Yoga as exercise

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Women in an outdoor yoga community class, Texas, 2010

Yoga as exercise is a physical activity consisting mainly of

Haṭha yoga, which made use of similar postures, but it is generally simply called "yoga". Academics have given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including modern postural yoga[1][a] and transnational anglophone yoga.[3]

Posture is described in the

Yoga Sutras II.29 as the third of the eight limbs, the ashtanga
, of yoga. Sutra II.46 defines it as that which is steady and comfortable, but no further elaboration or list of postures is given.

Postures were not central in any of the older traditions of yoga; posture practice was revived in the 1920s by yoga gurus including

Sivananda Yoga
. Yoga as exercise spread across America and Europe, and then the rest of the world.

Haṭha yoga's non-postural practices such as its

.

History

Yoga was originally a spiritual practice based on meditation.[4] Statue from Java, 13th century.

Yoga's origins

The

Haṭha yoga.[6][7] The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha means "force", alluding to its use of physical techniques.[6]

Haṭha yoga

Satkarmas with the intention of purifying the subtle body.[9]

Haṭha yoga flourished among secretive ascetic groups such as

purifications, postures (asanas), locks, the directed gaze, seals, and rhythmic breathing.[16] These were claimed to provide supernatural powers including healing, destruction of poisons, invisibility, and shape-shifting.[17][18] Yogins wore little or no clothing; their bodies were sometimes smeared with cremation ash as a reminder of their forthcoming deaths.[19] Equipment, too, was scanty; sometimes yogins used a tiger or deer skin as a rug to meditate on.[20] Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas, mainly seated; in particular, there were very few standing poses before 1900.[14][21] They were practised slowly, often holding a position for long periods.[22] The practice of asanas was a minor preparatory aspect of spiritual work.[11] Yogins followed a strict vegetarian diet, excluding stimulants such as tea, coffee or alcohol.[23] Their yoga was taught without payment; gurus were supported by gifts[24] and the philosophy was anti-consumerist.[25]

Early influences

According to one theory, the system of physical education practised in the 19th-century

British India, became the default form of mass-drill, and this influenced the "modernized hatha yoga".[26][27] According to the yoga scholar Suzanne Newcombe, modern yoga in India is a blend of Western gymnastics with postures from Haṭha yoga in India in the 20th century.[28]

From the 1850s onwards, there developed in India a culture of physical exercise to counter the colonial stereotype of supposed "degeneracy" of Indians compared to the British,

Tiruka, who taught exercises and unarmed combat techniques under the guise of yoga.[33][34] The German bodybuilder Eugen Sandow was acclaimed on his 1905 visit to India, at which time he was already a "cultural hero" in the country.[35] The anthropologist Joseph Alter suggests that Sandow was the person who had the most influence on modern yoga.[35][36] The first handbook of asanas in English, and the first to be illustrated with photographs, was Seetharaman Sundaram's 1928 Yogic Physical Culture.[37][38]

Introduction to the West

Krishnamacharya derived some of his asanas from the gymnastics culture of his time[40]

Yoga was introduced to the Western world by the spiritual leader

In 1924, the yoga teacher

Kuvalayananda founded the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center in Maharashtra, combining asanas with gymnastics, and like Yogendra seeking a scientific and medical basis for yogic practices.[54][55][56]

"The father of modern yoga"[57] Krishnamacharya teaching yoga in Mysore, 1930s[26]

In 1925, Kuvalayananda's rival Paramahansa Yogananda, having moved from India to America, set up the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, and taught yoga, including asanas, breathing, chanting and meditation, to "tens of thousands of Americans".[58] In 1923, Yogananda's younger brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh, founded the Ghosh College of Yoga and Physical Culture in Calcutta.[28]

vinyasa style of yoga.[60][62] The yoga scholar Mark Singleton noted that gymnastic systems like Niels Bukh's were popular in physical culture in India at that time, and that they contained many postures similar to Krishnamacharya's new asanas.[40][39]

Spread of postural yoga across the world

Among Krishnamacharya's pupils were people who became influential yoga teachers themselves: the Russian Eugenie V. Peterson, known as

