The Ascent of Yoga

Yoga is a lot like Hinduism itself—hard to define but constantly evolving as it melds with the times. It is not a given that a physical, philosophical, or religious system survives. You don’t see followers of Charvaka today, or once popular marital arts like kalaripayattu or silambam don’t have many practitioners now. But on June 21, not just across the length of India but the United Nations headquarters will roll out mats to celebrate International Day of Yoga. This is in keeping with a resolu­tion passed by its General Assembly on December 11, 2014, that said: “Recognizing that yoga provides a holistic approach to health and well-being. Recognizing also that wider dissemination of informa­tion about the benefits of practicing yoga would be beneficial for the health of the world population, 1. Decides to proclaim 21 June the International Day of Yoga…” It invited member states to participate and raise awareness about yoga and the next year, 2015, marked the first International Day of Yoga.

This resolution was a consequence of Narendra Modi, freshly elected as prime minister, having earlier made an address to the General Assembly exhorting for such an observance. On June 21, he will be in the US and lead the event at the UN headquarters and it will be in scale. A Hindustan Times article reported: “India has not only booked all the open spaces within the UN complex and the riverside promenade overlooking the Hudson river, but also parts of Roosevelt City and Long Island city to make space for over 2,000 people who are expected to participate in the event. A live feed of the yoga celebra­tions will be broadcast at Times Square, a few blocks away.” A Press Information Bu­reau note says that over 80 India missions and embassies are organising yoga events at iconic locations in different countries. In India, precursor events began months back and, on the day, ministers, film stars, teachers, senior citizens and numerous other sections of society will participate.

The observance of the day is a recogni­tion of the relentlessly increasing appeal of yoga in India. Its definition as a pure health tool is however an inversion be­cause it didn’t begin as a physical exercise regimen. Yoga is said to be the creation or compilation of the sage Patanjali a few centuries before the Christian era, but the only reference the Patanjali Yoga Sutra makes to an asana is ‘Sthiram Sukhamasa­na,’ which means a posture in which you are still and comfortable. He spells out an eight-limbed system that leads step by step to enlightenment, in which asana is one component whose details are not giv­en. The limbs include ethical actions that one must do and not do, control of senses, mastery over breath-energy, meditation, etc. that lead finally to samadhi. Someone’s end objective of yoga being the removal of back pain might have affronted Patan­jali. Some trace yoga back further to the Indus Valley Civilisation where there is the Pashupati figure seated cross-legged in what could be a yogic pose. However, it needn’t be so either, for any seated figure would be a posture.

By Patanjali’s time, there is little doubt that yoga as a spiritual system existed even if we have no idea whether it was limited to a subset of spiritual seekers or had resonance with the general masses. Later, there are hints of asanas in com­mentaries to the Yoga Sutras. The wide variety of postures and breathing exer­cises is still absent. In his book The Story of Yoga, Alistair Shearer writes that it is from around the 9th and 10th centuries that the teaching of “body-yoga” becomes more prevalent. “This begins to formal­ize the inchoate traditions of rigorous as­ceticism that had been part of the Indian scene since the Vedic times. Lists of asanas occur in texts belonging to the Panchara­tra yoga schools, the earliest of which is the tenth-century Vimanarchanakalpa. These groups worshipped Vishnu, which hints at a broader appeal of early yoga than had previously been assumed, as it is usu­ally Shiva who is considered the lord of all things yogic. It is also at this time that other physical techniques associated with body-yoga, the mudras or ‘seals’—physi­cal ways of manipulating the subtle vital energies—were being taught,” he writes. The book considered a traditional man­ual, the Hatha Yoga Pradapika, is from the 15th century but it too has just four asanas detailed, of which three are sitting postures. “As to postures, the text tells us: ‘Eighty-four asanas were taught by Shiva. Of those, I shall describe the essential four.’ For the supposed authority on body-yoga to confine its interest to a bare 5 per cent of its source material is certainly curious,” writes Shearer.

