I am giving you my perspective on the history of yoga. I’ve studied with many excellent teachers, and courses available. So, this will be my take, my experience, and my embodiment. 

Yoga has existed for a very long time in many different incarnations. Yoga means to yoke, bring things together and create a union. People in India and many other parts of the world have been grappling with or trying to remember this sense of union. 

In India, it began or was recorded much later because, as I mentioned, things were not documented or written down for a long time. The Rig Veda, along with the other three Vedas, remained unwritten for centuries. They were preserved through oral tradition. However, we do know there was a civilization in the Indus Valley.

They lived there between 2600 and  1750 B.C. They were a goddess-centered civilization. They thought they were goddess-centered because depictions of the goddess in her many forms were found on walls, vases, and household items. This civilization were said to mysteriously disappear.

The Aryans and the Vedas

It’s said that around 1500 B.C., the Aryans entered India from the north. Arya means noble, and they brought with them horses, chariots, and the Vedas—the earliest texts of classical Hinduism. Some believe these warlike nomads invented yoga, while others credit the Indus people or propose it was a joint creation. Whether the Aryans conquered the Indus Valley or natural disasters like floods played a role is still debated.

The Rig Veda was the first of the four Vedas, and it is where we find the Gayatri Mantra, often referred to as the “mother of all mantras.” This invocation asks our guides, both seen and unseen, to illuminate our path.

I love chanting this mantra because it connects us to a lineage of people who have chanted it for centuries. As one of my teachers, David Life, once said, chanting something ancient places you within that lineage—even if it’s not your bloodline.

The Power Of Nada (Sound)

The Vedas, a collection of hymns, are considered the oldest resource of Vedic civilization. These hymns were preserved in Sanskrit, a language that acknowledges the profound effects of sound (nada) on the human experience. The hymns were designed to create a specific Bhavana, or mood, through repetition.

Interestingly, most people at that time were illiterate. The caste system, which functioned as a class system, placed the responsibility of preserving and performing the Vedas on the Brahmin priests, one of the higher castes. They were the only ones permitted to read or sing these hymns, while others would listen and be affected by their power.

The Vedas were not initially intended for the general population or “laypeople.” This raises an interesting question: who might have been chanting these hymns in the Indus Valley, before the caste system existed?

The Upanishads

I remember listening to this lecture by Douglas Brooks. The word “Upana” means to sit with. The Upanishads were for the forest dwellers, as they called them. They were taking back the rituals and giving them to the people. Again, as I said, the Vedas were written by Brahmin priests and were only read by Them.

Most people were illiterate.  And the Upanishads were created to bring back and share it with the laypeople.  

The Upanishads took the rituals inside. So, they moved from making changes outside to creating significant changes inside to create change. Their whole idea was that what we seek is within us. And I feel like they’re also lying. At least, the way we think of yoga today is that it is something about going inward, not outward.

There are many schools of philosophy in India. 

I’m discussing three specifically: Samkhya, classical yoga, and ADvAita Vedanta. Samkhya is considered the oldest philosophy. 

Everything else is either a rebuttal or builds on Samkhya and classic yoga philosophy. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are a classic yoga philosophy that stems from Samkhya. I am introducing Advaita Vedanta because many of the concepts we discuss in yoga today are not classic.

Samkhya

Samkhya philosophy was formulated in 350 CE, which is the common era. As I said, it’s the oldest philosophy of India. 

Okay,  so in Samkhya philosophy, two entities make up the world. So, one thing that all Indian philosophy does is try to have a creation story in some way, shape, or form, or it explains how the world came to be. Okay, the world is the universe. 

And in Samkhya, two entities have created the universe, Prakriti and Purusha.

Classical yoga philosophy is based on Samkhya, but the largest difference is with Purusha. People think of Purusha as God. So, when Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutras, he shifted Purusha into being God and the divine. Moving into classic yoga philosophy, if you’ve ever read the Yoga Sutras, I will give you background on them.