B.K.S. Iyengar (from 1933), his brother-in-law, who founded Iyengar Yoga,[67][68] with its first centre in Britain.[69] Together they made yoga popular as exercise and brought it to the Western world.[61][65] Iyengar's 1966 book Light on Yoga popularised yoga asanas worldwide with what the scholar-practitioner Norman Sjoman calls its "clear no-nonsense descriptions and the obvious refinement of the illustrations",[70] though the degree of precision it calls for is missing from earlier yoga texts.[71]

Other Indian schools of yoga took up the new style of asanas, but continued to emphasize Haṭha yoga's spiritual goals and practices to varying extents. The

Integral Yoga, founded in 1966.[72] Vishnudevananda published his Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga in 1960,[74] with a list of asanas that substantially overlaps with Iyengar's, sometimes with different names for the same poses.[75][b] Jois's asana names almost exactly match Iyengar's.[77]

Worldwide commodity

Yoga in public, Jakarta, 2013. The participants are relaxing in Shavasana.

Three changes around the 1960s allowed yoga as exercise to become a worldwide

Hindu scriptures, and retreating from society.[79]

From the 1970s, yoga as exercise spread across many countries of the world, changing as it did so, and becoming "an integral part of (primarily) urban cultures worldwide", to the extent that the word yoga in the Western world now means the practice of asanas, typically in a class.

The spread of Yoga in America was assisted by the television show Lilias, Yoga and You, hosted by Lilias Folan; it ran from 1970 to 1999.[83][84] In Australia, by 2005 some 12% of the population practised yoga in a class or at home.[85] As a valuable business, yoga has in turn been used in advertising, sometimes for yoga-related products, sometimes for other goods and services.[86]

The market for yoga grew, argues the scholar of religion

Jain states that yoga is becoming "part of the pop culture around the world".[94] Alter writes that it illustrates "transnational transmutation and the blurring of consumerism, holistic health, and embodied mysticism—as well as good old-fashioned Orientalism."[95] Singleton argues that the commodity is the yoga body itself, its "spiritual possibility"[96] signified by the "lucent skin of the yoga model",[96] a beautiful image endlessly sold back to the yoga-practising public "as an irresistible commodity of the holistic, perfectible self".[96]

In 2008, the United States Department of Health and Human Services labelled September as National Yoga Month.[97] From 2015, at the suggestion of India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, an annual International Day of Yoga has been held on 21 June.[98]

Transformation

The aims and practice of traditional and current yoga differ dramatically.[99]
Traditional yoga in India: "naked yogis ... their skin smeared with ashes from the cremation pyre"[19]
Yoga as exercise: the yoga body's "spiritual possibility" is signified by the "lucent skin of the yoga model".[96]

The anthropologist

sectarian to universal; from mendicant to consumerist; from meditational to postural; from being understood intellectually to experientially; from embodying esoteric knowledge to being accessible to all; from being taught orally to hands-on instruction; from presenting poses in text to using photographs; and from being "contorted social pariahs" to "lithe social winners".[104] The trend away from authority is continued in post-lineage yoga, which is practised outside any major school or guru's lineage.[105]

Practices

Asanas

Yoga as exercise consists largely but not exclusively of the practice of asanas. The numbers of asanas described (not just named) in some major Haṭha yoga and modern texts are shown in the table; all the Haṭha yoga text dates are approximate.[106]

Estimates of the number of asanas
No. of asanas Text Date Evidence supplied
2
Goraksha Shataka
10th-11th century Describes Siddhasana, Padmasana;[107][108] a "symbolic"[d] 84 claimed
4 Shiva Samhita 15th century 4 seated asanas described, 84 claimed; 11 mudras[14]
15 Hatha Yoga Pradipika 15th century 15 asanas described,
Bhadrasana and Simhasana) named as important[110]
32 Gheranda Samhita 17th century Descriptions of 32 seated, backbend, twist, balancing and inverted asanas, 25 mudras.[111][14]
52 Hatha Ratnavali 17th century 52 asanas described, out of 84 named[e][112][113]
84 Joga Pradipika 1830 84 asanas and 24 mudras in rare illustrated edition of 18th century text[114]
37
Yoga Sopana
1905 Describes and illustrates with halftone plates 37 asanas, 6 mudras, 5 bandhas[114]
~200 Light on Yoga
B. K. S. Iyengar
1966 Detailed descriptions and multiple photographs of each asana[115]
908 Master Yoga Chart
Dharma Mittra
1984 Photographs of each asana[116]
2100 2,100 Asanas
Mr. Yoga
2015 Photographs of each asana[117]

