The beginnings of Yoga were developed by the Indus-Sarasvati civilization in Northern India over 5,000 years ago. The word yoga was first mentioned in the oldest sacred texts, the Rig Veda. The Vedas were a collection of texts containing songs, mantras and rituals to be used by Brahmans, the Vedic priests.
There are many reasons why yoga is becoming popular today. One thing is, your body is like a barometer, it makes you realize some fundamental facts about yourself. If you know how to watch it, it tells you everything about yourself. Not the fancy things that you think, but the real facts. Your mind is too deceptive; every day it says something different, but if you know how to read the body, it tells you everything just the way it is, your past, present and future. That is why fundamental yoga starts with the body.
Yoga is the only system that has lived for over 15,000 years without any papacy or enforcement. Nowhere in the history of humanity has it happened that somebody put a sword to someone’s neck and said, “You must do yoga.” It has survived and lived on because it has worked as a process of wellbeing like nothing else. Even though today it is being taught in a very rudimentary or even distorted way, it still endures. Many things come and go with changing fashions, but yoga has survived for thousands of years, and it is still picking up momentum.
