Tracing the Roots and History of Yoga

Yoga (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग yóga) refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines that originated in ancient India. Yoga was probably practiced in the Indus Valley civilization in India, around 3000 BC. Several seals discovered at Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300–1700 B.C.E.) depict figures in positions resembling a common yoga or meditation pose.

The first clearly written descriptions of yoga practice appear in the Hindu religious texts, the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas, but these were passed down through an oral tradition for many centuries or even millennia before being written down between approximately 500-150 BC.

Even though the authority of the Vedas themselves was not accepted by other Eastern religions such as Buddhist and Jain theology, the influence of yoga is still felt in these religions. It is not limited to orthodox Hindu spirituality.

However, the idea of joining body, mind and soul in cosmic unity, a central theme of yoga philosophy, comes later, in the Upanishads or Vedanta. And what we usually understand by yoga in the West, hatha yoga, was developed by Swami Swatamarama in the 15th century, only 600 years ago.

Swami Swatamarama’s text is called the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. It lists in detail all of the main asanas (postures), pranayama (breath control), mudra (hand postures or seals) and bandha (locks or binding postures, forms of mudra) that modern yoga students will know.

Hatha is a Sanskrit word meaning force or violence, but in yoga terms it may come from the two words ‘ha’ for sun and ‘tha’ for moon, representing complementary but opposing energies, or two halves of a whole, a common theme in yogic philosophy.

In our lives we tend to let the mind be constantly attracted by external objects and thoughts arising from what we see and experience through our senses. Hatha yoga uses physical exercises and postures known as asanas, along with pranayamas or regulation of the breath, to bring the mind back into unity with the body and soul. The breath is very important in yoga and is often seen as the soul, or the element that carries the soul.

Asana means immovable or motionless, and asanas are static postures, even if in some modern forms of yoga each one is only held for a short time before moving into the next. Other types of yoga may focus on movement itself, more like the Chinese exercise forms of tai chi and xi gong, but the asanas of hatha yoga are not motions.

Asanas develop strength, flexibility, balance and poise. Traditionally they were practiced to clear the mind to prepare for meditation. These days in the West we focus more on the physical and health benefits of yoga and if meditation is practiced at the end, it is seen as an add-on or final relaxation rather than the vital part of yoga practice that it would have been considered earlier in the history of yoga.

[Update: 01/19/2010] Here’s a link to lots of free PDFs and some great books on yoga.

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4. Hatha Yoga – An Introduction
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