Veggie Blog

The old version of this post opened with a list of modern worries (stress, a sedentary lifestyle, toxins in food and air) and then said that yoga “was developed over 5,000 years ago in India,” that it “predates all other religions,” and that its “holistic benefits” suit everyone. The history is more interesting, and less certain, than that. This rewrite looks at what yoga means, where it first appears and what the evidence does not show.

What does the word “yoga” mean?

The old post is right that yoga is a Sanskrit word connected with the idea of union, and that it is often explained as “to join” or “to yoke.” The Bhagavad Gita, one of the best-known Indian texts, defines it in several ways, including equanimity and skill in action. In many traditions the aim is a union of the individual self with a universal self, which is how the old post described it. That is a spiritual goal, not something research can measure, and today many people practice yoga for exercise and relaxation instead.

How old is yoga?

The old claim of 5,000 years cannot be proven. In the introduction to their scholarly collection Roots of Yoga, the historians James Mallinson and Mark Singleton write that before about 500 BCE there is very little evidence in South Asian texts or archaeology for systematic, psychophysical techniques of the kind the word “yoga” later came to describe. The Rig Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text (dated to the fifteenth to twelfth centuries BCE), points to visionary meditation, and a hymn to a long-haired sage suggests an ascetic tradition like that of later yogis. But they call it “entirely speculative” to claim that the Vedic texts show evidence of systematic yoga practice.

Some older books also point to a carved seal from the Indus Valley civilization as showing a figure in a yoga pose. Scholars such as Geoffrey Samuel, Andrea Jain and Wendy Doniger now describe that reading as speculative, so it cannot be used to date yoga. A fair summary is that yoga-like practices go back well over two thousand years, and that the precise starting point is unknown.

Where is yoga first written about?

Ideas about yoga appear in the early Upanishads, philosophical texts from the first half of the first millennium BCE, and in the Bhagavad Gita, which the old post alludes to when it talks about yoga as a path. The Yoga Sutras attributed to Patanjali are the best-known classical text, and our guide to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras explains why the date is debated. Much later, texts on hatha yoga describe the postures and breathing methods that most Americans now think of as yoga. According to Mallinson and Singleton, by the late eighteenth century hatha yoga techniques held a “virtual hegemony” across many yoga-practicing traditions in India.

Is yoga a religion?

The old post said that yoga is a spiritual path but that you do not have to make an ethical decision to practice, and that people of any background can take part. Britannica’s article on Hinduism is similar: yoga may be atheistic or theistic and may adopt various philosophical or religious principles. Practiced in a gym or studio, yoga is usually taught as exercise and relaxation, but you can ask a teacher how much spiritual material their classes include. See the Britannica entry on yoga in Hinduism for more background.

What did the old post get wrong?

The claim that yoga “predates all other religions” is not something history can support, and the line that yoga “purifies” the mind and body with “cleansing thoughts and food” should not be taken as a health claim. Yoga is not a cure or a detox; see how yoga became popular in America and what the numbers show and yoga explained: what it is and what the research supports for what studies do say. If you want to try it, start with a beginner class and a qualified teacher, as the NIH advises.