YOGA TODAY YOGA YESTERDAY

If you are happen going downtown you may see there are some yoga courses there, teaching yoga classes, and sometimes with lux facilites. This phenomenon maybe is something usual in our mind, and we take this as a matter of course. Many people has truly enthusiasm for yoga. Yoga today is respectable discipline practiced by many educated persons.

Historically speaking, the matters was different from this phenomenon. There was a time when people saw yoga just as an exotic thing and strange thing. Yoga was viewed just like freak things practiced by undercivilized people of some country.

Gradually, people wanted to know the hidden things behind yoga. And this process was not always in right ways. Some (western) people was right to be somewhat confused in their ideas concerning the Yogis and their philosophy and practice. Travellers to India have written great stories about the flocks of fakirs who fill the roads of its cities, and who claim the title 'Yogi.'

Sometimes Yogi was seen as a thin man, dirty, ignoramus, who either sits in a fixed posture until his body becomes become inflexible, or else holds his arm up in the air until it becomes unbendable. Those opinions are scarcely to be blamed. However, these strange people exist, but their claim to the title 'Yogi' seems as absurd to the true Yogi as does the claim to the title 'Doctor' on the part of the man who peels one's corns seem to the reputed surgeon.

After long periods, people progressively understood the mean of yoga and Yogi. And now many people all over the world confidently practice yoga, having a truly spirit to appreciate yoga in their daily life. Then, what's all about the meaning of yoga, etimologically speaking, and how was it built as a discipline through ages? That’s the next thing we will discuss.