How old is hatha yoga practice?
Yoga itself is ancient but hard to document because it was until recently (1800’s or so) a strictly oral tradition. And also one that excluded outsiders from instruction. Hints of early yoga practice in India (largely of a meditative nature, not the current huge syllabus of poses) are in the Rg Veda, the oldest scripture in the world. Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutra of 200 B.C. laid out the currently observed philosophical underpinnings of yoga practice but he was largely concerned with the meditative aspects. The best evidence we have for the flowering of the physical practices (hatha yoga) are texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Shiva Samhita and the Gheranda Samhita. These were all late products of the Tantric period exploring a body – centered yoga practice in the era 800-1600 A.D. Some of the poses we do in a hatha yoga class today are described clearly in these texts but many of our practices evolved later.
