Yoga as exercise
Yoga as exercise is a physical activity consisting mainly of postures, often connected by flowing sequences, sometimes accompanied by breathing exercises, and frequently ending with relaxation lying down or meditation. Yoga in this form has become familiar across the world, especially in the US and Europe. It is derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, which made use of similar postures, but it is generally simply called "yoga". Academic research has given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including modern postural yoga and transnational anglophone yoga.
Postures were not central in any of the older traditions of yoga; posture practice was revived in the 1920s by yoga gurus including Yogendra and Kuvalayananda, who emphasised its health benefits. The flowing sequences of Surya Namaskar were pioneered by the Rajah of Aundh, Bhawanrao Shrinivasrao Pant Pratinidhi, in the 1920s. It and many standing poses used in gymnastics were incorporated into yoga by the yoga teacher Krishnamacharya in Mysore from the 1930s to the 1950s. Several of his students went on to found influential schools of yoga: Pattabhi Jois created Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, which in turn led to Power Yoga; B. K. S. Iyengar created Iyengar Yoga, and defined a modern set of yoga postures in his 1966 book Light on Yoga; and Indra Devi taught yoga as exercise to many celebrities in Hollywood. Other major schools founded in the 20th century include Bikram Yoga and Sivananda Yoga. Yoga as exercise spread across America and Europe, and then the rest of the world.
Yoga as exercise primarily involves practicing asanas, which have evolved from just a few described in early Hatha yoga texts to thousands in modern works. Asanas are categorized by body position, movement type, or intended effect. Various modern yoga styles emphasize different aspects such as aerobic intensity, alignment, spirituality, or energy awakening. Many contemporary teachers create unbranded blends of styles, especially in Western countries.
Haṭha yoga's non-postural practices such as its purifications are much reduced or absent in yoga as exercise. The term "hatha yoga" is also in use with a different meaning, a gentle unbranded yoga practice, independent of the major schools, often mainly for women. Practices vary from wholly secular, for exercise and relaxation, through to undoubtedly spiritual, whether in traditions like Sivananda Yoga or in personal rituals. Yoga as exercise's relationship to Hinduism is complex and contested; some Christians have rejected it on the grounds that it is covertly Hindu, while the "Take Back Yoga" campaign insisted that it was necessarily connected to Hinduism. Scholars have identified multiple trends in the changing nature of yoga since the end of the 19th century. Yoga as exercise has developed into a worldwide multi-billion dollar business, involving classes, certification of teachers, clothing such as yoga pants, books, videos, equipment including yoga mats, and yoga tourism.
History
Yoga's origins
The Sanskrit noun योग , cognate with English "yoke", is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root "to attach, join, harness, yoke". Its ancient spiritual and philosophical goal was to unite the human spirit with the divine. The branch of yoga that makes use of physical postures is Haṭha yoga. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha means "force", alluding to its use of physical techniques.Asana is described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras II.29 as the third of the eight limbs of yoga. Sutra II.46 defines asana as that which is steady and comfortable.
Haṭha yoga
Haṭha yoga flourished among secretive ascetic groups such as Nath yogins in South Asia from c. 1100-c. 1900. Instruction was directly from guru to individual pupil, in a long-term relationship. It was associated with religions, especially Hinduism but also Jainism and Buddhism. Its objectives were to manipulate vital fluids to enable absorption and ultimately liberation. It consisted of practices including purifications, postures, locks, the directed gaze, seals, and rhythmic breathing. These were claimed to provide supernatural powers including healing, destruction of poisons, invisibility, and shape-shifting. Yogins wore little or no clothing; their bodies were sometimes smeared with cremation ash as a reminder of their forthcoming deaths. Equipment, too, was scanty; sometimes yogins used a tiger or deer skin as a rug to meditate on. Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas, mainly seated; in particular, there were very few standing poses before 1900. They were practised slowly, often holding a position for long periods. The practice of asanas was a minor preparatory aspect of spiritual work. Yogins followed a strict vegetarian diet, excluding stimulants such as tea, coffee or alcohol. Their yoga was taught without payment; gurus were supported by gifts and the philosophy was anti-consumerist.Early influences
According to one theory, the system of physical education practised in the 19th-century Young Men's Christian Association, adapted by ex-military gymnasts for the schooling system in colonial British India, became the default form of mass-drill, and this influenced the "modernized hatha yoga". According to the yoga scholar Suzanne Newcombe, modern yoga in India is a blend of Western gymnastics with postures from Haṭha yoga in India in the 20th century.From the 1850s onwards, there developed in India a culture of physical exercise to counter the colonial stereotype of supposed "degeneracy" of Indians compared to the British, a belief reinforced by then-current ideas of Lamarckism and eugenics. This culture was taken up from the 1880s to the early 20th century by Indian nationalists such as Tiruka, who taught exercises and unarmed combat techniques under the guise of yoga. The German bodybuilder Eugen Sandow was acclaimed on his 1905 visit to India, at which time he was already a "cultural hero" in the country. The anthropologist Joseph Alter suggests that Sandow was the person who had the most influence on modern yoga. The first handbook of asanas in English, and the first to be illustrated with photographs, was Seetharaman Sundaram's 1928 Yogic Physical Culture.
