Health System). Adopting a theoretical-hermeneutic and decolonial approach, the research is grounded in an immersion in the scriptures of the Vedic tradition, including the Bhagavad Gītā and the Upaniṣads, to explore Sanskrit concepts such as śabda and pramāṇa. In the Vedic context, epistemic validation is experiential, personal, and self-evident, with soteriological knowledge manifesting through the inner transformation of the subject by overcoming ignorance and suffering. Drawing from the Vedic tradition, this study advocates for pedagogical enhancements to yoga within the SUS that encompass relational, ethical, and collective dimensions of experience, with yoga classes providing spaces for the sharing and discussion of affections, desires, needs, and sociocultural values that impact both individual and collective health—thus establishing a new field of learning and dialogue.
Cultural products are like climbing plants, whose branches cling to the vegetation of other terrains and, in this process, generate hybridizations (Subramaniam, 2019). Yoga is a prime example: a body of knowledge from the Indian philosophical tradition that became intertwined with physical cultures and modern Western knowledge, producing something new (i.e., with emergent characteristics). Even in the context of its native land, South Asia, the term "yoga" conceals an inextricable network of schools, lineages, and recensions. Drawing on Guattari and Deleuze (1995), we may state that yoga possesses rhizomes.
Despite its unpredictable, rhizomatic nature and its elasticity, capable of accommodating a wide diversity of styles, yoga is generally defined as "an ancient practice originating in India that combines physical postures (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation to promote balance among body, mind, and spirit" (Meta AI, 2025). In contrast with the use of the term "ancient," contemporary yoga shows the strong influence of biomedicine, understood here as contemporary Western medicine, grounded in modern European sciences (Luz; Barros, 2012). This phenomenon, reflecting a broader movement toward the accommodation of yoga to scientific rationality that has occurred over the last century and a half, has justified the adoption of yogic discourses and practices within the field of health. As yoga underwent scientification throughout the twentieth century by means of medical disciplines, it became increasingly bound to the therapeutic domain, moving away from the philosophical-soteriological context to which it had been strongly associated prior to its export. This process resulted in what may be called a "flatland effect" (Wilber, 2000): the reduction of the effects of yoga to measurable aspects, such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and brainwave patterns.
The medicalization of yoga becomes evident when one observes the accelerated growth, over the last decade, of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) aimed at investigating the efficacy of its best-known techniques in the control and prevention of various health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and metabolic syndrome (Chu et al., 2014). Despite the abundance of biomedical research on the effects of the practice, there is a scarcity of studies that discuss in depth the process of yoga's medicalization or the epistemological, ontological, and methodological differences between biomedicine and the Vedic tradition, the latter considered one of the main philosophical sources of yoga.
The hegemony of medicalized yoga practice and the scarcity of critical studies are symptoms of one and the same phenomenon: a colonialist incorporation of yoga by biomedicine. Such colonialism is characterized by Santos (2019) in the following way: historically, modern sciences, with few exceptions, have positioned themselves toward traditional forms of knowledge in two main ways: either dismissing and disqualifying them as "unscientific," or exercising an epistemic or technical extractivism over them, appropriating elements of interest while disregarding their contexts, methodologies, values, and the subjects who hold that knowledge-practice. Within this colonialist context, a researcher may become a "specialist" in yoga through the publication of RCTs, even while unaware of its ethical and philosophical foundations, its pedagogy, and its purpose. We consider that such a dynamic tends to generate a problematic inversion: scientific knowledge about yoga comes to be valued not only more highly than embodied traditional knowledge — transmitted by masters, texts, practices, and disciples across generations — but the latter ends up severely obscured, distorted, or even nearly unknown in several important respects, from the standpoint of the tradition of origin, which limits and impoverishes its contribution to our society and culture.
Characterized within the SUS as an Integrative and Complementary Health Practice (PICS, in the Portuguese acronym), yoga has been widely interpreted (and frequently practiced) as almost a physical exercise. If, on the one hand, this reading of yoga protects it from criticism, such as that of Taschner (2018), who considers PICS in general to be "pseudosciences," on the other hand, it contributes to an intellectual disinvestment in the methodological and pedagogical specificities of this body of knowledge. This dynamic reflects the complex relationship, at times symbiotic and at times parasitic, that yoga has established with biomedicine in order to gain worldwide recognition (Subramaniam, 2019). By aligning itself with biomedicine, yoga secured its "place in the sun," but often at the cost of a rupture from its cultural soil, resulting in an atrophy — or even self-amputation — of its philosophical and soteriological dimensions.