Asanas can be classified in different ways, which may overlap: for example, by the position of the head and feet (standing, sitting, reclining, inverted), by whether balancing is required, or by the effect on the spine (forward bend, backbend, twist), giving a set of asana types agreed by most authors.[118][119][120][121] The yoga guru Dharma Mittra uses his own categories such as "Floor & Supine Poses".[122] Yogapedia and Yoga Journal add "Hip-opening"; the yoga teacher Darren Rhodes, Yogapedia and Yoga Journal also add "Core strength."[123][124][125]

Styles

The number of

Viniyoga. These emphasise different aspects including aerobic exercise, precision in the asanas, and spirituality in the Haṭha yoga tradition.[126][127]

Vrikshasana
, tree pose, in Vancouver, Canada

These aspects can be illustrated by schools with distinctive styles. For example,

Sivananda Yoga focuses more on spiritual practice, with 12 basic poses, chanting in Sanskrit, pranayama breathing exercises, meditation, and relaxation in each class, and importance is placed on vegetarian diet.[126][127][128] Jivamukti Yoga uses a flowing vinyasa style of asanas accompanied by music, chanting, and the reading of scriptures.[127] Kundalini yoga emphasises the awakening of kundalini energy through meditation, pranayama, chanting, and suitable asanas.[127]

Alongside the yoga brands, many teachers, for example in England, offer an unbranded "hatha yoga",

vinyasas), and new variants of poses are often created.[130][131][127] The gender imbalance has sometimes been marked; in Britain in the 1970s, women formed between 70 and 90 percent of most yoga classes, as well as most of the yoga teachers.[132]

The tradition begun by Krishnamacharya survives at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai; his son T. K. V. Desikachar and his grandson Kausthub Desikachar continued to teach in small groups, coordinating asana movements with the breath, and personalising the teaching according to the needs of individual students.[126][133]

Sessions

Iyengar yoga with emphasis on correctness, sometimes as here using props such as yoga bricks.[134]

Yoga sessions vary widely depending on the school and style,

guided meditation.[136] A typical session in most styles lasts from an hour to an hour and a half, whereas in Mysore style yoga, the class is scheduled in a three-hour time window during which the students practice on their own at their own speed, following individualised instruction by the teacher.[136][127]

Hybrids

The evolution of yoga as exercise is not confined to the creation of new asanas and linking vinyasa sequences. A

on paddleboards[141][142] are all being explored.[137]

Purposes

Exercise

The energy cost of exercise is measured in units of metabolic equivalent of task (MET). Less than 3 METs counts as light exercise; 3 to 6 METs is moderate; 6 or over is vigorous. American College of Sports Medicine and American Heart Association guidelines count periods of at least 10 minutes of moderate MET level activity towards their recommended daily amounts of exercise.[143][144] For healthy adults aged 18 to 65, the guidelines recommend moderate exercise for 30 minutes five days a week,[145] or vigorous aerobic exercise for 20 minutes three days a week.[144]

Treated as a form of exercise, a complete yoga session with asanas and pranayama provides 3.3 ± 1.6 METs, on average a moderate workout. Surya Namaskar ranged from a light 2.9 to a vigorous 7.4 METs;[g] the average for a session of yoga practice without Surya Namaskar was a light 2.9 ± 0.8 METs.[h][143]

Physical or Hindu

Since the mid-20th century, yoga has been used, especially in the Western world, as physical exercise for fitness and suppleness,

Protestant streak in yoga as exercise, "with its emphasis on working the body. This effortful yoga is, she says, paradoxically, both 'an indulgence and a penance'."[104][152]

Yoga (here Hanumanasana) is permitted in Malaysia as long as it does not contain religious elements.[153]

Authorities differ on whether yoga is purely exercise.

