WRESTLER'S BODY

The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development.Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic.
as one of the central exercises in a wrestler?s vyayam regimen, it is clear that dands do more than develop the gross body. They develop the personality of the wrestler as well. The wrestler?s personality derives its strength?as a charismatic social force and as personal self-confidence?through the symbiosis of a personal experience akin to enlightenment and a physical experience of muscular development.