In this sense, although we value scientific studies and their results, as well as the popularization of the benefits of yoga mediated by the biomedical approach, we observe with caution the almost radical decontextualization of this body of knowledge in relation to its original traditions. Notwithstanding the vast field of exploratory possibilities opening up for yoga, whose meaning and applicability continue to develop, both in its tigmotropism toward biomedicine and other cultures and in the postmodern condition it has been assuming, we consider that: 1) from a historical perspective, "yoga" (at least the Sanskrit term) traces back to South Asian culture, particularly to the Vedic scriptures, which implies recognizing that, in addition to rhizomes, yoga also possesses roots (Vivekananda, 2006); 2) the medicalization of yoga tends to impoverish its symbolic field and its practice. The concept of hṛdayam (heart), for instance, which in the Vedic tradition designates the center of consciousness and existence, is reduced to the anatomical, physiological, and epidemiological heart (Pereira; Tesser, 2024).
An analysis of the moral, philosophical, historical, and political elements that could offer a broader understanding of this symbiotic-parasitic process lies beyond the scope of this work; it is nonetheless worth noting that other epistemologies present in other medical rationalities, such as homeopathy and Ayurveda, have already been the object of investigation (Luz; Barros, 2012), a movement still incipient in the case of yoga. In any case, it is worth commenting that it is possible to conceive of cultural, social, political, and economic processes of great magnitude, which occurred over the last decades of the twentieth century and continue to unfold in the twenty-first, having penetrated all of human activity and also crossed the field of yoga. Such processes contributed to the formation of a "laboratory yoga," shaping its current configuration: a practice delimited by a specific space-time (the yoga class), lasting approximately one hour, with standardized techniques (physical postures, breathing exercises, relaxation, meditation) and measurable objectives — such as inducing the relaxation response and reducing blood pressure and heart rate, among others — suited to the criteria of empirical scientific research. Jain (2020) highlights, for example, the robust growth of the fitness regime market, in which improving the body through rigorous self-control, by means of diet and exercise, has become a dominant ideal.
Given this scenario, we move forward in what is understood by yoga. Sketching it in a free, synthetic, and original way — to be more thoroughly grounded and referenced later, within the context of the tradition that engendered it — we may say that yoga is not a set of exercises, but a soteriological discipline: a path of inquiry into the nature of reality, of the individual, and of suffering, and of its overcoming. Its method is not prescriptive but investigative, focusing on the discernment of the structures of experience, especially the role of desires in shaping identity and suffering. In this process, the various yogic techniques (postures, meditations, mantras) function as provisional supports (upāyas), designed to unveil the overlays and ideations that obscure the apprehension of being as such. The ultimate goal, therefore, is not well-being, but liberation (mokṣa), which arises from the direct apprehension of reality. A guiding thread that unites these supports is the search for coherence (or integration) across all dimensions of life: in the body, an inquiry into gestural and postural coherence; in the psyche, an analysis of the relationships among thoughts, desires, and existential purposes; an exercise of alignment between acts — including mental ones — and one's deepest motivations and values, so that life itself becomes a practice of coherence.
Moreover, yoga carries an ethic (dharma) with a logic distinct from the main Western ethical theories. Yogic ethics postulates that "right" practice, carried out with devotion and in emulation of an ideal (such as "non-violence," "coherence," or "truth"), causes goodness. The good is not an external outcome to be attained, but the very embodiment of the practice (Ranganathan, 2024).
Based on this understanding of yoga and on selected scriptures, this essay aims to present certain aspects of the epistemology of this tradition in order, from their understanding, to advance contributions toward an enrichment of yoga practices in the SUS. It seeks to revalue the ethical dimension of yoga as an affirmation of autonomy and of engagement with the health needs of users. To this end, the article first presents, synthetically, three foundations of Vedic epistemology. It then suggests how these foundations, reinterpreted, may inspire yogic practices in the SUS aligned with a hermeneutic approach1, in which the interpretation of the practitioner's lived experience becomes central to the practice of yoga and to the care process.
In this study, we adopt a decolonial approach, which values and scientifically investigates traditional aspects, knowledges, and practices as potentially pertinent and worthy of appreciation in their own terms, contexts, and objectives, aiming to establish translations and relations, when possible and appropriate, with contemporary scientific knowledge, values, practices, and social issues. The decolonial approach is important for challenging and reforming epistemological structures that have historically suppressed, shaped, and/or marginalized non-hegemonic knowledges (Santos, 2019). In this sense, we treat yoga as a traditional body of knowledge, bearing a rationality of its own, not reducible to scientific reason.
