A very fuzzy history of yoga poses
Hi, I'm Veronika, a returning data vis writer here at Datawrapper! 👋 While I settle into my new-yet-familiar role, I'd love to use this week's Weekly Chart to tell you a little bit about the history of yoga. 🧘
As someone who’s been practicing yoga on and off for about 10 years, I thought I knew the basics. That is, before I started my teacher training last month. Until then, yoga was a mindful exercise I used to move my body and calm my mind — an accurate enough description of what happens on the mat. So what more did I need to learn? The answer is a lot.
Yoga as exercise? A modern invention
The physical poses, also called asanas, that most of us know from studios and online classes are only a tiny part of the concept of yoga. Beyond them, there’s a whole lifestyle-defining system of practices, values, do’s and don’ts that make up every aspiring yogi’s guidebook. In fact, the postures we associate with yoga these days aren’t all that ancient — most of them were first described in the 20th century!
Yoga has roots going back more than 3,000 years, but its exact history is hard to pin down. It’s a puzzle made up of ancient texts, hymns, and stories passed down from teachers to students, and there are lots of gaps in what we know. Even the Yoga Sutras, considered a foundational text on yoga, could have been written any time between 200 BCE and 500 CE (or maybe even earlier, or maybe even later).
What we think we know is that, for hundreds of years after the sutras were written, yoga remained primarily a spiritual practice and most of the recorded asanas were seated poses for meditation, plus an occasional handstand. Around the 15th century, new twists, bends, and inversions started appearing, for example in the Haṭha Ratnāvalī. And it wasn’t until the 20th century that hundreds of modern poses made it onto the mat, including the popular Sun Salutation sequence. 🌅
(Once again, this is not a definitive timeline. There are many gaps in the known history of yoga, due to incomplete materials and missing voices of underprivileged communities. Most classical well-known sources describe the views of higher class individuals and were written in Sanskrit.)
Surprising as this is, at least to me, there’s no reason why yoga’s fuzzy history should take away from the magic of your everyday practice. Even as “only” an exercise, it can do wonders for slowing down and connecting the mind and body in our busy world. And if you’re curious about the depths of yoga philosophy, it can be the perfect stepping stone to learning more. ✨
That’s it from me today! Next week, you can look forward to a Weekly Chart from our designer Alex.
Further reading (ie. what I'm reading now):
Mark Stephens: Teaching Yoga → For an overview of yoga's development into a modern practice
Theo Wildcroft and Harriet McAtee: Yoga Teacher's Survival Guide → For a more nuanced and critical view of yoga's history
