What is Yoga?

Academic research of the history of yoga is still in its infancy and we are just in the process of lifting the veil of myths and opinions that have circulated in the yoga milieu for so long. This will surely change the way we perceive yoga in the future: What we call “yoga” is a confluence of many different traditions that flourished various times in history. These days we tend to see yoga through the lens of recent categorization into distinct traditions and schools. However, the development of yoga more likely took place as a dialogue between different groups and ideas that circulated during the same period. No school or philosophical system developed in a vacuum. Buddhist Yoga for example, had a great impact on the Brahmanical schools, it developed a huge literary corpus on yoga and it in fact contains the earliest records we have of Hatha Yoga.

I have since long wondered why we as modern yogis look almost singularly to Patanjali when we seek to deepen our knowledge of yoga. The yoga sutras and its commentaries are primarily descriptive texts providing an overview of the various kinds and stages of yoga while they don’t provide much information in terms of methodology. It seems to me that for this reason we tend to treat yoga philosophy as an intellectual exercise. But it makes little sense to memorize or discuss for example the Yamas and Niyamas unless we also know how to practice them: If we really want to progress along the yogic path, we need to internalize and embody those teachings and we do this in the context of bhavana, meditation: Buddhist texts, that also identifies as yogic, offer not only an elaboration on but very practical applications of the principles mentioned by Patanjali: you find extensive explanations of all the stages of the path, the step-by step practices for elimination of kleshas and cultivation of qualities conducive to enlightenment. You find practices such as the four applications of mindfulness and the four Brahma viharas (immeasurable love, compassion, joy and equanimity.) The latter are briefly mentioned in Y.S. 1.33 while its practical application is found in Buddhist text. Many modern yogis will have come across these practices in the form of, respectively, vipassana and loving kindness meditation. I think it is time to look at yoga in a broader perspective from the rich multitude of traditions that flourished in previous times-rather than accept what has been defined as « yoga » by a few individuals in the 19th and 20th century.