Yoga, widely regarded as an “immortal cultural result” of the Indus Saraswati Valley civilization, dating back to 2700 BC. C. The history of yoga has many places of darkness and uncertainty due to its oral transmission of sacred texts and the secret nature of its teachings. The first writings on Yoga were transcribed on fragile palm leaves that were easily damaged, destroyed or lost.
The development of yoga dates back more than 5000 years, but some researchers think that yoga can be up to 10,000 years old. The long and rich history of yoga can be divided into four main periods of innovation, practice and development. The beginnings of yoga were developed by the Indus-Saraswati civilization, located in northern India, approximately 5,000 years ago. The theory of yoga (along with various physical postures or asanas) that has gained worldwide attention can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilization (c.
Postclassic yoga covers a large part of time again (almost 1000 years). You have a lot of new yoga teachings and teachers who contribute to creating many new yoga schools. As I mentioned, yoga appears in the Rig Veda (one of the four texts of the Vedas). Yoga is so popular that you'll find it everywhere, whether it's in classes at your local gym, on TV shows and movies, or on social media.
Finally, Indian yogis brought yoga to the West, and if it weren't for Western interest in yoga, it would most likely have died out to become a curious footnote in India's long history. This is another type of modern yoga, which owes its name to the fact that it is practiced in rooms with heating from 35 to 40 °C. Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gîtâ are all Hindu religious texts and they all ask us to do yoga. The student government's reasoning was that its yoga classes were examples of “cultural appropriation.
He wrote Yoga Sutras to clarify the mechanism and systematic study of functional methods for awakening and extending the higher faculties of mind, intelligence and consciousness. These are classified into six subcomponents: Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Mimansa, Vedanta and Yoga. This collection of Sanskrit reflections on the theory and practice of yoga is seen as a must-read for yogis and introduced the concept of ashtanga or the eight members of yoga, also known as Raja yoga. Yoga is an ancient practice that focuses on breathing, flexibility and strength to improve mind and well-being.
Now that we have covered aspects of the background of yoga, we will now discuss some modern influences on why it is one of the most popular practices today. In the classical Astanga yoga system, the ultimate goal of yoga is to achieve samadhi and stay in that state as pure consciousness. This began at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, when Swami Vivekananda surprised attendees with his lectures on yoga and the universality of world religions. Loyalty to a prophet and to a single exclusive god is simply based on the belief that it is an “abomination” when it comes to yoga.
You can also gain a better understanding of Classical Yoga, at The Yoga Institute here, and an even more detailed account of other postures of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta & Ashrams centers, here.
