When I was 16, I went through a stage where I was convinced I was a Yogi. I only ate food from Trader Joe’s, and sported a tie-dye backpack made from “organic” fabric. Soccer was replaced with yoga and meditation. For several months I refused to brush my hair, and proudly cultivated a pathetic dread-lock in the back of my hair.
Looking back, I realize how ridiculous my actions were. Although I knew that the practice of yoga had its roots in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, I never bothered to understand more about it. To me, yoga was just a way to combat stress and provide momentum for my immature counter-culture tendencies.
Now, three years later, as I learn about Hinduism in a college setting, I realize that the practice of yoga is just one small part of the philosophy.
The Yoga school of thought focuses not on “down-dog” or “sun-salutation,” but rather the liberation of purusa the “spirit/soul” from prakrti “nature.” The Yoga system presents a causal model of suffering, based on the disease-cure-path theme. As stated in The Philosophical Traditions of India, “the liberation process is none other than a process of ‘healing’ from the sickness of phenomenal existence” (95). Unlike the Samkhya doctrine, Yoga “conceives of the mind as a unitary entity... not distinguished in three dimensions” (101).
Even though I am still trying to fully grasp these concepts, I can appreciate the complexity and subtly of the Yoga system. By focusing on the practice, rather than the actual teachings, I never grasped the true meaning of the Yoga system.
However, in order to come full circle, there are still some questions I would like to answer. First off, when was the modern form of Yoga developed? Does it all resemble the original practice of Yoga? If not, what are the differences?
Maybe after I answer these questions, I can really understand the system that I so enthusiastically (and ignorantly) embraced.
Most modern forms of yoga have pretty school-specific origins (for example, the particular combination of postures and temperature that makes up Bikram Yoga comes from an Indian guy named Bikram, who's still alive and giving seminars). In general, though, the proliferation of different types of postures dates from medieval Indian tantra. Hatha Yoga came out of this period. A lot of yoga schools now also still look back to the Yoga Sutras for wider inspiration, even as they take a series of postures from one teacher or another.
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