How Yoga History Conquered the World
At first, that is what I did when I rolled out my yoga mat, I had been simply enrolling in a good stretch. I did not even know that I was entering a road with millennia of yoga history. My exploration started with the painful muscles and wondering mind but soon enough it turned out to be something more. I began to question: whose poses, this concentration on breath, this whole philosophy, were these? I found out something that shocked me.
Yoga history is not just a chronology, it is a deep developing narration of human-spirit and human-physic. It is a story that stretches across continents and centuries and it is the knowledge of it that led to my practice not being a workout but a valuable trip into history. It is an amazing story that we will plunge ourselves into.
The Dawn of Yoga: It Has Not Begun on a Mat.
In case you imagine ancient yogis in perfect headstands, you may be surprised about the origins. The first traces of what we today regard as yoga are found in a collection of ancient Indian scriptures, the Vedas, which are more than 5,000 years old. Yoga itself as a term is first used in the Rig Veda and is based on the Sanskrit root yuj meaning to yoke or unite.
However, there was a catch here, this original version did not have much to do with physical postures. Yoga at the time was a form of ritual and discipline which was meant to unite the individual soul to the universal cosmic order. It was the art of utilizing the mind and going beyond the physical world by means of hard meditation and asceticism.
Do not imagine the sages sitting and thinking all day long, but students flitting through a Vinyasa class. It was the basis of all that would come after that, being the foundational work upon which the philosophical foundations of yoga rest to this day, and in which the principle objective of unity upon which yoga is still predicated.
The Foundational Teachings: The Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras.
The actual history changer of the yoga was a sage called Patanjali who lived a thousand years or so back around 2,000 years ago. He has been referred to as the father of yoga and aptly. He codified the available philosophies and practices into a terse 196 verse text which is called the Yoga Sutras.
Patanjali did not create yoga, but he suggested the illustrious scheme of yoga- the Eight-Limbed Path or Ashtanga Yoga. This is a sequence of steps to enlightenment and it is where most of the ideas of our contemporary practice originated. These limbs consist of ethical guidelines (yamas and niyamas), body position (asana), breath regulation (pranayama) and meditation phases. Personally, it was an eye opener to learn that asanas (physical poses) were only a minor fraction of a system of living. It gave an entirely new and larger view of my whole practice.
About the same period, there was the epic book, the Bhagavad Gita, which interlaced yoga philosophy into a magnificent story. It presented three main ways of yoga, Karma Yoga (the yoga of selfless action), Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion), and Jnanayoga (the yoga of knowledge). This stressed the fact that yoga was not the preserve of the ascetics and monks.
The Middle Ages: Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Estrangement of a Physical Body.
Still, centuries later yoga remained mostly a philosophic and meditative endeavor. However a significant change started in the middle ages, between the 11 th and 15 th centuries. It is at this point that this physical body began to be perceived not as a barrier to enlightenment, but as a means of it.
Hatha Yoga was created during this period. The very name of the practice, Hatha, is self-explanatory, as ha translates to sun and tha to moon, referring to the marriage of the opposites. This was aimed at cleansing the body so as to be ready to the highest levels of meditation. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, by Swami Swatmarama around the 15th century is the most significant text of this period. It is at this point that the history of yoga becomes much more physical.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika has outlined different asanas (postures), shatkarmas (cleansing methods), pranayama (breath management) and mudras (energy seals). A lot of the poses that we are familiar with today originated here though with many variations. This is what gave the yoga of strength, vitality and physical mastery. It was the bridge that needed to be made, which would ultimately enable yoga to be the world sensation it is today.
The path of Yoga: The Ocean Crossing.
How did yoga then get the giant leap out of the banks of the Ganges to Main Street, USA? The history of yoga in the West is an interesting narrative of gurus, world fairs and cultural exchange.
The original wave struck at the end of the 19th century. One of them was Swami Vivekananda, a vibrant Indian monk who impressed the audience in the World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. He addressed the American intellectual community and spiritual seekers with eloquence on the Hindu philosophy and generalities of yoga. He promoted yoga as a science of the mind and a philosophy, first of all.
Other influential teachers would continue to appear during the early 20th century, such as Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of a spiritual classic titled Autobiography of a Yogi. However, until recently, yoga in the West was a peripheral, intellectual, and spiritual practice.
The contemporary Yoga boom: Studios to Superstars.
The actual fire occurred in the middle of the 20 th century, and we have two main people to be grateful to, namely, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and his disciples.
Krishnamacharya is referred to as the architect of the modern yoga. He was a revolutionary teacher and in the early 20th century was the director of a school of yoga at Mysore, India. He focused more on the physical side of yoga, developing flowing series (vinyasas) and modifying postures to students. His best students would become international celebrities:
B.K.S. Iyengar: He created Iyengar Yoga that emphasizes on alignment and the use of props such as blocks and straps. Light on Yoga (1966) was the Bible of the asana practice in the West.
Pattabhi Jois: He introduced the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, which is a strenuous, preset of postures which turned out to be unscontrollably influential.
T.K.V. Desikachar: His son who advocated Viniyoga, which is more therapeutic and accommodating.
Fitness craze of 1980s and 1990s offered the most suitable occasion of prosperity of yoga. It was no more a mystical route but a incredible way of becoming fit, less stressed and achieving balance in a hectic world. Famous people began to do it, all the towns began to have yoga studios, and yoga clothing became a one billion dollar business. The yoga history was now in its mainstream and globalized phase.
Yoga Today: A Practice to all.
The development is going on today. It has an overwhelming number of styles to choose, including power yoga, hot yoga, restorative yoga, aerial yoga, and goat yoga! It is more accessible than ever because of the world of the digital age: online classes and applications will allow you to train anywhere.
In my case, this long and rich history of yoga has been humbling to learn. It reminds me that I am engaging in a tradition when I get on my mat. I am not only posing, I am repeating a movement which of millennia has been perfected.
it is your turn now to be in this long and beautiful tale, whether you are now in it because it will give you physical advantages, or because it will make you mentally clear, or because it will get you a spiritual relationship. The next time your flow happens to pass through a Sun Salutation, reminisce–you are one of the 5,000 year old traditions of togetherness and self-realization.
Frequency Asked Questions (FAQs).
Q: Who is the father of yoga?
A: The origins of yoga are excludingly ancient; however, when it came to systematizing the philosophy and practices of yoga, it was the sage Patanjali who is referred to as the fathers of yoga, that compiled and codified yoga around 2,000 years ago in his work, the Yoga Sutras.
Q: What is the traditional yoga?
A: The oldest one is controversial, yet it is agreed that the earliest forebears are the Vedic practices which were mainly ritualistic and meditative. The earliest written yoga practice was probably the Hatha Yoga described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika of the 15th century.
Q: What was the time of the popularity of yoga in the United States?
A: Yoga was first popularized in the late 1800s, but its first great surge of popularity came in the 1960s and the 1970s with the advent of the counterculture movement. It burst into the mainstream during the 1990s as a kind of physical exercise and de-stress.
Q: What is there between ancient yoga and modern yoga?
A: In ancient yoga, physical postures were a minor part of the spiritual and meditative practice, whose goal was liberation. In contemporary yoga, particularly in the West, the physical postures (asanas) used to be considered beneficial to health and well-being, which is why they are often not linked with the philosophical background of yoga.
Q: What has changed with yoga?
A: Yoga is a movement that has been changing. It evolved into a more physical cleansing (Hatha Yoga), then was westernized and made more popular as a mind-body workout, having inspired an enormous variety of styles that we now see.