“It is always useful to pause, that is, take a step back and resist drawing an immediate conclusion, whether that applies to one’s own experience or to a practice that one is encountering externally.” – Sravana Borkataky Varma and Anya Foxen (Authors – The Serpent’s Tale)

Team Kitaab is in conversation with Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen, authors of The Serpent’s Tale- Kundalini, Yoga, and the History of an Experience (Published by Columbia University Press, 2025).

SRAVANA BORKATAKY-VARMA is an instructional assistant professor of comparative cultural studies at the University of Houston as well as a research affiliate at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. She is co-editor of Living Folk Religions (2023), Embodied Pedagogies in the Study of Religion: Transforming the Classroom (2025), among other books.

ANYA FOXEN is associate professor of religious studies at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her books include Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga (2020).