Postural yoga in India

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A postural yoga show in Kolkata, January 2012. Postures in the display include Chakrasana (front), Natarajasana (back), Rajakapotasana (middle row), and Padmasana (top). Yoga Show - Kolkata 2012-01-21 8550 (cropped).JPG
A postural yoga show in Kolkata, January 2012. Postures in the display include Chakrasana (front), Natarajasana (back), Rajakapotasana (middle row), and Padmasana (top).

Postural yoga began in India as a variant of traditional yoga, which was a mainly meditational practice; it has spread across the world and returned to the Indian subcontinent in different forms. The ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention yoga postures, asanas, only briefly, as meditation seats. Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas alongside other techniques such as pranayama, shatkarmas, and mudras, but it was despised and almost extinct by the start of the 20th century. At that time, the revival of postural yoga was at first driven by Indian nationalism. Advocates such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda made yoga acceptable in the 1920s, treating it as a medical subject. From the 1930s, the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya developed a vigorous postural yoga, influenced by gymnastics, with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next.

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Krishnamacharya's pupils K. Pattabhi Jois and B. K. S. Iyengar brought yoga to the West and developed it further, founding their own schools and training yoga teachers. Once in the West, yoga quickly became mixed with other activities, becoming less spiritual and more energetic as well as commercial.

Westernized postural yoga returned to India to rejoin the many forms already in the country, transformed by the pizza effect on its round trip. Western yoga tourists, attracted initially by The Beatles' 1968 visit to India, came to study yoga in centres such as Rishikesh and Mysore. From 2015, India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held an annual International Day of Yoga, the armed forces and civil service being joined in mass demonstrations by members of the public.

Ancient origins

Statue of Patanjali seated in a meditation asana, Siddhasana Patanjali Statue.jpg
Statue of Patañjali seated in a meditation asana, Siddhasana

Yoga's ancient spiritual and philosophical goal was to unite the human spirit with the Divine. [1] It was largely a meditational practice; classical yoga such as is described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali , written around the second century, mentions yoga postures, asanas, only as meditation seats, stating simply that the posture should be easy and comfortable. [2] The Sanskrit word योग yoga means "yoking, joining". [3]

Medieval Haṭha yoga

Medieval Hatha yoga was a solitary practice. The yogin is shown practising Viparita Karani, both an asana and a mudra intended to trap the vital fluid using gravity, helping the yogin to attain liberation. Jogapradipika, 1830 Jogapradipika 29 Viparitakarana.jpg
Medieval Haṭha yoga was a solitary practice. The yogin is shown practising Viparita Karani, both an asana and a mudra intended to trap the vital fluid using gravity, helping the yogin to attain liberation. Jogapradipika, 1830

The branch of yoga that makes use of physical postures is Haṭha yoga. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha means "force", alluding to its use of physical techniques. [5]

Haṭha yoga flourished from c. 1100. [6] It was practised by Nath and other yogins in South Asia. [7] Its performance was solitary and ascetic. [8] All its procedures were secret. [9] Its objectives were to force the vital fluid prana into the central sushumna channel of the subtle body to raise kundalini energy, enabling Samadhi (absorption) and ultimately Moksha (liberation). [10] [11] Hatha yoga made use of a small number of asanas, mainly seated; in particular, there very few standing poses before 1900. [10] [12] They were practised slowly; positions were often held for long periods. [13] The practice of asanas was a minor preparatory aspect of spiritual work. [7]

Indian practices for independence

By the end of the 19th century, Hatha yoga was almost extinct in India, practised by people on the edge of society, despised by Hindus and the British Raj alike. That changed when Yogendra (starting in 1918) and Kuvalayananda (starting in 1924) along with the establishment of Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute, [14] [15] taught yoga ostensibly as a means of attaining physical wellbeing, and to study its medical effects, though motivated by a nationalistic desire to show the greatness of Indian culture. They accordingly emphasised the physical practices of Haṭha yoga, the asanas and yoga breathing (pranayama), at the expense of its more esoteric practices such as purifications (shatkarmas), the mudras intended to manipulate the vital forces, and indeed any mention of the subtle body or liberation. [16] [17] They were soon followed by the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace. He experimented with many new yoga asanas and transitions between them (vinyasas), creating a dynamic style of postural yoga. [18] Krishnamacharya observed and adjusted each pupil in an individualised approach to teaching, which later became known as viniyoga. [19] [20] One factor influencing the popularity of yoga as exercise was Indian nationalism; having strong bodies meant being a strong country which could shake off colonial rule. Another was photography: complex body positions could for the first time be captured in a photograph rather than hard-to-follow words. [21]

Exotic exercise for the Western world

The 20th century saw a series of yoga gurus establish schools of yoga in India, train yoga teachers, and turn themselves into brands known around the world: Krishnamacharya and his pupils K. Pattabhi Jois and B. K. S. Iyengar, and Sivananda among them. [22] Jois founded Ashtanga Yoga, a vigorous vinyasa style, with its headquarters at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore. Iyengar founded Iyengar Yoga, a precise style that emphasises correct alignment, using supports where necessary, based at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Institute (RIMYI) in Pune. [23] Sivananda and his disciples including Vishnudevananda created Sivananda Yoga, a more spiritual style, based in Rishikesh. [24]

