Yoga Is Not Old
I have never really been a big believer in yoga - other than the fact that stretching is good for you etc etc, I just could never buy into the "ancient Indian meditation and spiritualism" mumbo jumbo. And turns out... its all just mumbo jumbo.
Yoga was invented by this guy, who is still around today:
Most of your Steve Jobs loving, prAna wearing, OOOOoddwaalllaa drinking friends will tell you that yoga is 5,000 years old. Which is about as accurate as saying that sitting on your ass is 5,000 years old, because those claims are based on statues where people are sitting on the ground cross-legged.
Yoga is first mentioned by name in some 2,500-year-old Hindu religious texts called the Upanishads, but this is actually a term relating to a method of strapping horses together -- literally the origin for our word "yoke." The Upanishads use it as a metaphor for a mental prayer technique, but as far as all those weird stretches are concerned, the texts mention exactly one physical posture, and that posture is pretty much "sit in a way that makes meditation comfortable." So the word "yoga" might describe an old Hindu teaching, but then so does the word "avatar," and nobody's claiming that the James Cameron movie reflects an unbroken line of ancient sacred tradition.
It wasn't until the 19th century that an Indian prince named Krishnaraja Wodeyar III produced something resembling what we call yoga: a manual called the Sritattvanidhi, which listed 122 poses mostly taken from Indian gymnastics. What really kicked-started modern yoga, though, was the influence of the Imperial British, who introduced Indians to the new exercise craze that was sweeping Europe at the time.
Later a guy named B.K.S. Iyengar (he of the amazing eyebrows) came up with the idea of combining these exercise techniques with some of the teachings described in old Hindu texts like the Yoga Sutras and let the result loose on America in the 1960s. Since then, yoga fans have grown by the millions, with few realizing that they are practicing a chanted-up version of early 20th-century gym class.
Yoga was invented by this guy, who is still around today:
Most of your Steve Jobs loving, prAna wearing, OOOOoddwaalllaa drinking friends will tell you that yoga is 5,000 years old. Which is about as accurate as saying that sitting on your ass is 5,000 years old, because those claims are based on statues where people are sitting on the ground cross-legged.
Yoga is first mentioned by name in some 2,500-year-old Hindu religious texts called the Upanishads, but this is actually a term relating to a method of strapping horses together -- literally the origin for our word "yoke." The Upanishads use it as a metaphor for a mental prayer technique, but as far as all those weird stretches are concerned, the texts mention exactly one physical posture, and that posture is pretty much "sit in a way that makes meditation comfortable." So the word "yoga" might describe an old Hindu teaching, but then so does the word "avatar," and nobody's claiming that the James Cameron movie reflects an unbroken line of ancient sacred tradition.
It wasn't until the 19th century that an Indian prince named Krishnaraja Wodeyar III produced something resembling what we call yoga: a manual called the Sritattvanidhi, which listed 122 poses mostly taken from Indian gymnastics. What really kicked-started modern yoga, though, was the influence of the Imperial British, who introduced Indians to the new exercise craze that was sweeping Europe at the time.
Later a guy named B.K.S. Iyengar (he of the amazing eyebrows) came up with the idea of combining these exercise techniques with some of the teachings described in old Hindu texts like the Yoga Sutras and let the result loose on America in the 1960s. Since then, yoga fans have grown by the millions, with few realizing that they are practicing a chanted-up version of early 20th-century gym class.
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