Mira Mehta, asked by Yoga Magazine in 2010 whether she preferred her pupils to commit to a spiritual path before they start yoga, replied "Certainly not. A person's spiritual life is his or her own affair. People come to yoga for all sorts of reasons. High on the list is health and the desire to become de-stressed."[157] Kimberley J. Pingatore, studying attitudes among American yoga practitioners, found that they did not view the categories of religious, spiritual, and secular as alternatives.[158]

However, Haṭha yoga's "ecstatic ... transcendent ... possibly subversive" elements remain in yoga used as exercise.

esoteric or spiritual at all", making people skeptical about any alignment of yoga as practised in the West with "chakras or spirituality".[159] Stanley states that it is possible to start a practice without considering such matters, and that styles such as Bikram do not mention them, but that a deepening yoga practice will bring "an overall evolution of the self."[159] Syman suggests that part of the attraction of Bikram and Ashtanga Yoga was that under the sweat, the commitment, the schedule, the physical demands and even the verbal abuse was a hard-won ecstasy, "a deep feeling of vitality, a feeling of pure energy, an unbowed posture, and mental acuity."[160] That context has led to a division of opinion among Christians, some like Alexandra Davis of the Evangelical Alliance asserting that it is acceptable as long as they are aware of modern yoga's origins,[161] others like Paul Gosbee stating that yoga's purpose is to "open up chakras" and release kundalini or "serpent power" which in Gosbee's view is "from Satan", making "Christian yoga ... a contradiction."[161] Church halls are sometimes used for yoga, and in 2015 a yoga group was banned from a church hall in Bristol by the local parochial church council, stating that yoga represented "alternative spiritualities."[162]

In a secular context, the journalists Nell Frizzell and Reni Eddo-Lodge have debated (in The Guardian) whether Western yoga classes represent "cultural appropriation." In Frizzell's view, yoga has become a new entity, a long way from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and while some practitioners are culturally insensitive, others treat it with more respect. Eddo-Lodge agrees that Western yoga is far from Patanjali, but argues that the changes cannot be undone, whether people use it "as a holier-than-thou tool, as a tactic to balance out excessive drug use, or practised similarly to its origins with the spirituality that comes with it."[163] Jain argues however that charges of appropriation "from 'the East' to 'the West'" fail to take account of the fact that yoga is evolving in a shared multinational process; it is not something that is being stolen from one place by another.[164]

Health

Dandasana
, staff pose.

Yoga as exercise has been popularized in the Western world by claims about its health benefits.

Kuvalayananda, who attempted to demonstrate scientifically in his purpose-built 1924 laboratory at Kaivalyadhama that Sarvangasana (shoulderstand) specifically rehabilitated the endocrine glands (the organs that secrete hormones). He found no evidence to support such a claim, for this or any other asana.[167]

The impact of yoga as exercise on physical and mental health has been a topic of systematic studies (evaluating primary research), although a 2014 report found that, despite its common practice and possible health benefits, it remained "extremely understudied."[168] A systematic review of six studies found that Iyengar yoga is effective at least in the short term for both neck pain and low back pain.[169] A review of six studies found benefits for depression, but noted that the studies' methods imposed limitations,[170] while a clinical practice guideline from the American Cancer Society stated that yoga may reduce anxiety and stress in people with cancer.[171] A 2015 systematic review called for more rigour in clinical trials of the effect of yoga on mood and measures of stress.[172]

The practice of asanas has been claimed to improve flexibility, strength, and balance; to alleviate stress and anxiety, and to reduce the symptoms of

interleukin-6, C-reactive protein and cortisol) that might act on stress had been examined empirically, whereas many other potential mechanisms remained to be studied; four of the mechanisms (positive affect, self-compassion, inhibition of the posterior hypothalamus and salivary cortisol) were found to mediate the potential stress-lowering effects of yoga.[174] A 2017 review found moderate-quality evidence that yoga reduces back pain.[175] For people with cancer, yoga may help relieve fatigue, improve psychological outcomes, and support sleep quality and life attitudes, although results vary from reviews published in 2017.[171][176][177]

