About Yoga
Indus Valley Seal from around 2000 BC
Sage Patanjali
Yoga is ancient
The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj meaning to bind, join, attach and yoke, to direct and concentrate one’s attention on and to use and apply. It also means union or communion.
Seals have been found in the Indus Valley dating back to 2000 BC showing human forms sitting in yoga positions.
Yoga is one of six systems of Indian philosophy.
It was collated, co-ordinated and systematised by the sage Patanjali in around 200 BC. Prior to that yoga was only taught and practised in a purely oral tradition. It was an esoteric tradition, and it is only in the last 100 years that yoga, even inside India, has come to be practised more widely.
Patanjali outlines a systematic approach to Self-realisation. His classical text, the Yoga Sutras, describes the nature of the mind and how to avoid being controlled by the restlessness of mind. Yoga is based on a process of physical and mental training culminating in the direct experience of realizing the universal Self within everyone.
“What most people want is the same. Most people simply want physical and mental health, understanding and wisdom, and peace and freedom. Often our means of pursuing these basic human needs come apart at the seams, as we are pulled by the different and often competing demands of human life. Yoga, as it was understood by its sages, is designed to satisfy all these human needs in a comprehensive, seamless whole. Its goal is nothing less than to attain the integrity of oneness - oneness with ourselves and as a consequence oneness with all that lies beyond ourselves.”