Yoga positions, called asanas, feature colorful names--boat, plow, eagle, monkey, warrior and sage--that suggest life in classical India: Their history, often ascribed to wandering gurus thousands of years ago, may not be as ancient and mythic as once believed. Yoga positions nonetheless have names such as Triangle and Corpse pose that remain evocative even if these are actually modern monikers.
Tradition
B.K.S. Iyengar, considered the greatest living yoga master, in his 1966 classic "Light on Yoga," states that "asanas are not merely gymnastic exercises; they are postures." He praises yoga as a means of physical training that doesn't require large playing fields and costly equipment. "Asanas have been evolved over the centuries so as to exercise every muscle, nerve and gland in the body," Iyengar writes, significantly suggesting a lengthy history to yoga asanas. He describes, accompanied by photos of himself, how to perform more than 200 asanas. Poses recognizable in a yoga class for beginners or advanced students include Tadasana or Mountain Pose, Trikonasana or Extended Triangle Pose and Savasana or Corpse Pose.
Texts
Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein, writing in 1988 in "Yoga Journal," identified a late 17th century text called the Gheranda-Samhita as mentioning 32 asanas. Few were appropriate for prolonged meditation; instead, claims were made that the asanas purified and balanced the body. Early poses such as the auspicious posture were performed by bringing the soles of the feet together, with the hands placed over them in the shape of a tortoise. The staff posture is simply extending the legs with the feet next to each other. The couch or squat is performed by lying down with the feet cradling the knees. As did Iyengar, Feurestein assumed that behind each asana lay centuries of evolution.
Revisions
Contemporary yoga scholars Anne Cushman, Norman Sjoman and Mark Singleton reveal a more modern history to yoga positions. While yoga DVDs advertise, in the words of Cushman, a "5,000-year-old exercise system," she notes the conspicuous absence of most modern asanas, such as the triangle and sun salutations, from ancient yoga texts. Patanjali's second-century Yoga Sutra mentions only a seated meditation pose. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a 14th-century manual, lists just 15 positions. Rumors abounded of missing texts, eaten by ants or dictated by mystics. Poses such as chaturanga, the low pushup, may be recent additions to the yoga canon, created by Mysore foundational teacher Krishnamacharya, and his pupils, Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois. Cushman notes research by Sanskrit scholar Sjoman indicating that as Krishnamacharya taught yoga in the 1930s, he added to it British gymnastics and Indian rope exercises.
'The Yoga Body'
Professor and yoga scholar Mark Singleton, in his book "The Yoga Body," finds evidence that yoga postures owe a debt to European bodybuilding and the early 20th-century movement toward women's gymnastics in Europe and the United States, more so than ancient Indian tradition. Singleton points to the lack of standing postures in premodern asana descriptions, suggesting they are virtually all late additions, bought in by yoga's cross-fertilization with modern physical culture. He cites as example the shoulder stand or sarvangasana, a mirror image of the gymnastics pose called the Swedish candle. Singleton describes 28 exercises in a 1925 British gymnastics manual as being strikingly similar to postures in Iyengar's 1966 "Light on Yoga."
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