Yoga trivia | 50 facts about the popular mind and body practice

Yoga is a mind and body practice, that the last few years has become a really popular way to exercise, and many people prefer it, rather than common sports.

So, today we are about to explore the history behind yoga, its benefits, and of course, some of the most popular kinds of yoga.

1. Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines.
2. It originates in ancient India.
3. Yoga is one of the six Āstika (orthodox) schools of Hindu philosophical traditions.
4. There is a broad variety of yoga schools, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
5. The term “Yoga” in the Western world often denotes a modern form of hatha yoga and yoga as exercise, consisting largely of the postures or asanas.
6. The practice of yoga has been thought to date back to pre-vedic Indian traditions.
7. Possibly in the Indus valley civilization around 3000 BCE.
8. Yoga is mentioned in the Rigveda,and also referenced in the Upanishads, which are ancient scripts.
9. Although, yoga most likely developed as a systematic study around the 5th and 6th centuries BCE, in ancient India’s ascetic and Śramaṇa movements.
10. The chronology of earliest texts describing yoga-practices is unclear, varyingly credited to the Upanishads.
11. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the 2nd century BCE, and gained prominence in the west in the 20th century.
12. They were first introduced by Swami Vivekananda.
13. Hatha yoga texts began to emerge sometime between the 9th and 11th century with origins in tantra.
14. Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the West, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century with his adaptation of yoga tradition, excluding asanas.
15. Outside India, it has developed into a posture-based physical fitness, stress-relief and relaxation technique.
16. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise, as it has a meditative and spiritual core.
17. One of the six major orthodox schools of Hinduism is also called Yoga.
18. This school has its own epistemology, ontology and metaphysics.
19. It also closely related to Hindu Samkhya philosophy.
20. About the word “yoga” it’s a Sanskrit noun yoga is derived from the sanskrit root yuj (युज्) “to attach, join, harness, yoke”.
21. The word yoga is cognate with English “yoke”.
22. In the context of yoga sutras, the word Yoga means Union.
23. The spiritual sense of the word yoga first arises in Epic Sanskrit, in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE.
24. It is associated with the philosophical system presented in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with the chief aim of “uniting” the human spirit with the Divine spirit.
25. The term kriyāyoga has a technical meaning in the Yoga Sutras (2.1), designating the “practical” aspects of the philosophy, i.e. the “union with the supreme” due to performance of duties in everyday life.
26. According to Pāṇini, the term yoga can be derived from either of two roots, yujir yoga (to yoke) or yuj samādhau (“to concentrate”).
27. Someone who practices yoga or follows the yoga philosophy with a high level of commitment is called a yogi (may be applied to a man or a woman) or yogini (a woman).
28. 36 million people in the US regularly practice yoga.
29. Even though yoga is an ancient Indian practice, the Americans practicing yoga has grown by over 50% since 2015.
30. Yoga’s “target group” is kinda young, as the majority of yoga practitioners are under the age of 44.
31. Male yoga practitioners are known as ‘yogis’, whereas female practitioners are known as ‘yoginis’.
32. There are more than 100 styles or maybe kinds of yoga!
33. Some of the most popular types of yoga include Iyengar, Hatha, Aerial Yoga and Hot Yoga.
34. The ultimate goal of Yoga is Moksha that basically means liberation.
35. Although the exact form this takes depends on the philosophical or theological system with which it is conjugated.
36. In the classical Astanga yoga system, the ultimate goal of yoga practice is to achieve the state of Samadhi and abide in that state as pure awareness.
37. According to Jacobsen, Yoga has five principal traditional meanings.
38. The first one is a disciplined method for attaining a goal.
39. The second one is to acquire techniques of controlling the body and the mind.
40. The third one is a name of a school or system of philosophy (darśana).
41. The fourth is about the prefixes such as “hatha-, mantra-, and laya-, traditions specialising in particular techniques of yoga.
42. And last but not least is the goal of Yoga practice.
43. There is no consensus on its chronology or specific origin other than that yoga developed in ancient India.
44. Suggested origins are the Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1900 BCE) and pre-Vedic Eastern states of India, the Vedic period (1500–500 BCE), and the śramaṇa movement.
45. In 2016 there were over 52,000 registered yoga teachers.
46. At any one time there are over 60 million yoga posts trending on Instagram!
47. A study published by the US National Library of Medicine followed 96 individuals and looked at different aspects of aging, has shown that by practicins yoga you can slow down aging.
48. In general, they discovered that yoga combined with meditation, that has its own range of benefits, helped to delay the aging process and prevent the onset of many different diseases.
49. Americans spend $16 billion on yoga classes and equipment each year.
50. Teaching yoga is becoming an increasingly popular career choice.