So what is yoga? What is it to you? What meaning do you project when you hear the word yoga? How old is it? What are some books to read when learning more about yoga? Do you think of yoga as a form of exercise?
Here are a few definitions of what yoga is and the thoughts that I like:
🫧Yoga is about our relationship with our selves, everyone else, and everything else. @jessicarabone YTT ‘Ancient wisdom and new knowledge’
🫧Yoga is a science of life and efficient living. Yoga principles can be used to create mind body efficiency and therefore life efficiency. Definition offered by Prasad @yogaprasad_institute during our YTT guest teacher session about yogic decision making.
🫧‘Skill in action’. The Bhagavad Gita
🫧‘Yoga is a light, which once lit will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter your flame.’ B.K.S Iyengar
🫧‘Yoga is perfect evenness of mind.’The Bhagavad Gita
🫧‘Yoga is a practice that has been around for thousands of years that works to condition the body, mind, and spirit.’ Masterclass.com
🫧Donna Farhi (the teacher of yoga teachers) uses Patanjali’s ‘Yoga Sutras’ to define yoga: ‘Yoga is settling of the mind back to its original silence’.
Lets’s dig a bit more. According to Yogapedia (yep, that is a real thing, check it out): Yoga is a physical, mental and spiritual practice that originated in ancient India. Although each school or tradition of yoga has its own emphasis and practices, most focus on bringing together body, mind and breath.
Interesting fact: we do not really know how old yoga is. Most people agree that it is at least 2500 years old, but it could also be much older. Further archeological findings will tell more about this question. Yoga practice was in fact handed down from teacher to student (and still is) long before any yoga text arose. Which does not help to date yoga and truly say how old it is.
Here are 5 frequently asked questions about yoga and some answers:
1. What are some books to read if you decide to learn more about yoga?
Yoga was first codified by the sage Patanjali (though it is still debated who he (?) was and if it was only one person) in his 'Yoga Sutras' around 400 C.E. It is a collection of 196 yoga linked statements. It is in Yoga sutras that yoga is presented as an 8 limbs path or framework and yoga asana, breath and meditation are part of the 8 limbs of yoga.
A second key reference in yoga world is 'The Bhagavad Gita'. Or some simply call it 'The Gita'. You can read it all at once or you can open it at any page when you are looking for some answers in your life. This book can be studied all the life. I keep re-reading different parts of it and I continue to find something new.
2. When did 'group yoga classes' start?
Traditionally, yoga was a one-to-one transmission, teacher to student, and this type of teaching still continues today. Only since the 20th century group classes have become the norm, which means that yoga classes as we know today are less than 100 years old!
3. What does the word yoga mean?
The word yoga is derived from the Sanskrit (an ancient Indo-European language of India, in which the Hindu scriptures and classical Indian epic poems are written) root "yuj", meaning “to yoke,” or “to unite”. It is often interpreted that yoga practice aims to create union between body, mind and spirit, as well as between the individual self and universal consciousness.
4. What was the original goal of yoga when it started thousands years ago?
The ultimate goal of yoga was and is to achieve liberation from suffering. What ever that suffering might be for each person in a different life time.
5. Many people know or experience yoga as a form of physical exercise. What more there is to yoga?
Shapes, postures, also known as asanas, are the most common images / associations for most of the people who hear a word yoga today. And while yoga is mostly known as a low impact movement practice today in the West, or a form of exercise, it is actually more than that.
One of the ways to summarise what more there is to yoga than movement is by referring to Pantajali 'Yoga sutras' 8 limbs of yoga framework. Those 8 limbs/parts of yoga are: 1) yama - ethics or guiding principles with the outside world, 2) niyamas - guiding principles with oneself, 3) asana - postures or movement, 4) pranayama - breathing techniques, 5) pratyahara - withdrawal from senses, 6) dharna - concentration, focus, 7) dhyana - meditation, 8) samadhi - bliss or enlightenment.
Finally, to me yoga is all about kindness. Kindness to our bodies, our thoughts, people around us and eventually everything around us. That is true essence of yoga to me.
Be kind, with love,
Kotryna