Yoga (Sanskrit: योग) – Yoga means a union in Sanskrit. The word is derived from the Sanskrti root, युज, which means to attach, join, harness. It is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated in ancient India.
The practice of yoga has been thought to date back to pre-vedic Indian traditions, possibly in the Indus valley civilization around 3000 BCE. Yoga is mentioned in the Rigveda, and also referred to in the Upanishads.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the 2nd century BCE and gained prominence in the West in the 20th century after being first introduced by Swami Vivekananda.
Traditional yoga includes physical exercise, meditation, and spirituality. However, The term “yoga” in the Western world often denotes a modern form of hatha yoga and yoga as exercise, consisting largely of the asanas.
The spiritual sense of the word yoga first arises in Epic Sanskrit, in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE, and is associated with the philosophical system presented in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with the chief aim of “uniting” the human spirit with the Divine spirit