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many yoga styles taught today - some illustrated by past or present
Avalon staff on the left - differ in the stress they place on
'proper' alignment, on coordinating breath and movement, on the role
given meditation, and other details.
But
all modern yoga styles
have much in common, including the goal of helping students improve
their physical strength, mental clarity, and emotional balance.
There
are major differences between ancient and modern yoga. In premodern
India, 'yoga' referred to many different meditative and
magical practices. Some stressed breathing exercises,
but poses (asanas) were largely limited to simple sitting
postures.
This began to change around the 16th century and accelerated in
the 20th century, as Indian and Western traditions began to merge.
Modern
(or 'transnational') yoga retains some ancient yoga breathing and
meditative techniques, but since the 1930s
has increasingly stressed the role of postures (asamas), based both on
early-modern Indian and some Western traditions, including
European gymnastics. The
story of how that fusion occurred was only unraveled
by yoga historians in the 1990s (see Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, Oxford University Press, 2010), as yoga was recognized as a truly
global phenomenon - the creation and possession of no single region but of the whole
world.
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