For many people today, yoga begins with a familiar image: a mat, a series of physical postures, attention to breathing and perhaps a few quiet moments at the end of a class.
That is one expression of yoga, but it is only part of a much larger story.
The meaning of yoga has developed across centuries of Indian thought and practice. Different texts and traditions have described yoga through meditation, disciplined action, devotion, breath, ethical conduct, concentration, bodily practices and paths towards liberation.
There is therefore no single sentence that captures everything yoga has meant throughout its history.
Instead of asking only, “What is yoga?”, we can ask a more revealing question: what has yoga meant to different people, within different traditions, at different moments in time?
The Meaning of Yoga Goes Beyond Posture
Modern yoga culture often places āsana, or physical posture, at the centre of practice.
Posture can offer a meaningful way to explore movement, attention, breathing and stillness. However, yoga did not begin as the posture-based studio class that many people recognise today.
Yoga developed in the Indian subcontinent over a long period of time. Its history belongs to a rich intellectual, religious and ascetic landscape that included Brahmanical traditions, renunciant movements, Buddhism, Jainism and other currents of Indian thought.
Within this wider landscape, practitioners and thinkers explored fundamental questions about human existence.
What is the self? Why do human beings suffer? What creates bondage? What might liberation mean? How should a person live? What happens when attention becomes deeply concentrated?
Different traditions answered these questions differently. Yoga became one of the important ways through which such questions could be explored in both philosophy and practice.
Does Yoga Simply Mean “Union”?
A familiar explanation says that the Sanskrit word yoga means “union”. You may encounter this definition in teacher training, yoga classes and popular writing.
It is not entirely without basis, but it is too narrow to serve as a universal definition.
The Sanskrit term has carried different meanings according to context. Ideas of joining or yoking can be relevant, but so can concepts such as harnessing, discipline, method and concentrated practice.
More importantly, different yoga traditions do not describe their ultimate purpose in the same way.
Classical Yoga, associated with Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, offers an important example. Its philosophical framework distinguishes puruṣa, consciousness, from prakṛti, the changing field of nature that includes mental activity.
Within this system, liberation does not simply involve merging two things together. It involves clear discernment between consciousness and the changing processes with which consciousness appears to become identified.
For this reason, “union” may be useful within some contexts, but it should not be presented as the one definition that explains every form of yoga.
Yoga Did Not Begin With Patañjali
Patañjali occupies an important place in yoga history, yet he was not the inventor of yoga.
Ideas and practices that later become important within yoga appear in Indian sources before the Yoga Sūtras. The Upaniṣads, for example, contain discussions of the self, meditation, breath, control of the senses and liberation.
The Kaṭha Upaniṣad offers a particularly memorable example. It compares the human being to a chariot: the senses are likened to horses, the mind to the reins and the intellect to the charioteer. The image illustrates the importance of disciplined attention and control of the senses.
The Bhagavad Gītā presents another influential development. Rather than reducing yoga to one technique, the text explores several orientations to practice. These include disciplined action, knowledge and devotion.
Such sources do not give us one identical definition.
Instead, they show yoga developing through multiple conversations about practice, knowledge, action, consciousness and liberation.
Patañjali and Classical Yoga
Among these different developments, Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras became one of the most influential systematic accounts of yoga.
Near the beginning of the text appears a famous statement:
yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ
Translations vary because each Sanskrit term carries interpretive questions. Broadly, the statement points towards the stilling, restraint or cessation of the changing activities of citta, often translated as mind or mind-field.
The next sūtra describes the seer as abiding in its own nature.
This places the purpose of Classical Yoga far beyond physical flexibility. Patañjali is concerned with the activity of the mind, identification, disciplined practice, discernment and ultimately liberation.
Later in the text, he presents the well-known eightfold framework of aṣṭāṅga. It includes ethical restraints, personal observances, posture, regulation of breath, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and samādhi.
Physical posture appears within this system, but it is only one part of a much wider path.
There Is More Than One Formulation of Yoga
It can be tempting to search history for one original system and then measure every later form of yoga against it.
The historical picture is more complex.
Different traditions developed distinct ideas about the self, body, mind, consciousness, reality and the purpose of practice. Their methods also varied.
Some approaches placed strong emphasis on meditation and concentration. Others explored devotion, knowledge or disciplined action. Later Haṭha traditions developed increasingly detailed practices involving posture, breath, mudrā, bandha and concepts of the subtle body.
Traditions also interacted. Practices changed, ideas travelled between communities and older teachings received new interpretations.
It can therefore be more useful to understand yoga as a broad and evolving family of traditions rather than a single practice that has always looked and meant exactly the same thing.
Where Does Haṭha Yoga Fit?
