What are the origins of yoga?

Yoga has become an extremely popular practice in recent years throughout the Western world but sometimes I believe that people are just on their mats to stretch and don’t always fully understand what Yoga is or where it comes from, it is most definitely not about how flexible you are or how long you can hold a handstand for. One of my teachers once said to me – “the person who is truly in a state of yoga is the person who is most present.”

Here is a little bit about the origins of yoga and what it was designed for;

Yoga is an ancient art and science of healthy living, which originates thousands of years ago long before the first religions or belief systems were born.  The actual word yoga means ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’.

Yoga was first developed by the Indus-Sarasvati civilization in Northern India over 5000 years ago. We can see the first mention of the word yoga in the Rig Veda – the oldest sacred texts. The Vedas were a collection of texts written on palm leaves containing songs, mantras and rituals to be used by the Brahmans, the Vedic priests.

Pantanjali was the first sage to write the philosophy of yoga known as the yoga sutras over 1,700 years ago, it’s made up of 195 aphorisms (sutras), or words of wisdom. You will often find yoga teachers referencing the sutras in their yoga classes. However, we don’t really know too much about Pantanjali, it is believed that he lived around the second century BCE and also wrote significant works on Ayurveda, and Sanskrit grammar. But based on the analyses of modern scholars Pantanjali is placed in the second or third century CE.

It may seem odd to us that so little is known about Pantanjali, but anonymity is typical of the great sages of ancient India. They recognized that their teaching was the outcome of a cooperative group effort that spanned several generations, and they refused to take credit for themselves, often attributing their work to some other, older teacher.

Here is sentence 2 taken from the first chapter of Pantanjali’s yoga sutras.  The Samadhi-pada

When you are in a state of yoga, all misconceptions (vrittis) that can exist in the mutable aspect of human beings (chitta) disappear. 

Freeing ourselves of the misconceptions that alter our consciousness is a highly complex task that involves our entire being; for misconceptions are literally embedded in our physical, energetic, emotional and mental bodies. Nonetheless, each of us has the capacity to attain this clear state of perception, i.e. the state Patañjali refers to as yoga, and to which he shows us a viable path.  Through yoga we are able to unite/yoke the body, mind and spirit.

Namaste