Ruth Westoby is a doctoral researcher in yoga and an Ashtanga practitioner. As well as offering workshops and lectures at studios and conferences, Ruth teaches on some of the principal teacher training programmes in the UK and beyond. Ruth is on the steering committee for the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies.
Ruth collaborated with the Haṭha Yoga Project’s ‘embodied philology’, interpreting postures from an 18th-century text teaching a precursor of modern yoga, the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, in 2016 and 2017. Ruth began to explore yoga practices in 1996 and started teaching postural yoga in 2004. In 2010 she received an MA in Indian Religions from SOAS, University of London, with Distinction. Ruth has studied closely with Hamish Hendry and Richard Freeman. In 2015 she was authorized by Sharat to teach Ashtanga level 2.
Ruth is researching for a doctoral thesis on ‘Bodies in Haṭhayoga: Gender, Materiality and Power’ at SOAS under the supervision of James Mallinson. Please see enigmatic.yoga.
Ruth’s main teachers are Hamish Hendry whom she assists, Richard Freeman, Sharat Jois, and the late Śrī K Pattabhis Jois. She was awarded an MA in Indian Religions from SOAS in 2010 with Distinction. Since then she has been studying Sanskrit and caring for her young family. She writes for the practitioner journal Pushpam.
Ruth recently collaborated with SOAS’s Haṭha Yoga Project interpreting postures from the 19th century Sanskrit text the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati. She is currently working on doctoral research into gendered conceptions in haṭha yoga at SOAS under the supervision of James Mallinson.
