02 February 2008

History Of Yoga

History Of Yoga Goes Back To More Than Four Thousand Years To India

When you think about it, yoga is a means to bring together the mind, body as well as spirit in perfect unison, and in fact, right from the earliest days of the beginnings of yoga to the present day yoga, these intentions have not changed – only been refined and improved. As a matter of fact, the history of yoga has a lot of tradition embodied in it and it is basically a system pertaining to the physical, mental as well as spiritual health and fitness of a practitioner that has its roots in the system devised in India that goes back many thousands of years. Thus, the history of yoga is rich not only in its tradition, but also in its effectiveness and it may be divided into four different periods that began with the pre-classical period which was followed by the classical period which gave way to the post-classical period and up to the present or modern period.

Yoga Sutra Is What The Book On Yoga Is Called

According to the history of yoga, the book pertaining to yoga is known as the yoga sutra and this history would not have been completed in the classical period alone. The word yoga itself means the ‘Yolk’ or something which joins other things together and a good example would be joining of a cart to the ox while using a yolk. Thus, you can easily infer that yoga has everything to do with uniting each and every aspect of the human being into one single entity.

What’s more, you should not be misled into thinking that yoga means just contorting the body into weird poses because that is simply a small aspect of it and there is more to it including ethics, physical postures as well as controlling the breathing and it even includes meditation.

Of late, modern yoga has undergone something of a renaissance and the history of yoga has gone with the times and become more globalized and now there is a visible delineation between the religious aspects and the practice of yoga. In addition, the history of yoga has also seen the emergence of many different schools of yoga and even the practice of yoga has seen much branches sprouting along with different philosophies being spawned as well.

Nevertheless, the common thread that runs in all forms of yoga and which have not changed much throughout the history of yoga is that the fundamental aim of yoga is to create a harmony of the mind, body and also the environment. So, in the modern period in the history of yoga, it has become more comprehensive means to achieve greater control of the mind and body and is not merely a means to stay fit as well as trim; rather, yoga today can help you achieve better health as a whole person and will help empower life.