The research consisted of an immersion in primary sources of the Advaita Vedānta tradition, notably the triple canon: the Bhagavad Gītā (Gambhirananda, 2006), the principal Upaniṣads (Gambhirananda, 2003), and the Brahma Sūtra (Gambhirananda, 1983), together with the commentaries (Bhāṣya) of Śaṅkarācārya (c. 788–820 CE) contained within these very texts. The reading and analysis were conducted according to a method proper to Vedantic soteriological pedagogy, whose horizon is mokṣa — the overcoming of suffering that stems from the belief in existential limitation. This method is structured in three stages: listening (śravaṇa), rational reflection (manana), and contemplation (nididhyāsana).
Although the ontological and soteriological foundations of this hermeneutic tradition are laid out in detail in Śaṅkarācārya's commentaries, their principles are synthesized in the popular verse Brahma Jñānāvalī Mālā, according to which: the absolute (brahman) is the real; the world is an appearance (neither real nor unreal); and the individual (jīva) is the absolute itself.
The Upaniṣads form part of the Vedas, the oldest literary corpus of South Asian civilization, collectively known as Vedānta — "the end of the Vedas" — for constituting their concluding portion. In them, the inquiry into the relationship between the subject and the world culminates in the recognition of non-duality (advaita) between the two. In contrast with the earlier sections of the Vedas (Saṃhitā and Brāhmaṇa), marked by an instrumental, means-to-ends rationality, the Upaniṣads work with ontological statements such as "that is you," "I am the absolute," "this being is Absolute," whose assimilation requires a guided explanatory path. According to Loundo (2021), the term upaniṣad refers to this oral pedagogy, being widely understood as "sitting at the feet of the master to receive knowledge of the absolute" (brahma vidyā). A more detailed methodological description may be found in Pereira (2024).
Without intending to restrict the broad spectrum of views encompassed within the tradition(s) of yoga, we will structure the discussion of Vedic epistemology around three aspects: 1) the function of the guru (or teacher, in general) and the requirements demanded of the student; 2) the epistemological functions of Vedic texts (and of speech, more broadly); 3) the epistemic validation of this knowledge and the understanding of the "evidence" derived from it. The choice of these three axes is justified by their representing the pillars of Vedic pedagogical and soteriological praxis: the agent of knowledge (guru/disciple), the medium of knowledge (text/word), and the method of validation (experience/consensus). These aspects were chosen for their relevance both within the tradition and within current yoga practices in the SUS, where there is often a lack of clarity regarding the role of the tradition in general, of the teacher in particular, the meaning of the techniques, and the criteria of efficacy adopted.
There persists a poor understanding and obscurity surrounding the term guru. This concept can be better elucidated through the alternative model of rationality put forward by Brown (1988), particularly with regard to the question of authority. For this author, authority refers to sources recognized as legitimate for establishing knowledge, arguments, or principles within a given field. It is a source of trust, respect, or credibility, capable of influencing thought and philosophical discourse. This authority may be attributed both to specialists, whose knowledge and experience are recognized as authoritative, and to established traditions, such as scriptures or the teachings of renowned philosophers.
The guru, more than a teacher (who may be regarded as an advanced disciple), is one capable of explaining the message of the scriptures, by virtue of being embedded within an oral teaching tradition — having been, himself, a disciple of a guru — and by embodying the requirements necessary for the assimilation of soteriological knowledge. Thus, the guru guides the student regarding the conduct required and clarifies textual obscurities, reproducing meanings that echo from the past. The guru does not merely repeat texts, but revitalizes the words of the Upaniṣads, imbuing them with meaning. The guru, therefore, is seen less as a normative agent and more as a hermeneut.
On the part of the disciple, certain prerequisites are necessary. Among them, the desire for liberation (mokṣa) and śraddhā stand out, a term often inadequately translated as "faith." However, śraddhā does not correspond to the notion of faith typical of Western religious traditions, such as Catholicism. It refers instead to a well-grounded confidence, a disposition to learn arising from the recognition of the validity of the knowledge transmitted by a guru and/or by the scriptures. It is a form of epistemic openness in which the student, acknowledging his or her own limitations, trusts the tradition as a path toward new knowledge — more precisely, toward the correction of mistaken perceptions — without demanding immediate proof, while maintaining a critical and reflective attitude.
