Affective entrainment: Generating and incorporating the “rollercoaster” experience of a group yoga class

This article investigates the cultivation and incorporation of transpersonal affect through an analysis of classes at an Amsterdam yoga studio. With their combination of aerobic exercises, heightened atmosphere, and teachings of self-transformation, Tattva Yoga classes are renowned as a “rollercoaster” experience. This article analyses a single Tattva Yoga class, delineating how the rollercoaster arises from the orchestration of space and moving bodies, generating fluctuating intensities which take up and are taken up by practitioners. To capture this process, the article develops the concept of affective entrainment, defined as the synchronisation of oscillations of intensity and release. In conceptualising the means by which Tattva Yoga classes modulate transpersonal affect, affective entrainment both attends to the unqualified and impersonal character of affect and also affirms that it is nonetheless cultivated via techniques and pedagogies specific to the context of its emergence.