At the turn of the last century in India, yoga began to evolve in keeping with the rapid change in India. Colonialism brought in new ideas and information, yoga teachers began to incorporate them into the core. The man who made a semi­nal contribution to this was Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. He might not be very well-known today but his students like BKS Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois established schools that led to yoga spreading both in India and the West. Krishnamacharya, who lived to be 101 from 1888 to 1989, is termed by some as the father of modern yoga. An itinerant scholar, he spent time in Varanasi where he learnt yoga and then started teaching. He was invited by the Maharaja of Mysore to teach in his palace, and here he refined his system because he found more material. In an article in The Yoga Journal, author Anne Cushman writes about a book called The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, written by Norman Sjoman who, while doing research in the 1980s in the library of Mysore Palace, came upon a 19th-century yoga manual that contained 122 asanas with illustrations. Sjoman de­duced that Krishnamacharya also found this manual when he was at the palace and incorporated it into his own yoga. But that was not all. “Along the way, claims Sjoman, Krishnamacharya also seems to have incorporated into the yogic canon specific techniques drawn from British gymnastics. In addition to being a patron of yoga, the Mysore royal family was a great patron of gymnastics. In the early 1900s, they hired a British gymnast to teach the young princes. When Krishnamacharya was brought to the palace to start a yoga school in the 1920s, his schoolroom was the former palace gymnastics hall, com­plete with wall ropes and other gymnastic aids, which Krishnamacharya used as yoga props. He was also given access to the West­ern gymnastics manual written by the My­sore Palace gymnasts. This manual—ex­cerpted in Sjoman’s book—gives detailed instructions and illustrations for physical maneuvers that Sjoman argues quickly found their way into Krishnamacharya’s teachings, and passed on to Iyengar and Jois…,” writes Cushman.

BKS Iyengar, especially, is famous for introducing even more props to teaching yoga, like chairs, ropes, wooden blocks, and belts. It makes even complex asanas accessible to people who are aged or in­flexible. He found a student in the famous British violinist Yehudi Menuhin, which then led to more Western personalities becoming interested in his yoga. Iyengar once taught the Queen Mother of Belgium, who was in her mid-80s, to do sirsasana, the headstand. But the style he developed was different from another famous student of Krishnamacharya, Pattabhi Jois. While Iyengar emphasised holding a posture for lengthy periods of time, Jois’ ashthanga was a seamless cascade of postures. Neither felt that they had to be limited by what and how they had been taught.

Meanwhile, other yoga gurus and schools were also making an impact. In Mumbai, for example, there was Swami Kuvalayananda who established the Kaivalyadhama Centre. It was after meet­ing him that Jawaharlal Nehru, a 40-year-old freedom fighter then, became a prac­titioner and, according to an article in The Print, “In 1952, it was Nehru who moved a resolution in the Rajya Sabha stating that yoga should be a part of India’s health edu­cation. In 1953, he ensured that yoga exer­cises were included in the ‘National Plan of Physical Education and Recreation’, which was prepared by the Central Advi­sory Board of Physical Education.” Indira Gandhi had a yoga guru in Dhirendra Brahmachari and he had a long-running programme in Doordarshan beginning in the late-1970s that taught yoga to Indians in their homes through television.

Mass media continues to be fuel to yoga. Baba Ramdev’s camps used to see large numbers, but it was their telecast on tele­vision that turned him into a household name. He also jumped class distinctions because by then television had become ac­cessible to rural and poorer households. His yoga empire has now expanded into Ayurveda and consumer products. Yoga’s commercial footprint is growing across the world. A recent report by Allied Market Research, an American market research firm, estimated the yoga mar­ket to grow from $36.5 billion in 2019 to $66.2 billion by 2027, and they think much of it will be driven by online offer­ings. A press release on the report said: “The yoga industry is witnessing rapid growth, particularly in North America and Asia Pacific. The yoga practitioners are expected to cross 350 million by the end of this decade.” The pandemic and lockdown suddenly led to a huge increase in online yoga programmes.

Yoga continues to take on new mean­ings. For instance, over the last decade or two, forms like aerial yoga have come to be, which uses hammocks to make peo­ple do poses as they half-hang in the air. Something similar goes by the name of anti-gravity yoga. No one can claim that it is not yoga because any pose that prom­ises well-being can come under its ambit. Purists might object but such modifica­tions are not a corruption but the key to yoga’s ascent.

BKS IyengarInternational Yoga DayNarendra ModiPattabhi JoisTirumalai Krishnamacharyawellnessyoga