The history of yoga in a readable book

Alistair Shearer’s The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West delves into a simple question of how yoga went from a spiritual practice to a physical one

In his book The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West, the author, Alistair Shearer answers a simple question: How did “a time-honoured road to enlightenment” turn “into a $25 billion-a-year wellness industry”? He answers it across 357 pages, the first few chapters having a scholarly density, the sources being from history — excavations from Mohejodharo (c. 3000 BC - 1500 BC), and texts like the Vedas (2500 BC - 500 BC). It eases up soon enough with insights on what pushed yoga from meditative practice to physical mat work. In a nutshell, Shearer tells us that the original practice was always meant to be what he calls “mind-yoga”, the purpose of which was to look inward, but what we’ve turned it into is “body-yoga”, the purpose of which is fitness or “a secular healing remedy”.

Past Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, wherein he says only three short verses are devoted to physical postures; the Hatha Yoga Pradipika that has only four asanas; and various other texts, Shearer establishes that the purpose of yoga was never to tone our bodies, but “as the way to transcend its irksome limitations altogether”. The physicality of the practice, he says, began with the British Raj’s clever fusion of gymnastics with yoga as promoted in the YMCA. Along the way, we meet the Theosophists, Swami Vivekananda, BKS Iyengar, and encounter various movements and alliances, like the number of hours of teachers’ training, the types of yoga that have come up over the years, and Western medicine’s ‘stamp of approval’ — all of which have contributed to the way yoga is seen today. Read More