History of Yoga in 3 minutes
Do you know the history of Yoga - which is India’s biggest gift to the world?
I’ll summarise 5000 years of the story for you in just 3 minutes, so here’s the tea!
The seeds of the word “yoga” lie in the Rigveda, which defines it as harnessing or
yoking horses to a chariot. It’s not a spiritual discipline yet, though it has other raw concepts like tapas, or ascetic heat.
It’s in the Katha Upanishad that we see the first actual definition of yoga. It gives us the iconic chariot metaphor: the body is the chariot, the mind the reins, the intellect the charioteer, the Atman the passenger, and our senses are the wild horses that yoga restraints.
The Maitri Upanishad then establishes a six-limbed system to practice, proving yoga was a fluid, evolving method long before it was standardized.
Next, the Śramaṇa movements enter the story. Ancient Buddhists and Jains contribute heavy meditation frameworks, heavily cross-pollinating with early Vedic ideas to turn yoga into a daily internal technology.
But a huge twist comes in the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna turns yoga from an act of pure forest renunciation into an act of worldly action, pluralizing it into pathways like Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana yoga.
Then comes the most famous philosopher of the story: the sage Patanjali. He standardizes the mental discipline into 196 sutras, giving us the classical definition: yogas-citta-vrtti-nirodhah - which means Yoga is essentially stilling the chaotic fluctuations of your mind.
So far, ancient traditions tried to escape the material world. But then a radical new movement called Tantra completely flips the script. They argue the physical body isn't a prison to escape, but a sacred vehicle to realize the Divine. They introduce the energy apparatus we use today: Nadis, Chakras, and Kundalini.
Out of this, the Nath Sampradaya builds Hatha Yoga - a forceful physical technology designed to unlock that inner energy.
Fast forward to the colonial era, and these physical yogis have become heavily armed, powerful mercenary groups. This terrifies the British Empire, who use the Criminal Tribes Acts to clamp down on them, forcing physical yoga underground for a century.
To restore its reputation, Swami Vivekananda relaunches yoga globally in 1893 -focusing purely on its deep philosophy and meditation.
Finally, the physical culture boom of the 20th century changes everything.
The Raja of Aundh popularizes Surya Namaskara as a fitness routine, and T. Krishnamacharya merges traditional techniques with modern gymnastics.
His iconic students - B.K.S. Iyengar, T.K.V. Desikachar, and K. Pattabhi Jois - take this dynamic style and make it explode worldwide.
Bringing us to 2014, when India leads the UN to declare June 21st as International Day of Yoga - a global soft-power reclamation of our heritage. Gurudev (Sri Sri Ravishankar) had a huge hand in triggering this milestone.