The practice of the medieval seated asanas survived into the 20th century in Calcutta, and was cultivated by Buddha Bose and Bishnu Ghosh. [25] [26] Among Ghosh's pupils was Labanya Palit; she published a manual of 40 asanas, Shariram Adyam ("A Healthy Body"), in 1955, admired by the poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore. [27] [28] The yoga teacher Bikram Choudhury (born 1944 in Calcutta) claimed falsely to have learnt Hatha Yoga directly from Ghosh; actually he began yoga in 1969, influenced by Ghosh's writings. He emigrated to America in 1971 to found Bikram Yoga. [29] [30] Fleeing legal action in America for sexual abuse and other matters, Choudhury returned to India in 2016, opening several yoga studios. [31]

On its arrival in the West, yoga became mixed with a variety of Western activities and concepts, from gymnastics to psychotherapy, Western occultism and New Age religion. Yoga has grown into a widespread and valuable commodity and form of exercise, ranging from gentle to energetic, and practised by millions across the Western world. [21] [32]

Return to India

Restored meditation chamber labelled "I am the Eggman" at the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, 2019 I am the Eggman, Beatles Ashram, Rishikesh, India (front).jpg
Restored meditation chamber labelled "I am the Eggman" at the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, 2019

In 1968, the English rock band The Beatles travelled to Rishikesh to take part in a Transcendental Meditation training course at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram, now derelict and renamed the Beatles Ashram. [33] [34] The visit sparked widespread Western interest in Indian spirituality, [33] and has led many Westerners to travel to India hoping to find "authentic" [35] yoga in ashrams in places such as Mysore (for Ashtanga Yoga) and Rishikesh. That movement led in turn to the creation of many yoga schools offering teacher training and promotion of India as a "yoga tourism hub" [36] by the Indian Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of AYUSH. [35] [37] [36] Youthful Westerners' sometimes naive spiritual quests to India were gently [38] satirised in the Mindful Yoga instructor Anne Cushman's novel Enlightenment for Idiots. [39] [38]

Students (standing in Vrikshasana) from around the world undergoing yoga teacher training beside the River Ganges in Rishikesh, 2015 Yoga Teacher Training Rishikesh India .jpg
Students (standing in Vrikshasana) from around the world undergoing yoga teacher training beside the River Ganges in Rishikesh, 2015

Yoga, transformed by what the Austrian anthropologist and Indologist Agehananda Bharati called "the pizza effect", [21] [40] having journeyed across the Atlantic and back, returned with new "flavours and ingredients". It had become sleek, modern, a sign of health and fitness and urban cool; it had in large part lost its close association with Hinduism, and had indeed become almost wholly a form of exercise rather than religion of any kind. [21] [41]

In 1992 the anthropologist Sarah Strauss spent 11 months at the Sivananda ashram in Rishikesh, both practising and observing postural yoga in India. The instructors were Indian; the students were American, German, and Indian. She considered that for the Indians, yoga was "embedded in a sense of familial or national belonging", whereas the non-Indians were seeking to "find themselves" in a rapidly globalizing world. [42]

Government-led event

Indian Navy personnel in Uttanasana on board INS Viraat for the first International Day of Yoga in 2015 Indian Navy personnel perform yoga on board INS Viraat in 2015.jpg
Indian Navy personnel in Uttanasana on board INS Viraat for the first International Day of Yoga in 2015

In 2014, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, persuaded the United Nations General Assembly to create an annual International Day of Yoga. It has been celebrated since 2015 in many countries, but especially enthusiastically in India. [43] [44] Modi is a member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. Critics of Modi have suggested possible motives for the event, from a partisan attempt to make India more Hindu, [45] to the desire to reclaim yoga and have it recognised around the world as "India's cultural property", despite the changes it had undergone. [46] Modi personally led over 35,000 participants on the first Day of Yoga in New Delhi; across India, the Indian Armed Forces ran demonstrations on the decks of warships and high in the Himalayas, while politicians and civil servants from India's large bureaucracy joined events in cities from Chennai to Kolkata and Lucknow. [47]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hatha yoga</span> Branch of yoga focusing on physical techniques

Hatha yoga is a branch of yoga that uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some hatha yoga style techniques can be traced back at least to the 1st-century CE, in texts such as the Hindu Sanskrit epics and Buddhism's Pali canon. The oldest dated text so far found to describe hatha yoga, the 11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, comes from a tantric Buddhist milieu. The oldest texts to use the terminology of hatha are also Vajrayana Buddhist. Hindu hatha yoga texts appear from the 11th century onward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K. Pattabhi Jois</span> Indian yoga guru (1915–2009)

