HISTORY OF YOGA

Yoga is the talk of every town these days, from school going kids to teens to mid –aged and old aged people, everyone can be seen practicing yoga and laughing meditation in the park. People meet over yoga and break their mundane by performing pranayama techniques but hardly one percent of our population would know about the roots of this life changing practice.

Yoga’s history is ambiguous and indecisive till date because it was believed that its teachings were secretive and orally transmitted from guru (teacher) to shishya (student), it is also said that early yoga teachings were actually written down on palm leaves which couldn’t be contained and got vanished with time, Yoga was believed to begin during Indus Saraswati Civilization over 5000 years ago, however some western scholars suggested that it originated during the time of Buddha around 500 BC. Nobody knows the exact chronologic dates of the origin of yoga except for the fact that it was originated from the east.

Yoga is also known to be talked about in the Vedic period and proof of its documentation is seen in the old existing texts of Rig-Veda, dating back to 3000 BC.

According to the known information, history of Yoga is divided into 4 main periods form its developmental pattern to its newness and modernism.

1) VEDIC YOGA :
We mentioned earlier that Rig- Veda contains yogic texts.
Veda in Sanskrit means knowledge and rig means praise, thus the holy Rig-veda talks about the collection of chants in the praise of the almighty, it has been deciphered from Vedic Yoga that yoga in those times was practiced for prolonged period of time to focus on the enlightenment of the mind by sacrificing the materialism and thus becoming “Rishi”- Seer.

2) PRE-CLASSICAL YOGA :
After the Rig-Veda, Yoga was believed to be further developed and curated by Rishis- seers and got documented in the Upanishads- the wisdom of the Vedas saw more personalized and practical form in this mammoth set of scriptures. The two great National epics Ramayana and Mahabharata contains knowledge of yoga wherein the yogis talks about the techniques of achieving deep mediation through strict discipline with which they used to rise above their body and became one with the higher self.

3) CLASSICAL YOGA :
Through classical yoga famous raja yoga came into existence, it talks about the eight fold yoga which is been taught by patanajali in the yoga sutra for the betterment of health and life. Tantra Yoga also emerged in this period and it was practiced to break the cycle of life and death.

4) MODERN YOGA:
With the travelling of many gurus to the west, emerged Modern Yoga, Swami Vivekananda charmed the attendees with his yogic knowledge in the 1800’s in Chicago. Hatha is also known to rise during this period; Many yogis who further became famous Gurus did much appalling work during this time period and opened many ashrams and wrote yogic books thus wide spreading the reach of yoga.