Power in everyday life during normalization: conformity, circumvention, and resistance in yoga practice

The article analyzes the memories of yoga practitioners during the normalization period in former Czechoslovakia, aiming to identify and describe the mechanisms and strategies of governance and power under socialist regime within the yoga platform. I carried out a qualitative research capturing the autobiographical account of the personal experiences of respondents who practiced yoga during the period of communist normalization. Despite the state's regulation of leisure activities, people devoted themselves to yoga practice. The article analyzes how yogis dealt with state power both in private and public spheres and what strategies they used to search for free intermediate spaces of realization. I also mention how the respondents perceive the difference between normalizing yoga conditions and the current state of yoga.The article analyzes the memories of yoga practitioners during the normalization period in former Czechoslovakia, aiming to identify and describe the mechanisms and strategies of governance and power under socialist regime within the yoga platform. I carried out a qualitative research capturing the autobiographical account of the personal experiences of respondents who practiced yoga during the period of communist normalization. Despite the state's regulation of leisure activities, people devoted themselves to yoga practice. The article analyzes how yogis dealt with state power both in private and public spheres and what strategies they used to search for free intermediate spaces of realization. I also mention how the respondents perceive the difference between normalizing yoga conditions and the current state of yoga