Origin of Yoga

Where does yoga come from?

Have you ever done Yoga, and in the middle of your session you wondered where, and how it all began?
I sure haven't.

People always say : "What happened in the past, should stay in the past."

In this case, I believe everyone, even myself should acknowledge this highly known exercise. The word "Yoga" gets thrown around on a daily base. Do you even know what it means?

According to Medindia: "The word "Yoga" discovers its beginning in Sanskrit: Yug which means to join and unite."
in my opinion, this practice of life is based on exercises that help the growth of the body, brain and spirit in harmony, and I know so many people that could agree! This personal development method has been developed in India for many and plenty of years, and is practised regularly.* Yoga is a physical activity with several aims. I personally believe the main purpose is to reach a goal of balance and take control of your life to relax.
Various traditions of yoga are found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

According to P.J.Mazumdar: "Yoga can be said to have formally begun with the scripture by Patanjali, ‘The Yoga Sutras’. This scripture codified and formalized the practice of yoga and all yoga methods have been based on this book since then."** It's very fascinating to me, that Yoga had originally started from a book. This reminds me a lot of different religions, each religion has its own sacred book. As for me, I read the Bible, and it is a very old scripture, such as the "The Yoga Sutra". So, I would believe that for those who do practice yoga regularly, this could be their favourite scripture, and especially for the Yogis, and Gurus.

My neighbour did live in India, and she was explaining to me that when she lived back home, Yoga was mandatory in schools. Teachers would have to talk about it, and practice it as a "physical exercise". As she was telling me about this, it made me think, and I started to do research on this topic. The deeper my research went, the more I found out that, this could be a debate topic. Some people believe that Yoga has to do with religion, but in my opinion I believe yoga has no religious connections however it does help with the spiritualism, through the peace of mind.

Personally, I didn't know that Yoga came such a long way. I don't ever remember hearing, or reading of a specific date of when it had first been practiced. Not knowing around what time it had even started makes me believe that Yoga is one of the most ancient practices.

According to CNY Healing Arts: "Hindu monks, beginning with Swami Vivekananda, brought yoga to the West in the late 19th century. It was combined with an advanced form of breath work and meditation known as Kundalini Yoga by Yogi Bhajan in 1969. In the 1980s, yoga became popular as a physical form of exercise across the entire Western world." *** Reading this information, I thought about the dates, and noticed that it was way before my parents were even born, it really surprises me! It surprises me so much because, when my friends talked about Yoga, I never really thought about how old Yoga is. Even older than my parents!

Hope you enjoyed a little background on yoga, stay tune and you will be updated weekly on the importance, the history and how you can be part of the Yoga Life :)


* http://www.medindia.net/Yoga-Lifestyle/yoga-orgin.htm

**http://www.advaitayoga.org/advaitayogaarticles/yogahistory.html - second paragraph.

***http://www.cnyhealingarts.com/2012/11/29/yoga-eastern-influence-on-exercise-in-the-west/ - second paragraph.