The modern yoga ,we practice in the studios can be called as postural yoga which can be translated to asana based yoga. So, what is the origin in of this practice ?
Whenever anyone asks me what I do for a living and I say “I teach yoga”, response mostly will be “I love stretching or I hate stretching “. I almost feel that the trend of yoga postures and social media grew together like sisters. And the most popular thing about yoga on google search is yoga pants. Mindfulness and meditation are thrown in the mix to make it spiritual but most modern studios cater to students who are interested either in physically fitness, reduce their mental stress with physical exercise or heal their aching bodies with different kinds of stretches . so, the practice of yoga is mostly aimed to satisfy the needs of physical body. It is a great practice and those of you who have followed this path have felt a shift in the way you live. If that is the case, my urge is to get curious about its origin and its roots.
Here is the link to the video explaining what I written down in this post
Some say that the mention of yoga date backs to 1500 BCE ( vedic period) and some say it is 15,000 to 40, 000 yrs old, that is vast ground to cover. So,I am going to cut through timeline of this evolution and just say that it is at least 5,000 year old tradition. The intention of yoga practice is to find self realization or finding our true self which will then lead to liberation or Moksha . This was not the intention of just Yoga but the entire population of south asian continent through vedic period. As finding ones true self was the philosophy of an entire nation ,several practices , methods and paths emerged how to achieve that. All these different practices are still observed depending on the kind of lifestyle people follow. Out of those several practices , Yoga was one of them and gained popularity as a guide and also as philosophy. As finding self realization through yoga was such a complex subject different schools of yoga emerged. There were few which became more popular than the other. I will be talking about some of these in future posts. One of the popular ones was Pantanjalis way of doing Yoga which were compiled in verses called Yoga sutras of Patanjali. This text clearly lays the path to achieve self realization through the practice of yoga in 8 steps . And of the steps or limbs is Asana or posture. So, the root of all the postures we do roots from this word Asana which is a part a text compiled by Patanjali.
Future posts will include
Patanjali yoga sutra
Bhagavad Gita
Defining Self realization
Namaskar
Savitha