A massive industry now surrounds yoga, generating 80 billion dollars annually in classes, equipment, and other related expenditure. However, what has become commonly known as yoga today would have been virtually unrecognizable to yogis of the past.
During the early 20th century yoga went from being little known even in India to becoming a global movement. Much of this was due to the work of two great yogis: Shri Yogendra and Swami Sivananda.
Origins
The earliest mention of yoga comes from the Rig Veda around 1500 BCE. The Vedas are India’s oldest sacred texts. They are a collection of chants, prayers, rituals and philosophical teachings.
It is believed that Parvati, wife of Shiva, passed this ancient knowledge on to the Saptarishis or seven sages. From there, it was recorded in the Upanishads – a set of Hindu philosophical-religious scriptures.
It was at this point that yoga began to morph into the more physical form that we practice today. Swami Vivekananda brought yoga to the West when he exhibited it at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. From there, hatha yoga spread worldwide.
Early Practices
In the late 19th century, Yoga began to spread widely outside of India. Yoga masters such as Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda toured Europe and America promoting the spiritual teachings of Yoga. Around this time a yogi named Patanjali compiled and organized the practices into an “eight-limbed path” which still guide many styles of modern yoga practice.
The sage Patanjali also wrote 3 books – a treatise on Sanskrit grammar, a medical book on Ayurveda and the Yoga Sutras which consolidated the then existing practices into a set of principles. Around the same time a new style of Yoga called Tantra developed which claims to tap a serpentine energy at the base of the spine.
Medieval Period
In the beginning, yoga was an oral tradition and could only be transmitted between masters. It was a practice reserved for ascetics that were willing to give up everything and isolate themselves in a monastery to become expert yogis.
During this time, a spiritual revolution was taking place that eventually led to the emergence of Tantra. Yoga was viewed as a means of liberation from manifest reality and arose from an understanding that life is essentially suffering.
The Medieval Period is sometimes called the “Dark Ages” because there were few intellectual or cultural advances in contrast to the great Greco-Roman culture that preceded it. This was largely due to church influence, which suppressed secular teachings of rhetoric.
Renaissance
As the post-classical era began, generations of yogis refined yoga’s ideas and insights into a carefully systematised practice. While some forms, like Hatha yoga, emphasized complete mastery of the body and extreme renunciation, other approaches sought to make yoga more accessible for people with more normal lives.
In the West, yoga became popular in the late 19th century through the influence of a variety of spiritual teachers. Swami Vivekananda’s success at the Parliament of Religions captured public interest, and he helped to spread awareness through his modern translations of ancient texts.
Enlightenment
Yoga is a discipline that involves body, mind, and spirit. Its ultimate goal is enlightenment, the union of the individual with the universe.
The practices and beliefs of yoga were developed by the Rishis (mystic seers) in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization beginning around 3000BCE. They documented their teachings in the vast scripture called the Vedas and Upanishads.
Sage Patanjali collated these teachings into his 2,000-year-old Yoga Sutra. He and other yogis later developed Hatha Yoga, which involved the physical practice of postures. Modern emphases on alignment and fitness are largely twentieth-century innovations from Yoga masters like Sivananda, Krishnamacharya, BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, and TKV Desikachar.
Modern Period
Modern yoga first came to the West through the Indian gurus Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Ramana Maharishi who practiced advaita vedanta. These gurus promoted meditation and devotion as key to enlightenment and liberation.
However, a growing emphasis on physical culture was also brought to the yoga fold through European ideas of man-making and Swedish systems of gymnastics by Ling and Sandow which greatly influenced the development of modern postural yoga.
The post-classical period saw the emergence of Hatha yoga with a greater focus on postures, and the writing of several yoga scriptures, including the famous Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swami Swatmarama in the 15th Century. It is important to note that unlike Zen, there is no unbroken lineage of teachers for hatha yoga.