The history of yoga is a complex web of branches and schools that twist and turn, leading to what is considered to be today’s modern yoga. No one can pinpoint precisely when yoga was invented, but here’s what we do know: Yoga hails from India. The language of yoga is called Sanskrit, an ancient priestly tongue. A pose is called an asana, based on the Sanskrit word for “seat.” The yoga lifestyle has changed quite a bit since ancient times, when yogis lived in secluded caves or forests and practiced ways to master their bodies, such as stopping their heartbeat. But the essence of yoga remains the same, as does the ultimate goal: to find harmony with yourself and the world.
Some scholars believe the yoga tradition began as early as 5,000 years ago, linking its origins to a soap-stone seal, which was excavated in the early 1900s, that had human-like figures carved in shapes that looked like yoga poses. Others believe yoga is 2,500 years old, which is when it was first mentioned in an ancient text. Still others believe that yoga originated during the Vedic Age in India, when people focused on ritual, poetry, and transcending the mind through intense focus. During this time, holy men and women were said to have magical powers and practiced strenuous physical feats to overcome the body, which they considered an obstacle to enlightenment. These early yogis were committed to understanding their relationship with the divine, a core idea that is found in many schools of yoga today, thousands of years later.
Over time, the focus shifted from study and rituals toward self-understanding through direct experience. The body was no longer considered an obstacle; rather, it was seen as a means to finding freedom.
In yoga’s Classical Age, which also took place in India, yoga came to be seen as a spiritual philosophy that could help people reach their full human potential. Finding freedom wasn’t so much about uniting with some great spirit in the sky, but about awakening to one’s own authentic self. It’s known as the Classical Age because during this time, six classical philosophies were established, one of which is Patanjali’s yoga. During this era, the emphasis of the practice was on meditation, rather than on yoga’s physical poses.
HISTORIC TEXT OF THE CLASSICAL AGE: The Yoga Sutra
The Yoga Sutra is an authoritative text of the Classical Age. It was written at the dawn of the first millennium by a sage named Patanjali. It contains 196 aphorisms on the meaning of yoga, the experience of yoga, the expanding of one’s yoga practice, and how yoga can free the soul. It also defined a set of guidelines called the Eight-Limbed Path (see page 134) that serves as a template for some modern-day yoga schools. And it identified five causes of suffering, called kleshas, which stand in the way of enlightenment. The five kleshas are ignorance (avidya), ego (asmita), attachment (raga), aversion to pain (dvesa), and fear of death (abhinivesah).
Modern yoga as we know it gained traction in the late 1800s after a few individual Indian yogis shared teachings of Eastern philosophy with Western audiences. Among those was Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk who gave an influential speech at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. Over the next century, more Indian teachers came to America, including B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, and T.K.V. Desikachar. These teachers, all students of a great Indian master called Krishnamacharya, went on to create the major styles practiced by today’s yogis. Another Indian teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda, came to Boston in 1920 and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship. His book, Autobiography of a Yogi, is a wildly popular spiritual classic.
By the 1960s, yoga had taken hold in Western counter-culture. An Indian guru named Swami Satchidananda gave the opening speech at Woodstock in 1969, while the Beatles started traveling to India to study with a guru named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Ram Dass wrote a famous book called Be Here Now that heralded in the age of spiritual seekers. By the 1990s, yoga’s popularity had fully transitioned from counterculture to the mainstream, where it thrives today.
HISTORIC TEXT OF THE MODERN AGE: Light on Yoga
Written by B.K.S. Iyengar and first published in 1966, Light on Yoga is considered to be the definitive manual on modern yoga. It includes descriptions and photographs of the yoga master himself in a wide range of poses. Iyengar went on to create an eponymous style of yoga, which focuses on precise alignment and the use of props.