What’s the first thought that pops into your mind when someone mentions yoga to you? For many it will be to do with lean, bendy bodies and a form of exercise.
While this is not completely wrong, yoga is so much more than exercise and postures. In fact, the asanas – the postures – only make up one of the eight limbs of yoga1 and one of eighteen different forms of yoga mentioned in the historical yogic text, the Bhagavad Gita.1
Mind, body and Lorna Jane
Although hatha yoga – the one we most commonly associate with modern yoga – has been practised since the late 1600s, the modern mainstream focus on asanas, body image and yoga fashion (think the rise of women’s activewear brand, Lorna Jane) is fairly new in the history of yoga.
Even as recently as 20 years back there was still some sense that yoga was about more than just the physical.
For example, in a 1995 interview with respected yoga teacher T.K.V Desikachar regarding the life and teachings of his father, Sri T. Krishnamacharya, Desikachar says: ‘For most people yoga is purely a spiritual discipline’.2
Indeed, many of the people who took to yoga once it started to spread out to the West seemingly embraced the spiritual aspect amid the rise of the hippy era, and lay the foundations for another stereotype of yoga: the spiritual, hippy yogi.
But beyond yoga stereotypes and the focus on asanas, what actually is yoga?
So what does yoga really mean?
The agreed modern meaning – the definition of yoga – is to unite. To bring together.
To yoke, to join all components of ‘mind, body and spirit’, if we take it back to its Sanskrit roots (Yuj = yoke).3
T.K.V Desikachar also talks about it meaning ‘to tie the strands of the mind together’ or ‘to attain what was previously unattainable’ or ‘to be one with the divine’. 2
All of this can seem a bit abstract, so let’s think of it like this: if we give attention to and develop all parts of our being human – all elements of our mind and our consciousness and experience and actions, as well as our physical body – then we have the best opportunity to realise our potential.
We are, after all, more than just our bodies.
Yoga is a toolkit full of teachings that enables us to bring all those threads of ourselves together in harmony, to create union in ourselves, and – in doing so – be at ease in the world.
And that, regardless of whether you’re into the image, exercise or fashion side of yoga or not, sounds like a good place for us all to be.
References
- Yoga Journal. Get to Know the Eight Limbs of Yoga https://www.yogajournal.com/practice/the-eight-limbs
- Desikachar, T.K.V. The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice (Revised Edition). 1995
- Yogapedia. Definition – what does Yuj mean? https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/7656/yuj
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