Just as faith is not required of one who seeks out a physician, neither is it required when one seeks a guru for questions such as "Who am I?", "What is the world?", "What is God?" (It would be equally strange if, on a Sunday morning, a mathematician went door to door with pamphlets on Bhaskara's formula, asking people to have "faith" in the principles of arithmetic.) It is, therefore, a rational and empirically grounded confidence, one capable of guiding the individual on the path of overcoming his or her existential condition:
Having examined the fields of experience acquired through action, with the aid of the maxim — 'there is nothing [here] that is not a product [resulting from action]' — the brāhmana should give up [seeking the eternal among products]. To know that [immutable entity], he should then, with sacrificial sticks in hand, seek out a teacher who is versed in the śruti and established in knowledge of the Absolute
(Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, I.2.12, Gambhirananda, 2003, p. 102).
This passage, by taking into account the place of personal experience (anubhava) and of questioning about life, clarifies that the subject's search for the overcoming of suffering would stem from an "inescapable existential dissatisfaction that reflects the definitive realization of the eminently ephemeral character of all pleasure arising from involvement with objects of private acquisition" (Loundo, 2019, p. 31). The recognition that the pursuit of worldly goals yields fruits that are ultimately futile from the standpoint of the radical eradication of suffering is what would drive the seeker toward the investigation of the Self (ātmā), with the guru and the Vedic texts serving as mediators of this reflective undertaking.
Language is one of the most cherished themes of the Vedic tradition. Bhartṛhari (c. 5th century CE), an important linguistic philosopher and the author of the Vākyapadīya, states that "there is no cognition in the world in which the word does not figure. All knowledge is, so to speak, interwoven with the word" (Iyer, 1965, p. 110). According to Bhartṛhari, even thought itself is a form of inner speech. The Vedas were originally transmitted orally in Sanskrit and only later set down in writing in devanāgarī. One observes the primacy of speech (vāc) over the written word, the latter regarded as a coded representation, devoid of the nuances of spoken sound.
In the earliest Vedic texts, one already finds the idea that a cold analysis, anchored solely in the literal meaning of expressions, would not suffice to reveal the intended meaning of its hymns. Verse 10.71.4 of the Ṛg Veda (n.d.) distinguishes between one who understands only the literal meaning and one who grasps the sense between the lines: "the one 'sees' speech but does not comprehend it; hears, but does not truly listen; whereas for the other, speech surrenders its meaning, as a loving wife undresses for her husband."
Indian philosophy came to develop an epistemological discourse centered on the concept of pramāṇa, defined as the instrument of valid knowledge (Madhavananda, 1942, p. 6). Six major instruments (causes) of knowledge are recognized: perception, inference, comparison, postulation, absence, and sound (śābda). Although there exist cognitions based on sound (such as recognizing the sound of a waterfall), here śābda refers to the content of the Vedas, also regarded as the sonic body of the absolute. The Vedas become a means of knowledge when their words undergo exegesis for the extraction of meaning. The inclusion of śābda as an autonomous means distinguishes Vedic epistemology from Western sciences. For this epistemology, the word is the "gold standard."
Moreover, certain passages of Vedic literature are pramāṇa insofar as they satisfy the criterion of novelty — that is, they present new information. Dayananda (2010) mentions central features of śabda pramāṇa: 1) it does not result from action, since knowledge occurs independently of volition; 2) it offers knowledge not previously available through other cognitive means, and, therefore; 3) it possesses epistemological autonomy. With the exception of the cārvakas (radical empiricists), Buddhists, and vaiśeṣikas (atomists), all orthodox Indian schools recognize the Vedic texts, as well as the words of competent gurus and teachers, as reliable and distinct sources of cognition.
For Śaṅkara, two categories of knowledge emanate from the Vedas: dharma and brahman. Dharma comprises statements describing the theory of action (karma) and its imperceptible effects, the transmigration of the soul (metempsychosis), the existence of other worlds (lokas), and the rituals necessary to attain them. The second category, brahman, is found strongly within the Upaniṣads (Gambhirananda, 1983, pp. 19–46), texts whose very name, as already mentioned, indicates the need for the guidance of a guru — one who leads the aspirant "in the cognitive endeavor of the Real as a condition sine qua non for the definitive overcoming of the problem of existential suffering" (Loundo, 2021, p. 169).