K. Pattabhi Jois was an Indian yoga guru who developed and popularized the flowing style of yoga as exercise known as Ashtanga vinyasa yoga. In 1948, Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India. Pattabhi Jois is one of a short list of Indians instrumental in establishing modern yoga as exercise in the 20th century, along with B. K. S. Iyengar, another pupil of Krishnamacharya in Mysore. Jois sexually abused some of his yoga students by touching inappropriately during adjustments. Sharath Jois has publicly apologised for his grandfather's "improper adjustments".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashtanga vinyasa yoga</span> School of modern yoga

Ashtanga vinyasa yoga is a style of yoga as exercise popularised by K. Pattabhi Jois during the twentieth century, often promoted as a dynamic form of classical Indian (hatha) yoga. Jois claimed to have learnt the system from his teacher Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. The style is energetic, synchronising breath with movements. The individual poses (asanas) are linked by flowing movements (vinyasas).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asana</span> Postures in hatha yoga and modern yoga practice

An āsana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose, and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define "asana" as "[a position that] is steady and comfortable". Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of his system. Asanas are also called yoga poses or yoga postures in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun Salutation</span> Series of yoga positions performed in a particular order

Sun Salutation, also called Surya Namaskar or Salute to the Sun, is a practice in yoga as exercise incorporating a flow sequence of some twelve linked asanas. The asana sequence was first recorded as yoga in the early 20th century, though similar exercises were in use in India before that, for example among wrestlers. The basic sequence involves moving from a standing position into Downward and Upward Dog poses and then back to the standing position, but many variations are possible. The set of 12 asanas is dedicated to the Hindu solar deity, Surya. In some Indian traditions, the positions are each associated with a different mantra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Downward Dog Pose</span> Standing posture in modern yoga

Downward Dog Pose or Downward-facing Dog Pose, also called Adho Mukha Svanasana, is an inversion asana, often practised as part of a flowing sequence of poses, especially Surya Namaskar, the Salute to the Sun. The asana is commonly used in modern yoga as exercise. The asana does not have formally named variations, but several playful variants are used to assist beginning practitioners to become comfortable in the pose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uttanasana</span> Standing forward-bending posture in modern yoga

Uttanasana or Standing Forward Bend, with variants such as Padahastasana where the toes are grasped, is a standing forward bending asana in modern yoga as exercise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shavasana</span> Relaxed reclining posture in hatha yoga

Shavasana, Corpse Pose, or Mritasana, is an asana in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, often used for relaxation at the end of a session. It is the usual pose for the practice of yoga nidra meditation, and is an important pose in Restorative Yoga.

A vinyasa is a smooth transition between asanas in flowing styles of modern yoga as exercise such as Vinyasa Krama Yoga and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, especially when movement is paired with the breath.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virasana</span> Kneeling posture in modern yoga

Virasana or Hero Pose is a kneeling asana in modern yoga as exercise. Medieval hatha yoga texts describe a cross-legged meditation asana under the same name. Supta Virasana is the reclining form of the pose; it provides a stronger stretch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mayurasana</span> Hand-balancing posture in hatha yoga

Mayūrāsana or Peacock pose is a hand-balancing asana in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise with the body held horizontal over the hands. It is one of the oldest non-seated asanas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kurmasana</span> Seated forward bending posture in hatha yoga

Kurmasana, Tortoise Pose, or Turtle Pose is a sitting forward bending asana in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise.

Norman E. Sjoman is known as author of the 1996 book The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, which contains an English translation of the yoga section of Sritattvanidhi, a 19th-century treatise by the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar III. This book contributes an original view on the history and development of the teaching traditions behind modern asanas. According to Sjoman, a majority of the tradition of teaching yoga as exercise, spread primarily through the teachings of B. K. S. Iyengar and his students, "appears to be distinct from the philosophical or textual tradition [of hatha yoga], and does not appear to have any basis as a [genuine] tradition as there is no textual support for the asanas taught and no lineage of teachers."

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoga as exercise</span> Physical activity consisting mainly of yoga poses

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.

<i>Yoga Makaranda</i> Hatha yoga book by Krishnamacharya

Yoga Makaranda, meaning "Essence of Yoga", is a 1934 book on hatha yoga by the influential pioneer of yoga as exercise, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Most of the text is a description of 42 asanas accompanied by 95 photographs of Krishnamacharya and his students executing the poses. There is a brief account of practices other than asanas, which form just one of the eight limbs of classical yoga, that Krishnamacharya "did not instruct his students to practice".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standing asanas</span> Yoga poses with one or both feet on the ground

The standing asanas are the yoga poses or asanas with one or both feet on the ground, and the body more or less upright. They are among the most distinctive features of modern yoga as exercise. Until the 20th century there were very few of these, the best example being Vrikshasana, Tree Pose. From the time of Krishnamacharya in Mysore, many standing poses have been created. Two major sources of these asanas have been identified: the exercise sequence Surya Namaskar ; and the gymnastics widely practised in India at the time, based on the prevailing physical culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoga in the United States</span>

The history of yoga in the United States begins in the 19th century, with the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; Emerson's poem "Brahma" states the Hindu philosophy behind yoga. More widespread interest in yoga can be dated to the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoga in Britain</span>

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.

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