A 2015 systematic review noted that yoga may be effective in alleviating symptoms of

prenatal depression.[178] There is evidence that practice of asanas improves birth outcomes,[173] physical health, anxiety and worry in older adults,[179] quality of life measures in the elderly,[173] whilst also reducing hypertension.[180][181]

Secular religion

A personal yoga ritual

From its origins in the 1920s, yoga used as exercise has had a "spiritual" aspect which is not necessarily neo-Hindu; its assimilation with

Elizabeth De Michelis, a highly specific three-part structure that matches Arnold van Gennep's 1908 definition of the basic structure of a ritual:[186]

   1. a separation phase (detaching from the world outside);[186][187]

   2. a transition or liminal state; and[186][187]

   3. an incorporation or postliminal state.[186][187]

Van Gennep's postliminal state.[186][187]

For the separation phase, the yoga session begins by going into a neutral and if possible a secluded practice hall; worries, responsibilities, ego and shoes are all left outside;

Savasana, just as dictated by the Hatha Yoga Pradipika 1.32. The posture offers "an exercise in sense withdrawal and mental quietening, and thus ... a first step towards meditative practice,"[192] a cleansing and healing process, and even a symbolic death and moment of self-renewal.[192] Iyengar writes that savasana puts the practitioner in "that precise state [where] the body, the breath, the mind and the brain move toward the real self (Atma)" so as to merge into the Infinite, thus explaining the modern yoga healing ritual in terms of the Hindu Vishishtadvaita: an explanation that, De Michelis notes, practitioners are free to follow if they wish.[193][194]

The yoga scholar

Elliott Goldberg notes that some practitioners of yoga as exercise "inhabit their body as a means of accessing the spiritual... they use their asana practice as a vehicle for transcendence."[195] He cites yoga teacher Vanda Scaravelli's 1991 Awakening the Spine as an instance of such transcendence: "We learn to elongate and extend, rather than to pull and push... [and so] an unexpected opening follows, an opening from within us, giving life to the spine, as though the body had to reverse and awaken into another dimension."[195][196]

In

Competition

The idea of

Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup, founded by Bikram Choudhury in 2003,[199] is now held annually in Los Angeles.[198]

Business

Fashion leggings (yoga pants) have become big business.[200]

By the 21st century, yoga as exercise had become a flourishing business,

professionally marketed. A 2016 Ipsos study reported that 36.7 million Americans practise yoga, making the business of classes, clothing and equipment worth $16 billion in America, compared to $10 billion in 2012, and $80 billion worldwide. 72 percent of practitioners were women.[201][202][203] By 2010, Yoga Journal, founded in 1975, had some 350,000 subscribers and over 1,300,000 readers.[204]

Clothing and equipment

Fashion has entered the world of yoga, with brands such as

Madonna and Sting, produced a yoga mat costing $850 and a matching carry case in leather for $350.[209]

In India, participants typically wear loose-fitting clothes for yoga classes, while serious practitioners in yoga ashrams practice an arduous combination of exercise, meditation, selfless service, vegetarian diet and celibacy, making yoga a way of life.[210]

Holidays and training

Yoga holidays (vacations) are offered in "idyllic"[211] places around the world, including in Croatia, England, France, Greece, Iceland, Indonesia, India, Italy, Montenegro, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Turkey.[211][212][213] In 2018, prices were up to £1,295 (about $1,500) for 6 days.[211]

Teacher training, as of 2017, could cost between $2,000 and $5,000.[202] It can take up to 3 years to obtain a teaching certificate.[214] Yoga training courses, as of 2017, were still unregulated in the UK;[215] the British Wheel of Yoga has been appointed the activity's official governing body by Sport England,[216] but it lacks power to compel training organisations, and many people are taking short unaccredited courses rather than one of the nine courses so far accredited.[214]