Suffering stems from a person's fundamental ignorance (avidyā) of this single ontological principle: brahman. This ignorance manifests as a process of superimposition (adhyāsa), in which limiting factors (upādhis) are projected onto the person, causing an individuality to take on apparent substance. The individual, in these terms, is an appearance (mithyā). Both the world and the individual — whether as experiencer or as agent — are appearances of brahman. For Advaita Vedānta, the undeniable recognition that "I am the absolute" is, in itself, sufficient for liberation (mokṣa), without the need for any further action or other means of knowledge to attest to that fact (Gambhirananda, 1983, pp. 1–13). Śabda pramāṇa, in this context, is knowledge born of words, yet one that does not describe something distant from the subject.
The scriptures, therefore, do not aim to reveal the Self (ātmā) or the absolute, but rather to negate erroneous notions superimposed upon the individual, reestablishing non-duality between the two and unmasking the illusory character of the dichotomy. This process is described as the untying of the "knots of the heart" (Gambhirananda, 2003, p. 137), where the knots represent desires. It is important to understand that desires reside in the intellect, not in the Self, which is already free. The notion of desire is central to understanding liberation in Advaita Vedānta, as it constitutes the connecting axis "of the appropriative and manipulative sense that shapes the illusory relationship between the relating subject and its objects," which the tradition seeks to unveil (Loundo, 2021, p. 21).
In his commentary on the Brahma Sūtra, Śaṅkara offers indications regarding the validation of soteriological knowledge: "For, when one feels in one's heart that one has realized brahman […] how can this be denied by another person?" (Gambhirananda, 1983, p. 840).
The same idea appears in the Bhagavad Gītā, when the warrior Arjuna (a figure who, in keeping with the etymology of his name, represents the ideal of coherence — ārjavaṃ), in the course of his dialogue with the avatar Kṛṣṇa, asks how to identify the sage — the one who has successfully completed the soteriological undertaking: "What is his manner of speech? […] What does he say? How does he sit? How does he move?" (Gambhirananda, 2006, p. 101). With this, Arjuna was seeking some behavioral, empirical proof of spiritual knowledge. (Transposing this question to the current context of the medicalization of yoga, we might ask: "The successful yoga practitioner — what is his blood pressure? His cholesterol level? His heart rate variability? His brainwave pattern, as seen on the electroencephalogram? Does he smoke? Does he practice only yoga, or other physical activity as well? If so, how many times a week?") Unable, however, to offer any observable description, Kṛṣṇa defines the sage as "he into whose heart desires enter [and from whose heart they depart] in the same way that the waters [of rivers] flow into the ocean, which remains unaltered and complete, attains peace" (p. 119). Arjuna, therefore, was left without knowing exactly what the evidence would be.
Arjuna's question echoes a central dilemma of Western philosophy: how does one validate knowledge that escapes scientific empiricism? The Vedic answer begins with the very etymology of "evidence," whose root *vid (to see, to know) gave rise to terms such as vidyā and veda, already mentioned, as well as to English words such as "vision" and "evidence" themselves, deriving from the Latin videre. Just as in the popular saying "seeing is believing," the Vedic tradition recognizes vision as the most exemplary of the sense perceptions, the basis of other means of knowledge. Vision is characterized by its immediacy and, in this sense, it is indeed similar to knowledge of the ātmā, which, being likewise direct and immediate, may also be regarded as a form of evidence. Taking this broad sense of evidence into consideration, we may include emotions and the objects of the sciences and, following Wilber (2022, p. 215, adapted), distinguish three types of evidence, according to their sources (Figure 1):
When the mind is restricted to sensory knowledge, we obtain empirical-analytical evidence, whose focus is primarily technical. When it apprehends other minds, this is evidence of a hermeneutic, phenomenological, rational, or historical order, oriented toward practical and moral interests. However, when attempting to turn toward spirit (the Self being accessible only by itself, as suggested by the diagram's first horizontal line), the mind encounters paradoxes. These, widely found within the Upaniṣads, operate as provisional supports that divert the mind from its habitual functions, leading it toward contemplation. Thus, the mind operates paradoxically when it attempts to apprehend the absolute; and its interest becomes soteriological (Wilber, 2022). How can one know whether the apprehension of this supposedly spiritual knowledge, distinct from both the sensory and the symbolic, is not, in fact, a hallucination?
