Yoga

Yoga (; San­skrit: , Lis­ten) is a phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tu­al prac­tice or dis­ci­pline that denotes a vari­ety of schools, prac­tices and goals in Hin­duism, Bud­dhism (includ­ing Vajrayana and Tibetan Bud­dhism) and Jain­ism, the best-known being Hatha yoga and Raja yoga. The ori­gins of Yoga have been spec­u­lat­ed to date back to pre-Vedic Indi­an tra­di­tions, but most like­ly devel­oped around the sixth and fifth cen­turies BCE, in ancient Indi­a’s ascetic cir­cles, which are also cred­it­ed with the ear­ly sra­mana move­ments. The chronol­o­gy of ear­li­est texts describ­ing yoga-prac­tices is unclear, vary­ing­ly cred­it­ed to Hin­du Upan­ishads and Bud­dhist Pāli Canon, prob­a­bly of third cen­tu­ry BCE or lat­er. The Yoga Sutras of Patan­jali from first half of 1st mil­len­ni­um CE is one of a key sur­viv­ing major texts on Yoga. Hatha yoga texts emerged around 11th cen­tu­ry CE, and in its ori­gins was relat­ed to Tantrism.James Mallinson, “Sāk­tism and Hathayo­ga,” 28 June 2012. [accessed 19 Sep­tem­ber 2013] pg. 20, Quote: “The tech­niques of hatha yoga are not taught in San­skrit texts until the 11th cen­tu­ry or there­abouts.” Yoga gurus from India lat­er intro­duced yoga to the west, fol­low­ing the suc­cess of Swa­mi Vivekanan­da in the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. In the 1980s, yoga became pop­u­lar as a sys­tem of phys­i­cal exer­cise across the West­ern world. Yoga in Indi­an tra­di­tions, how­ev­er, is more than phys­i­cal exer­cise, it has a med­i­ta­tive and spir­i­tu­al core. One of the six major ortho­dox schools of Hin­duism is also called Yoga, which has its own epis­te­mol­o­gy and meta­physics, and is close­ly relat­ed to Hin­du Samkhya phi­los­o­phy. Many stud­ies have tried to deter­mine the effec­tive­ness of yoga as a com­ple­men­tary inter­ven­tion for can­cer, schiz­o­phre­nia, asth­ma, and heart dis­ease. The results of these stud­ies have been mixed and incon­clu­sive, with can­cer stud­ies sug­gest­ing none to unclear effec­tive­ness, and oth­ers sug­gest­ing yoga may reduce risk fac­tors and aid in a patien­t’s psy­cho­log­i­cal heal­ing process.