Iyengar Yoga, named after and developed by B. K. S. Iyengar, and described in his bestselling 1966 book Light on Yoga, is a form of yoga as exercise that has an emphasis on detail, precision and alignment in the performance of yoga postures (asanas).
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar was an Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is the founder of the style of yoga as exercise, known as "Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost yoga gurus in the world. He was the author of many books on yoga practice and philosophy including Light on Yoga, Light on Pranayama, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Light on Life. Iyengar was one of the earliest students of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is often referred to as "the father of modern yoga". He has been credited with popularizing yoga, first in India and then around the world.
Satchidananda Saraswati, born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder and known as Swami Satchidananda, was an Indian yoga guru and religious teacher, who gained following in the West. He founded his own brand of Integral Yoga, and its Yogaville headquarters in Virginia. He was the author of philosophical and spiritual books and had a core of founding disciples who compiled his translations and updated commentaries on traditional handbooks of yoga such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita for modern readers.
Yoga as therapy is the use of yoga as exercise, consisting mainly of postures called asanas, as a gentle form of exercise and relaxation applied specifically with the intention of improving health. This form of yoga is widely practised in classes, and may involve meditation, imagery, breath work (pranayama) and calming music as well as postural yoga.
Babacar Khane, also known as Yogi Khane, Yogi Babacar Khane and Maître Khane, is a practitioner of yoga, author, and mystical poet. His work has focused on the diffusion of yoga in Europe and its introduction into medical treatments. He founded the International Yoga Institute and an international yoga teacher training school, active now in Africa, America, Asia and Europe. He introduced a new way of teaching yoga based on Indian Hatha yoga asanas, Egyptian postures and Chinese exercises attributed by the Shaolin monks to Bodhidharma. He is one proponent of "Egyptian yoga", a branch of yoga based on the observation of the ancient-Egyptian art.
CMAS Europe is an organisation created expressly to represent the interests of Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (CMAS) within the European Union and in other parts of Europe by European national diving federations affiliated to CMAS.
André Van Lysebeth was a Belgian yoga instructor and author whose books about yoga have been translated into many languages. He is also known for a quintessential book on human sexuality he took thirty years of his life to write, Tantra: The Cult of the Feminine.
The British Wheel of Yoga was set up in 1965 by Wilfred Clark as a co-ordinating body for yoga groups throughout Britain that welcomed all schools of thought.
Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.
Yoga as exercise is a physical activity consisting mainly of postures, often connected by flowing sequences, sometimes accompanied by breathing exercises, and frequently ending with relaxation lying down or meditation. Yoga in this form has become familiar across the world, especially in the US and Europe. It is derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, which made use of similar postures, but it is generally simply called "yoga". Academics have given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including modern postural yoga and transnational anglophone yoga.
Mark Singleton is a scholar and practitioner of yoga. He studied yoga intensively in India, and became a qualified yoga teacher, until returning to England to study divinity and research the origins of modern postural yoga. His doctoral dissertation, which argued that posture-based forms of yoga represent a radical break from haṭha yoga tradition, with different goals, and an unprecedented emphasis on āsanas, was later published in book form as the widely-read Yoga Body.
Suzanne Newcombe researches the modern history of yoga and new and minority religions. She states that she is particularly interested in "the interfaces between religion, health and healing." She is known in particular for her work on yoga for women and yoga in Britain.
Modern yoga as exercise has often been taught by women to classes consisting mainly of women. This continued a tradition of gendered physical activity dating back to the early 20th century, with the Harmonic Gymnastics of Genevieve Stebbins in the US and Mary Bagot Stack in Britain. One of the pioneers of modern yoga, Indra Devi, a pupil of Krishnamacharya, popularised yoga among American women using her celebrity Hollywood clients as a lever.
Yoga teacher training is the training of teachers of yoga as exercise, consisting mainly of the practice of yoga asanas, leading to certification. Such training is accredited by the Yoga Alliance in America, by the British Wheel of Yoga in the United Kingdom, and by the European Union of Yoga across Europe. The Yoga Alliance sets standards for 200-hour and 500-hour Recognized Yoga Teacher levels, which are accepted in America and other countries.
Positioning Yoga: balancing acts across cultures is a 2005 book of social anthropology by Sarah Strauss about the history of modern yoga as exercise, focusing on the example of Sivananda Yoga.
Yoga in Britain is the practice of yoga, including modern yoga as exercise, in Britain. Yoga, consisting mainly of postures (asanas), arrived in Britain early in the 20th century, though the first classes that contained asanas were described as exercise systems for women rather than yoga. Classes called yoga, again mainly for women, began in the 1960s. Yoga grew further with the help of television programmes and the arrival of major brands including Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga.
Yoga in Italy is the practice of yoga, whether for exercise, therapy, or other reasons, in Italy.
Yoga in Britain: stretching spirituality and educating Yogis is a 2019 book by Suzanne Newcombe on the history of modern yoga as exercise in Britain in the second half of the 20th century, especially in the period between 1945 and 1980. The book has been warmly received by scholars for its depth of study of the history and sociology of yoga in Britain, and its careful placing of its descriptions in specific contexts of time and place.
Yoga in France is the practice of yoga, whether for exercise or other reasons, in France. The relaxation technique of yoga nidra was pioneered by Dennis Boyes, whose 1973 book preceded Satyananda Saraswati's popularisation of the technique.
Yoga in advertising is the use of images of modern yoga as exercise to market products of any kind, whether related to yoga or not. Goods sold in this way have included canned beer, fast food and computers.