Bikram Choudhury teaching a Bikram Yoga class

Copyright claims

Bikram Yoga has become a global brand,[217] and its founder, Bikram Choudhury, spent some ten years from 2002 attempting to establish copyright on the sequence of 26 postures used in Bikram Yoga, with some initial success. However, in 2012, the American federal court ruled that Bikram Yoga could not be copyrighted.[218] In 2015, after further legal action, the American court of appeals ruled that the yoga sequence and breathing exercises were not eligible for copyright protection.[219]

In culture

Literature

Yoga has found its way into types of literature as varied as

documentary. The actress Mariel Hemingway's 2002 autobiography Finding My Balance: A Memoir with Yoga describes how she used yoga to recover balance in her life after a dysfunctional upbringing: among other things, her grandfather, the novelist Ernest Hemingway, killed himself shortly before she was born. Each chapter is titled after an asana, the first being "Mountain Pose, or Tadasana", the posture of standing in balance.[220][221]
The teacher of yoga and mindful meditation Anne Cushman's 2009 novel Enlightenment for Idiots tells the story of a woman nearing the age of thirty whose life as a nanny and yogini hopeful is not working out as expected, and is sure that a visit to the ashrams of India will sort out her life. Instead, she finds that nothing in India is quite what it seems on the surface. The Yoga Journal review notes that underneath the chick lit "fun romp", the book is a serious "call to enlightenment and an introduction to yoga philosophy."[222][223]

Kate Churchill's 2009 film Enlighten Up! follows an unemployed journalist for six months as, on the filmmaker's invitation, he travels the globe – New York, Boulder, California, Hawaii, India – to practise under yoga masters including Jois, Norman Allen,[j] and Iyengar. The critic Roger Ebert found it interesting and peaceful, if "not terribly eventful, but I suppose we wouldn't want a yoga thriller". He commented: "I'm glad I saw it. I enjoyed all the people I met during Nick's six-month quest. Most seemed cheerful and outgoing, and exuded good health. They smiled a lot. They weren't creepy true believers obsessed with converting everyone."[225][226]

Research

Yoga is becoming a subject of academic inquiry; many of the researchers are "

School of Oriental and African Studies in London has created a Centre of Yoga Studies; it hosted the five-year Hatha Yoga Project which traced the history of physical yoga, and it teaches a master's degree in yoga and meditation.[231]

Academics have given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including "modern postural yoga" reflecting its emphasis on

asanas (postures)[1] and "transnational anglophone yoga" denoting its growth in the English-speaking world, especially America.[3]

Notes

  1. Modern Yoga" into "Modern Psychosomatic Yoga", "Modern Denominational Yoga", "Modern Postural Yoga" and "Modern Meditational Yoga".[2]
  2. Vishnudevananda's Anjaneyasana 2 is Iyengar's Hanumanasana; Anjani is Hanuman's mother, and Anjaneya is a matronymic for Hanuman.[76]
  3. De Michelis notes that to speakers of Indic languages, yoga has a "quite different" semantic range, including meditation, prayer, ritual and devotional practices, ethical behaviour, and "secret esoteric techniques" that average English speakers would not consider to be yoga.[80]
  4. signs of the zodiac, while in numerology, 7 is the sum of 3 and 4, and 12 is the product, i.e. 84 is (3+4)×(3×4).[109]
  5. ^ 84 names of asanas are listed; not all can now be identified.
  6. Haṭha yoga
  7. ^ Haskell, curious about the wide range of METs in Surya Namaskar, repeated the study (Mody) which gave the highest value; using "transition jumps, and full pushups", he obtained "agreement" with 6.4 METs.[144]
  8. ^ Asanas performed individually provide on average 2.2 ± 0.7 METs; pranayama types performed individually provide just 1.3 ± 0.3 METs.[143]
  9. Jain.[150]
  10. ^ Allen was the first American to be taught by Jois.[224]

References

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  2. ^ The De Michelis 2004 typology can be seen at Yoga as Linkage.
  3. ^ a b Singleton 2013, p. 38.
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  9. ^ Mallinson & Singleton 2017, pp. xxviii–xxxii, 46, 49–50, 71–79.
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  11. ^ a b c Bühnemann 2007, pp. 20–21.
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External links