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What is Yoga?
Yoga is an ancient system from India. This system includes asanas (postures) that help you to
become healthier, balanced and can create the opportunity to enter deep states of meditation.
The yogic system helps you become flexible, release tension, and burn toxins so that you can
experience peace, calmness, relaxation, and clarity. On the surface, yoga can be merely
perceived as exercise, though the philosophy and spirituality behind yoga goes much deeper.
For thousands of years, the Yoga system was taught to help purify the body and mind, so
that a practitioner can burn karma and awaken their soul. This included breathing
techniques, concentration, meditation, practicing nonviolence, discipline of mind
and body, fasting, truthfulness and non-attachment among others.
Asana in the Western World
Yoga began to gain popularity in the West at the end of the 19th century.
But it was a yoga deeply influenced by Western spiritual and religious ideas, representing in many respects a radical break from the grass-roots yoga lineages of India. The first wave of "export yogis," headed by Swami Vivekananda, largely ignored asana and tended to focus instead on pranayama, meditation, and positive thinking. The English-educated Vivekananda arrived on American shores in 1893 and was an instant
success with the high society of the East Coast.