WHERE YOGA CAME FROM?
Yoga is one of the most ancient practices of human development. The first mentions of yoga date back to between 3000 and 2500 BC in ancient India.
The “Vedas” book is considered to be the oldest text describing yoga. “Yoga Sutras of Patañjali” is later but more fundamental and systematic, and based on which a system of knowledge about yoga was built, as a set of eight parts that can be practiced either separately or in combination.
“Bhagavad-Gita” is also worth mentioning – it is one of the most famous works on the philosophy of yoga, written, as they say, around the 3rd–1st century BC. The Bhagavad-Gita is a kind of philosophical epic which emphasizes the development of the human spirit through the performance of actions necessary at that moment. In the yogic community, it is also called “following one’s dharma” (higher purpose). The first practices found described working with consciousness much more often, and only after many centuries working with the body through yoga has became as popular as it is now.
To continue further, you need to answer the question “What is yoga?” Is it a sport? Or a religion?
Definitely not just one or the other. First of all, yoga is a tool for consciously improving your life through working with your body, working with your feelings and emotions, and working with your worldview.
Also, yoga is a way of life. A person who practice yoga begins to be more attentive to body, to desires, to feelings, and later begins to be more attentive to the world around. This means that self-satisfaction and empathy for others become indispensable companions of a yogi (or yogini).
And finally, yoga is a meditative state, which means that to practice yoga is to be ready to see new things, to feel more deeply, to be surprised by new aspects of life you were unaware of, and to question outdated views.
So, yoga is a complex system of knowledge, practices, and experience, a system that is constantly developing and improving, and at the same time one that uses and studies the knowledge of ancient practitioners and scientists that has turned out to be effective even in our time.
Like any deep, large-scale system, yoga has changed in different stages of human development, leaving its core but adding new forms and cutting off what is no longer relevant to the modern human.
Therefore, yoga can be divided very conditionally into different types/branches/schools (conditionally because real yoga is always united by a common thread – human development). You can see some different yoga types below for inspiration:
Examples of the classic branches of yoga:
- Rāja yoga is yoga according to the Patanjali system, which consists of 8 parts (Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi). These parts are for both internal and external work. If desired, different parts can be practiced either separately or in combination.
- Jñāna yoga or jñāna mārga is the elimination of cognitive dissonance between world perception and life itself, harmonization of relations with the world in both a local and a broader sense.
- Karma yoga is working with problematic situations through consciousness and following what you really want and need to do at every moment.
Examples of more niche branches:
- Yoga nidra – the practice of dynamic conscious sleep.
- Natya yoga – spiritual development through dance.
- Chakra yoga – working with different aspects of human life.
- Tantra yoga – development through total living of various states and desires.
Special attention should be paid to the most essential part of yoga – meditation. Meditation is a modern concept but traditional practices incorporate lots of techniques that were also used many centuries ago. A lot of people use the word ‘meditation’ in various ways and everyone understands it differently.
Undoubtedly, meditation has nothing to do with “not thinking.” From a yogic point of view, meditation is a tool we use to set various tasks for ourselves. There are different types and forms of meditation – those that are more focused on body sensations, or on worldview issues, or meditations focused on consciousness of one’s feelings.
Meditation can be considered successful if the practitioner has gained some new knowledge about themselves or the world which allows them to really change their life internally and/or externally. More knowledge about Meditation you can find in the next article.