| Absolute/Self | ↔ | Absolute (Transcendelia) |
| Mind | ↔ | Mind (Intelligibilia) |
| Body | ↔ | Matter (Sensibilia) |
Wilber (2022) argues that spiritual-contemplative knowledge, such as that derived from practices like yoga, follows a methodological order similar to that of knowledge within the other two domains (of Figure 1), allowing it to be verified or refuted through the same three stages: 1) The injunctive aspect: the set of instructions to be followed in order to acquire knowledge. It amounts to a "manual" — if you want to know that, do this. In yoga, this corresponds to the various provisional supports; 2) The illuminative aspect: the perception or insight that emerges from carrying out the instructions. It is the "seeing" that arises from practice, mediated by a specific way of looking; 3) The communal aspect: this refers to the sharing and intersubjective validation of knowledge. When practitioners who have followed the same path report similar experiences, there is agreement regarding the validity of what has been known.
This suggests that yoga, as a method for apprehending the unity underlying diversity, possesses a rationality of its own — injunctive, instrumental, experimental, experiential, and consensual in character. A paradoxical rationality, close to the thought of Pascal: "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing" (apud Wilber, 2022, p. 102).
How, then, might one better draw upon the wisdom, values, and pedagogical richness of the Vedic tradition of yoga, synthetically reviewed in the preceding sections, for the context of yoga groups operating within SUS health services?
A first and fundamental contribution lies in the recovery of orality as an act of attention/care. As discussed, the centrality of śābda (the word) and the dialogical dynamic between guru and disciple, pillars of Vedic epistemology, indicate that transformative knowledge is, in many cases, constructed through exchange. It is important to stress, however, that this reference to the guru-disciple relationship does not imply a literal reproduction of their roles. Within the SUS, yoga instructors, as a rule, are not gurus and should not be understood or act as such; they may, however, draw inspiration from their dialogical pedagogy. Such inspiration naturally demands progressive, tradition-sensitive training, so that listening and speech become tools of attention (rather than of doctrination). We consider that even facilitators of yoga groups who are not specialists in the tradition, acting with due humility, may mediate spaces for listening to and speaking about the sufferings, desires, and difficulties that run through the lives of SUS users, as well as the motivations that lead them to yoga.
It is important to note that, within the SUS, yoga is generally practiced in Health Centers (CS) and city gyms, led by health professionals and accessed, most commonly, through medical referral. Users, unlike those in the private sector, generally seek out yoga motivated by diagnoses or risk factors. Nonetheless, we consider it relevant to open conversations about desires — that is, those that go beyond technically (professionally) established or prescribed needs — in order to better understand users' demands and, from these, structure the practice of yoga.
Population surveys (Park et al., 2019), together with the experience of one of the researchers as a yoga teacher, identify stress as one of the main reasons that lead someone to yoga. The efficacy of yoga in reducing anxiety is widely recognized. This anxiolytic effect, supported by the "relaxation response" proposed by Herbert Benson and colleagues (1974), has contributed significantly to the acceptance of yoga in both scientific and popular circles. We argue, however, that the discussion should not be confined to these terms.
At the individual level, the Vedic tradition's approach to the theme of desire offers a valuable contribution to the discussion of stress. Verses 2.62–2.63 of the Bhagavad Gītā, for example, spell out the deleterious chain that begins when the mind fixates on an object of desire. An object is not desired for its intrinsic properties, but because of the perception of its attractiveness. The verses clarify that "meditation" — that is, repeated thought about a particular object of interest — generates attachment. When this desire is not satisfied, frustrations arise that lead to anger, loss of discernment, deterioration of ethical judgment, and, ultimately, loss of humanity (Gambhirananda, 2006, pp. 109–110).
In our view, however, the socialization of desires should not be confined to the scriptures, which say little (or nothing) about the social contexts of these themes. Deprivations are felt individually, but they are shaped socially. A person may, for instance, feel a need to own a brand-name garment because it is socially valued. Needs, therefore, reflect a connection between the collective and the individual (Schraiber, 2010). As already mentioned, desire in itself is not a problem within the Vedic tradition; it does not constitute a "knot of the heart." The problem emerges when desire takes on the contours of need. Taking CVD as an example, and using the Vedic tradition as a reference point, one comes to understand that an important risk factor for a negative cardiovascular outcome is not the mere fondness for cigarettes, but the need one has for them. Why, then, do certain social groups depend more heavily on cigarettes or alcohol than others? There is, therefore, in the transition from desire to need, a social component that deserves attention.
