Just how old is yoga? Well, almost as old as the ancient civilizations of the world over 5,000 years back.

1. YOGA
The Course of
Yoga
through the
Millennia

2. Just how old is yoga? Well, almost as old as the ancient
civilizations of the world over 5,000 years back. Some even
consider it to be older by a further 5,000 years, but there are
no reliable documents to prove that. Since the principles of
yoga were largely conveyed orally and kept hidden from the
larger populace, the exact time-frame of its formalization and
adoption is hard to figure out even for scholars of history and
archaeologists. There were written texts too, but since much
of writing back then was done on palm leaves that couldn’t
stand the test of time.
But though its origins in pre-history aren’t well documented,
it’s certain that yoga is more than 5,000 years old. That
would take it to the period of the Indus Valley Civilization in
north western India and what is now Pakistan, between 3300
and 1900 BCE. But it is believed that yoga was further
developed and perfected upon during the Vedic period that
extended from 1500 to 500 BCE in northern India.

3. First Use of the Term “Yoga”
The Rig Veda, one of the oldest religious texts in the world,
contains the first use of the word “yoga”. The Rig Veda is part
of the Vedas text collection which contains mantras, rituals
and songs for use by the Hindu Brahman priests. The
Brahman caste was considered the highest in the caste-based
society of the day. The Brahmans further developed the yogic
practices. Credit also goes to the seers of the era, called
“rishis”. The rishis and the Brahmins could document their
practices in another religious work, the Upanishads. The
Upanishads framed the karma yoga and jnana yoga
disciplines. But the development of yoga has also been
attributed to the non-Brahmanic Sramana traditions.
Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras
From 200 BCE to 500 BCE, a philosophical system for yoga
started emerging. This was the age when Buddhism and
Jainism emerged as well. In the 2nd
century AD, Patanjali
brought out his Yoga-Sutras text. Patanjali is credited with
documenting the classical stream of yoga, called Raja Yoga.
Patanjali’s focus was on organizing the steps of yoga with an
aim of attaining enlightenment or “Samadhi”. These Yoga-
Sutras still have a major influence on modern yoga, which is
why Patanjali is called the father of yoga.

4. The Yoga Widely Followed in the West – Hatha
Yoga
The modern practice of yoga commonly practiced in the
United States and the Western word largely follows the
principles of Hatha Yoga which itself is an evolution of Tantra
Yoga developed by yoga masters who lived centuries
following Patanjali. They did not follow the concepts of the
Vedic texts I mentioned earlier. Rather, they considered the
physical body as a means to enlightenment and developed
the principles of Tantra Yoga, which eventually led to Hatha
Yoga.
By the Middle Ages, there were many satellite divisions of
yoga that emerged. The Western world got wind of yoga only
millennia later, in the 19th
century after Swami Vivekananda’s
exposition of Hinduism and Indian traditions in 1893 at the
Parliament of Religions at Chicago.
Peter Theodorou is one of the most successful yoga trainers
out there. He believes in always staying physically fit for a
healthy life. And yoga has been helping him do that. He just
wants to impart that wisdom to others so they can benefit
from it.