When I took up the practice of yoga, I never even considered learning about the history of yoga. I really just considered yoga a simple way of promoting great physical health and nothing more. But, somewhere along the way the practice of yoga turned into part of my spiritual growth more than it was part of my exercise program. I’ve recently found myself without easy access to a yoga studio. So, I’ve been researching different poses on YouTube and reading all that I can.
It is definitely unjust to consider yoga a simple way of promoting great physical health and nothing more. The practice of yoga takes spiritual growth as the ultimate goal, and its roots go back five thousand years BC.
Starting from the Indus Valley, the history of yoga includes a whole set of practices that have been passed on to this day. I”m pretty sure many of my teachers were mumbling something or another about all of this in class, but I was more focused on my breath, and not falling on my face to really comprehend what they were saying.
The original intent of practicing yoga was to initiate spiritual growth; the practitioner has to constantly work to achieve the union of the limited and transitory self with its eternal dimension known as Brahman. The original intent for me beginning a practice was to be able to touch my toes. Since I’ve been off the mat for nearly a year and half now I can’t touch my toes, but my awareness and yearning to achieve Union has stayed with me. I learned to breathe deeply and accept myself more fully in a Yoga Studio in Venice, California without ever considering a lesson in history.
According to the history of yoga, by Brahman we imply God as the eternal omnipresence that is inherent to all aspects of reality. The principles found in yoga history are definitely quite apart from Christian tradition. If man’s main issue and fault is sin in the Christian approach, according to yoga doctrine, ignorance is the one that causes human frailty and failure. The study of the history of yoga relies on the teachings found in the Vedas, a compilation of three-thousand-year old texts.
The practice of yoga has progressed over time through stages; vedic stage followed by the pre-classic, classic and post-classic variants, and finally we look around today and observe the myriad of styles and practices. Each of stage throughout the history of yoga has brought something new in terms of the way the human being is regarded in relation to the world and the self, yet the central teachings remain unmodified.
More than thirty million people practice yoga on a daily basis, and we can see new attitudes towards spirituality, life style, health and society are coming into the mainstream way of thinking.