Thus, the yoga class can become a space for a hermeneutics of desires, investigating how participants' motivations are generated and sustained. This discussion inevitably touches on multiple dimensions that constitute a desire: at the economic and political level, it runs through the logic of productivity; at the philosophical level, it concerns the privatization of objects that become constitutive of an identity; at the psychological level, one's relationship with such objects may give rise to addictions. Such processes are not abstract; they are inscribed in the body, by way of intentionalities, gestures, and postural habits, which makes the bodily practice of yoga a fertile field for such exploration. Dialogically exercising a mutual understanding of desires, sufferings, and existential dilemmas — always singular, yet largely shared — thus draws close to a hermeneutic perspective (interpretive and comprehensive) that can enrich yoga groups, to the extent that this tradition can be accessed. Ayres's (2005) proposal to bring Collective Health closer to hermeneutics suggests avenues for thinking through the discussion and sharing of Vedic knowledges and pedagogies (centered on their own hermeneutics) within SUS yoga groups.
A second contribution, in keeping with the previous one, is the valuing of personal experience as a substrate for the construction of knowledge and understanding — a legitimate form of evidence — offering a direct counterpoint to the trend toward the medicalization of yoga2. This contribution aligns with the principle of experiential epistemic validation (anubhava), which, as we have seen, manifests as a transformation that is not only internal but also external. In practice, this implies conceiving of the yoga class as a "laboratory of the sensible"3, a field of inquiry in which the practitioner is invited to attribute meaning to the information that emerges from his or her own somato-psychic interiority. As Bois (2009) points out, such information acquires the status of immanent knowledge, teaching the practitioner about his or her own ways of being and acting.
Given that contemporary yoga is predominantly characterized as a physical practice, the training of teachers to mediate such somatic processes is essential. As a hermeneut of the sensible, the teacher can — and should — encourage reflection on one's inner life (the "how one is") during practice, drawing on the perception of the sonic or visual environment (even with eyes closed), of the body's stillness, of its internal movements, fluctuations, and silences. More than a mediator, the teacher may act as a conductor who, by manipulating environmental and discursive elements (sound, the pace of the class, vocal texture and modulation, instructions, proposals, as well as his or her own psychotonus and gestures), helps reveal dissonances between the student's "somatic sonority" (his or her psychotonus, habitual gestures shaped by desires rooted in the body) and a more fundamental rhythm, of the order of the sensible.
Finally, in order for yoga to be brought into greater alignment with the principles of the SUS, it is necessary to recover an ethics of engagement that binds individual practice to the collective undertaking. This ethics is not an external political addition, but derives directly from the soteriological consequence of Vedic knowledge: the overcoming of non-duality (advaita). If the fundamental root of suffering, according to Vedic epistemology, is ignorance (avidyā), which generates the notion of an "I" separate from the world, then the growth of wisdom moves in the direction of understanding that self-transformation and social work/transformation are, ultimately, co-determined. The message of the Bhagavad Gītā encapsulates this vision: wisdom is not attained by fleeing action in the world, but through engaged and responsible action, undertaken from a new place of consciousness.
However, this integrated, socially and politically engaged perspective confronts a notorious timidity within the current yogic cultural climate. There is a strong tendency toward apoliticism and a reluctance to address social issues aimed at confronting structural inequities and oppressions, such as colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism, which are, paradoxically, deeply rooted in yoga's own modern history (Jain, 2020). This stance has largely resulted from the adaptation of Vedic holism to the mold of the autonomous, individualistic subject fostered by neoliberalism. By refusing to understand yoga's ethics in terms of a co-enactment between subject and world, the practice is easily instrumentalized as a tool of spiritual by-pass: the use of an ascetic discipline to divert attention from difficult sociopolitical questions (McCartney, 2019).
This apparent apoliticism seems to rest on problematic interpretations of the tradition itself. One of these is the rigid, literal conception of the canonical texts, which would lead to the conclusion that themes such as socioeconomic inequities should not be discussed, since they are not explicitly addressed in the tradition's texts. This view disregards the fact that the Vedic method is, in itself, hermeneutic and, therefore, applicable to new socio-historical realities. Moreover, although yoga is frequently promoted as a holistic body of knowledge, in practice there is a strong discursive concentration on the individual. Karmic theory, for example, tends to be simplified into a deterministic process (actor-action-result of action), which compromises a broader understanding of the ecological and highly complex dynamics of action. Discourse on "enlightenment," conceived as an individual journey — even though its ultimate goal is the dissolution of the notion of individuality — tends to relegate discussions of the common good to a secondary plane. Similarly, the chakras are presented as energy centers belonging solely to the body, associated with glands — a biologization of the chakras.