Good old Patanjali writes that the Yoga Sutra is a how-to book on how to live and meditate. Or the two things.  How to live your life on and off the meditation cushion. And classic yoga philosophy adheres to what we call Raja yoga. Raja being, Raj means king.  He also believes that meditation is the king of all yoga. 

And the idea of the yoga sutras is that you want to transcend your mind from the distractions of the world to be able to connect to God. It is dualistic, just like Samkhya, meaning that there is (specifically in classic yoga philosophy), there’s a little S self, which is who we think we are, which could also be Prakriti,  and a big S self, which is Purusha, or who we truly are, that which is divine.

Patanjali states that you want to transcend your little S self to connect to your big S self.

So, he explains different meditation techniques in the yoga sutras. But he also discusses life. For example, you want to eat a clean diet, be aware of who you surround yourself with, and care for your house.

He has the Niyamas, the precepts on how we should interact with the world around us and take care of ourselves. Then he talks about the Siddhis, which are essentially the “superpowers you get from yoga and are still a roadside attraction”.

Some people can levitate, walk on coals, and do everything. These are not what we seek but a byproduct of practicing. Then, he talks about samadhi, the ultimate goal of classic yoga: to reach enlightenment or bliss. 

It was the same in that there was a school of philosophy, like our reference point, the Upanishads. It is not the Vedas. Okay, so in the Vedas, there wasn’t one God. There were many gods. There was a god of the Sun, Rudra, and a very fundamental or primitive version of Shiva.

Okay, the experiencing self, jiva—the Sanskrit word—and the transcendental self of the universal, Atman, are identical; both are Brahman. So everything in the world is divine; it is all Brahman. And the little self is jiva. In Advaita Vedanta, the big self is Atman.

Advaita Vedanta: Nondualism & Maya

Another big concept in Advaita Vedanta is Maya, generally translated as illusion. 

In Tantric philosophy, the creative force brings about our consciousness. We materialize things through the creative force, which was cool! I was blown away. It’s fun when you revisit things and are in a different place. Maya is a deep engagement with the process by which the divine’s self reveals itself because, unlike Brahman, Maya is material.

Then, we can connect to that power and understand it through Maya. Because Maya is usually translated as an illusion, many people think it’s bad, but it’s not. It’s just an aspect of the divine.  

Bondage is Maya. It’s an illusion, not real but imaginary and imposed by our mind. Shankara takes the Upanishadic vision and claims that the features of the world, the features of the world of difference, are a kind of ignorance, a form of avidya. We suffer because we are ignorant and don’t know what we don’t know. 

Shankara, who again created Advaita Vedanta, would say that we’ve always been perfectly free,  that we misperceive our true nature, and that the world of change is unreal.  I don’t know if I believe that. 

Tantric Philosophy: Working with what is

And so, Tantric philosophy is also nondualistic.  And it’s believed, like Purusha and Prakriti, like Samkhya, and many of these, that there are two energies in the world. For them, they call it Shiva and Shakti.  Shiva is consciousness or awareness, and Shakti is the creative force they live in all things. 

The union we’re trying to seek is already present. It’s very much like Advaita Vedanta, which teaches that we are already there—we are divine just as we are. I love this idea. While I can’t speak much about Advaita Vedanta since I don’t know it as deeply, in Tantra, the belief is that everything—experiences, thoughts, and all of life—is divine. Instead of trying to escape or transcend what’s in front of us, Tantra teaches that we transcend by fully engaging with and working with what is.

So, the change is very much within you versus trying to change the world around you and dancing with all that shows up. So again, like in yoga philosophy, there are these ideas of purity or transcending body and mind.

The body is holy. So, work with the body. It’s the idea of intention. Tantra, so tan means expansion, and tra is an instrument. So tantra means, like the instrument of expansion.  And so we’re expanding to remember or see the divinity in all things.