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).
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".
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).
The Mysore style of asana practice is the way of teaching yoga as exercise within the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga tradition as taught by K. Pattabhi Jois in the southern Indian city of Mysore; its fame has made that city a yoga hub with a substantial yoga tourism business.
Baba Hari Dass was an Indian yoga master, silent monk, temple builder, and commentator of Indian scriptural traditions of dharma and moksha. He was classically trained in the Ashtanga of Patanjali, as well as Kriya yoga, Ayurveda, Samkhya, Tantra, Vedanta, and Sanskrit.
Amrit Desai is a pioneer of yoga in the West, and one of the few remaining living yoga gurus who originally brought over the authentic teachings of yoga in the early 1960s. He is the creator of two brands of yoga, Kripalu Yoga and I AM Yoga, and is the founder of five yoga and health centers in the US. His yoga training programs have reached more than 40 countries worldwide and over 8,000 teachers have been certified.
Sivananda Yoga is a spiritual yoga system founded by Vishnudevananda; it includes the use of asanas but is not limited to them as in systems of yoga as exercise. He named this system, as well as the international Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres organization responsible for propagating its teachings, after his guru, Sivananda with the mission 'to spread the teachings of yoga and the message of world peace' which has since been refined to 'practice and teach the ancient yogic knowledge for health, peace, unity in diversity and self-realization.'
The Jivamukti Yoga method is a proprietary style of yoga created by David Life and Sharon Gannon in 1984.
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."
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 Yoga Alliance is a U.S.-based nonprofit membership trade and professional organization for yoga teachers, headquartered in Arlington Virginia. The organization created the title of Registered Yoga Teacher in the United States to refer to teachers who have finished a yoga teacher training through a school registered with the Yoga Alliance. Yoga Alliance charges an annual fee for teachers and schools to be registered.
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.
R. Sharath Jois is a teacher, practitioner and lineage holder (paramaguru) of Ashtanga Yoga, in the tradition of his grandfather K. Pattabhi Jois. He is the director of Sharath Yoga Center in Mysore, India.
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.
Frank Jude Boccio is a teacher and one of the originators of mindful yoga. He is known both for his teaching in centres across America, and for his 2004 book Mindfulness Yoga: The Awakened Union of Breath, Body and Mind, which describes a practice that combines yoga as exercise and Buddhist meditational practice.
Yoga in Germany is the practice of yoga, whether for exercise, therapy, or other reasons, in Germany.
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.
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.
Yoga tourism is travel with the specific purpose of experiencing some form of yoga, whether spiritual or postural. The former is a type of spiritual tourism; the latter is related both to spiritual and to wellness tourism. Yoga tourists often visit ashrams in India to study yoga or to be trained and certified as yoga teachers. Major centres for yoga tourism include Rishikesh and Mysore.
The European Union of Yoga(EUY) is an international non-profit organisation which co-ordinates a network of yoga teachers, training schools and yoga federations. It was founded in 1971, and has since 1973 held an annual congress at Zinal, Switzerland where yoga teachers and practitioners can meet in a multi-lingual, cross-cultural environment and hear from invited Indian yoga teachers.