This concentration on the individual reveals an incongruity that needs to be resolved at the very core of Vedic philosophy. If suffering resides in ignorance of non-duality, then a practice that reinforces individualism cannot lead to liberation. The tradition's answer would lie in overcoming the false dichotomy between "inner battle" and "outer battle." Starting from the idea of co-determination, the yogic discipline, by transforming the individual, alters the way that individual acts in the world, which, in turn, transforms the world that affects him or her. As Vivekananda (2002) reminds us, the yogic undertaking is inseparable from the dismantling of privilege.
We suggest that a yoga grounded in the Vedic tradition and adapted to the context of the SUS and of Collective Health could deepen the theme of desires, needs, and existential purposes, whether through: 1) the body, with exercises that refine processes of embodiment (such as intention-sensation-gesture), generating other somatic modes; 2) or speech, through practices of orality and listening, aimed at hearing the longings, desires, and needs affecting the collective that forms a yoga group. These are practices that hark back to the dialogue between guru and disciple within Vedic pedagogy, while also resonating with the circles of Freirean popular education and with the modes of sharing found among rural, riverine, and forest-dwelling populations.
The medicalization of yoga may be understood as a process of emptying out its soteriological and hermeneutic elements, in favor of an emphasis on its postural and observable aspects. Biomedical language has come to dominate the way people think about their bodies, and yoga has been drawn into this tendency, building a conception of body, physical fitness, and health within this same discursive logic. In this vein, Vedic texts (mantras) have been reified as instruments of energetic modulation, sustained by discourses that attribute transformative properties to sound vibrations in and of themselves; or else reinterpreted through Judeo-Christian or scientific lenses. Yoga, at least here in the West, has been progressively losing its function as a soteriological method.
The propositions presented here — (a) the recovery of dialogue and of the hermeneutic spirit as an act of care and of the pursuit of liberation, typical of the epistemological pillars of the Vedic tradition; (b) the valuing and exploration of personal experience, grounded in that tradition's principle of experiential epistemic validation; and (c) the construction of a socially and ecologically engaged yogic ethics, arising from a minimal or initial understanding of non-duality (advaita), emerging from the teachings of that same tradition — underscore the need to revitalize Vedic epistemology and pedagogy, centered on orality and on the understanding of desire, as pathways for improving yoga practices within the SUS. These, in turn, may be understood as a space potentially engaged with the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of existence.
In counterpoint to the "laboratory yoga" mentioned earlier — medicalized and dissociated from its soteriological vocation — we propose a twofold reorientation of its practices. On the one hand, a yoga "as a laboratory" of the sensible: a field of inquiry into the affects, tensions, and desires that emerge in the embodied matter of the Self, expressions to be welcomed and understood with discernment, equanimity, coherence, and the tradition's other guiding principles. On the other hand, it is a matter of turning this laboratory into a space of dialogue, oriented toward an emancipatory or liberating telos, both individual and collective.
We refer here to Gadamer's (1999) philosophical hermeneutics, which understands interpretation as a process of "fusion of horizons" between the transmitted tradition (text or knowledge) and the contemporary historical context. This is not a matter of academicism, but of invoking the hermeneutic "spirit" for SUS yoga groups in a twofold task: interpreting and applying Vedic wisdom to contemporary realities, and interpreting users' experience within their own life and health context.
Relatedly, Pereira and Tesser (2024) observe that the Vedic soteriological tradition, in refuting superimpositions (adhyāsa) that occur between the self and the non-self (objects and states of experience) — such as "I am fat" or "I am stupid" — which shape an individuality (jīvatvam), could serve within the context of Collective Health as a strategy of Quaternary Prevention (P4), since it would mitigate the formation of limiting self-perceptions and the internalization of pathological (such as "I am hypertensive," "I have cancer," "I am a cardiac patient") and behavioral (such as "I am sedentary," etc.) stigmas that commonly arise within the clinical setting of primary health care.
Bois (2009) defines the "sensible" as the body's capacity to perceive and process information directly, generating a global, immediate, and embodied form of knowledge. Intimate contact with the body produces novel perceptions and a sense of feeling that proves to carry meaning. From this perspective, yoga is a privileged field of inquiry, capable of transforming the practitioner's relationship with him- or herself and with the world.