Several centuries after the composition of the Yoga Sūtras, traditions associated with Haṭha Yoga developed new ways of working with the body and breath.
Haṭha texts describe practices that can include āsana, breath regulation, seals and gestures, energetic locks and techniques connected with subtle-body models.
The body therefore became an increasingly important site of yogic practice. Yet this still does not mean that historical Haṭha Yoga looked like a contemporary studio class.
Its techniques belonged to broader aims and worldviews that differ in important ways from much modern wellness-oriented yoga.
This distinction helps us avoid another common mistake: imagining that the large repertoire of flowing standing postures found in many studios today has existed unchanged for thousands of years.
How Did Modern Postural Yoga Develop?
The forms of yoga practised in contemporary studios have their own history.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Indian yoga interacted with changing ideas about physical culture, education, health, nationalism and international exchange. Teachers and reformers interpreted and presented yoga for new audiences.
T. Krishnamacharya became particularly influential in twentieth-century postural yoga. Several teachers associated with him later developed distinctive approaches of their own, including B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi and T.K.V. Desikachar.
Other teachers and institutions also contributed to modern yoga’s development. There is no single line connecting every contemporary class directly to one ancient system.
Recognising this history does not make modern āsana practice false or less valuable.
It simply allows us to understand contemporary yoga as part of a continuing process of interpretation and change.
The Posture Can Still Be a Beginning
Looking beyond āsana does not require us to dismiss physical practice.
A posture can become a place to observe sensation, effort and habit. Movement can reveal how quickly the mind judges an experience. Stillness may show how difficult it can be to remain with what is happening without immediately trying to change it.
Breathing can become an object of attention. Transitions can invite concentration. Rest may offer an opportunity to notice rather than perform.
Seen in this way, the physical practice does not need to disappear. Its purpose simply becomes broader than producing a particular shape.
The question can shift from “How far can I move?” towards “What am I noticing through the way I practise?”
Different approaches create different ways to investigate that question. The Orenna Journal explores this further through Restorative Yoga, as well as reflections on Yin Yoga, Yoga Nidra and adaptive approaches to practice.
A Common Misunderstanding: There Is One “Authentic” Yoga
Discovering that yoga extends beyond physical posture can sometimes create another problem.
We may begin searching for one pure, original form of yoga and assume that everything else is a departure from it.
History does not offer such a simple picture.
Yoga developed over long periods and within different philosophical, religious and practical settings. Texts did not always agree. Traditions emphasised different methods and goals. New practices appeared, while earlier ideas were repeatedly interpreted in new contexts.
Recognising this diversity does not make the term meaningless.
Instead, it encourages greater precision. Rather than assuming that every source means the same thing by yoga, we can ask what a particular text, teacher or tradition means when it uses the word.
Why the Meaning of Yoga Still Matters
Understanding this wider history changes how we approach contemporary practice.
It reminds us that flexibility is not a measure of how much yoga someone is practising. Complex postures do not automatically represent greater philosophical depth, and a quiet practice is not necessarily less significant than an athletic one.
It also opens the door to aspects of yoga that may receive less attention in a modern class: ethics, concentration, meditation, philosophical inquiry and the observation of mental experience.
Most importantly, history gives us permission to become curious.
We do not need to force several thousand years of changing traditions into one slogan. We can encounter their differences, understand their contexts and allow those differences to deepen our relationship with practice.
The Orenna Perspective
At Orenna, physical movement is understood as one possible part of yoga rather than its complete definition.
Movement can sit alongside breathing, sensory awareness, concentration, meditation and periods of stillness. The balance between these elements can change according to the person and the purpose of a particular practice.
This is one reason an individual session does not need to become a performance of increasingly complex postures.
A supported position may create space for observation. A simple movement can demand careful attention. At other times, breathing, meditation or stillness may become the central practice.
Patañjali’s philosophy provides one important lens within this wider exploration. It invites us to consider the changing activity of the mind and the tendency to identify with thoughts, emotions and experiences as they arise.
That is one influential understanding of yoga. It is not the only one.
Perhaps that is the most useful place to begin: not with the expectation that yoga must mean one thing, but with enough curiosity to discover how much more lies beyond the posture.
References & Further Reading
Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary. North Point Press.
Mallinson, James & Singleton, Mark. Roots of Yoga. Penguin Classics.
Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford University Press.
White, David Gordon (ed.). Yoga in Practice. Princeton University Press.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Yoga Philosophy. An introduction to Classical Yoga and the philosophical framework associated with Patañjali.
Primary texts for further exploration: selected Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras.
The Orenna Journal explores yoga from historical, philosophical and contemporary perspectives. Yoga traditions have developed across different periods and communities, and the interpretation of historical texts and Sanskrit terminology remains an area of continuing scholarly discussion.
