The first module explores the state of yoga on the eve of the modern period, looking at how traditional forms of yoga were adapted and blended with hybrid forms to produce new, globalised forms of philosophy and practice. What was traditional yoga practice at this time? And what do we mean when we speak of "modern yoga"? Are modern practices really "authentic" and "traditional", or are we caught in a more tangled and complex relationship with the past? This first module aims to give students the critical tools to examine modern yoga forms in relation to the past.

Psychology and modern yoga came into being at the same time, and they share a common, complex history. In this module, we will look at the way yoga has been transformed by its interraction with psychology, and how psychology has assimilated the theory and practice of yoga. If psychology is the secular religion of our age, how has the function of yoga changed as it has been subjected to the logic of modern psychology? What stories does psychology tell us about ourselves, and are those stories real? With a focus on 'modern dharma', we will see how contemporary yoga culture has offered us strange new ways of understanding ourselves and our significance in the world.

In this final module, we will look at some new directions in the history of yoga. Yoga's ever-closer relationship with technology signals an exciting, and perhaps worrying, turn in its history. What happens when the human becomes machine? What happens when yoga becomes post-human? And what, if anything, prohibits us from using current and near-future technologies to achieve the traditional goals of yoga, up to and including super-powers and machine-generated ‘liberation’ from the human condition? Finally, we consider yoga in light of climate breakdown, and the cataclysmic changes predicted for our planet.