Yoga: A brief history

You see, a while ago a friend of ours, Vishnu, leaked the yoga teachings to the world: through an unborn baby in the 1500’s who, after learning the whole Ashtanga series while in the womb, was born as Vamana Rishi.  He wanted to make sure the knowledge would pass down the ages, so he wrote it on the most sturdy banana leaf he could find and called it The Korunta.  It was eventually eaten by a colony of ants of course, because his student’s student’s student’s student, Krisnamacharia, kept taking it to show off to Yogananda and Ghandi at the cricket picnics which he hosted in the 1920’s.

The information still got out there however, and now there is a Yogaworks inc. on every street corner in California – conveniently right next to a Starbucks for that after-class large triple whipped strawberry mocha frappuccino -and now there are many, many loyal teachers of power yoga, forest yoga, hot yoga, Bikram yoga (That guy’s so funny!), Tao yoga, Yin yoga, integral yoga, and am-I-invading-your-personal-space-yoga.  No, forget that last one; I always get it confused with Watsu.

But I have to leak it again because, believe it or not, this is not the original physical practice of yoga that we leaked; the kind which transforms thought and lifts our internal experience.  In our country, the teaching and practice of yoga more resembles the 6 levels of Ashtanga in your countries.  There are revelations to be had in the series when the student practices it everyday or second day at least.  The intelligence in the order of postures is remarkable and deliberate.  Fortunately you do have some teachers of Ashtanga in countries around the world who teach it like we do:  Richard Freeman, Mark Togni , John Scott , and Tim Miller to name a few.

 I hope that my re-leak sticks, and remains undiluted by every cliché under the sun.