Introduction to the West
Yoga was introduced to the Western world by the spiritual leader Vivekananda's 1893 visit to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and his 1896 book Raja Yoga. However, he rejected Haṭha yoga and its "entirely" physical practices such as asanas as difficult and ineffective for spiritual growth, out of a widely shared distaste for India's wandering yogins. Yoga asanas were brought to America by the yoga teacher Yogendra. He founded a branch of The Yoga Institute in New York state in 1919, starting to make Haṭha yoga acceptable, seeking scientific evidence for its health benefits, and writing books such as his 1928 Yoga Asanas Simplified and his 1931 Yoga Personal Hygiene. The flowing sequences of salute to the sun, Surya Namaskar, now accepted as yoga and containing popular asanas such as Uttanasana and upward and downward dog poses, were popularized by the Rajah of Aundh, Bhawanrao Shrinivasrao Pant Pratinidhi, in the 1920s.In 1924, the yoga teacher Kuvalayananda founded the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center in Maharashtra, combining asanas with gymnastics, and like Yogendra seeking a scientific and medical basis for yogic practices.
File:Krishnamacharya mysoreSchool.jpg|thumb|left|"The father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya teaching yoga in Mysore, 1930s
In 1925, Kuvalayananda's rival Paramahansa Yogananda, having moved from India to America, set up the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, and taught yoga, including asanas, breathing, chanting and meditation, to "tens of thousands of Americans". In 1923, Yogananda's younger brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh, founded the Ghosh College of Yoga and Physical Culture in Calcutta.
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, "the father of modern yoga", claimed to have spent seven years with one of the few masters of Haṭha yoga then living, Ramamohana Brahmachari, at Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, from 1912 to 1918. He studied under Kuvalayananda in the 1930s, and then in his yogashala in the Jaganmohan Palace in Mysore created "a marriage of Haṭha yoga, wrestling exercises, and modern Western gymnastic movement, and unlike anything seen before in the yoga tradition." The Maharajah of Mysore Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV was a leading advocate of physical culture in India, and a neighbouring hall of his palace was used to teach Surya Namaskar classes, then considered to be gymnastic exercises. Krishnamacharya adapted these sequences of exercises into his flowing vinyasa style of yoga. The yoga scholar Mark Singleton noted that gymnastic systems like Niels Bukh's were popular in physical culture in India at that time, and that they contained many postures similar to Krishnamacharya's new asanas.
Among Krishnamacharya's pupils were people who became influential yoga teachers themselves: the Russian Eugenie V. Peterson, known as Indra Devi, who moved to Hollywood, taught yoga to celebrities, and wrote the bestselling book Forever Young, Forever Healthy; Pattabhi Jois, who founded the flowing style Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga whose Mysore style makes use of repetitions of Surya Namaskar, in 1948, which in turn led to Power Yoga; and B.K.S. Iyengar, his brother-in-law, who founded Iyengar Yoga, with its first centre in Britain. Together they made yoga popular as exercise and brought it to the Western world. Iyengar's 1966 book Light on Yoga popularised yoga asanas worldwide with what the scholar-practitioner Norman Sjoman calls its "clear no-nonsense descriptions and the obvious refinement of the illustrations", though the degree of precision it calls for is missing from earlier yoga texts.
Other Indian schools of yoga took up the new style of asanas, but continued to emphasize Haṭha yoga's spiritual goals and practices to varying extents. The Divine Life Society was founded by Sivananda Saraswati of Rishikesh in 1936. His many disciples include Swami Vishnudevananda, who founded the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, starting in 1959; Swami Satyananda of the Bihar School of Yoga, a major centre of Haṭha yoga teacher training, founded in 1963; and Swami Satchidananda of Integral Yoga, founded in 1966. Vishnudevananda published his Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga in 1960, with a list of asanas that substantially overlaps with Iyengar's, sometimes with different names for the same poses. Jois's asana names almost exactly match Iyengar's.