The word "yoga" means to join or yoke together. Different forms of yoga have tried to join the body, mind and spirit over the last 5,000 years. But today's most familiar types of yoga, which focus predominantly on physical postures and yoga as exercise, have become popular only recently.
Patanjali
Most yogis trace the written record of yoga philosophy back to Patanjali, who wrote a book called "The Yoga Sutras" somewhere between the second century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. While he exhaustively covers disciplines you can follow to achieve enlightenment, he barely mentions the physical body. Many modern editions of this book have been published, with scholars and famous yoga teachers expounding on Patanjali's system. He is frequently quoted in modern yoga classes while students are performing postures.
Hatha Yoga
When you think of yoga as exercise, you're thinking of hatha yoga. This covers postures, breathing and meditation. All of the popular schools of yoga today -- Iyengar, Ashtanga, vinyasa, Sivananda, et cetera -- are forms of hatha yoga. These exercises are designed to build strength, balance and flexibility. Originally the purpose of yoga postures was to prepare the body to sit comfortably in meditation. But for many modern yogis, the postures coupled with breathing techniques have become a stand-in for meditation.
Krishnamacharya
Yoga philosophy began to drift westward at the end of the 19th century. Swami Vivekananda spoke at the Chicago's World Parliament of Religions in 1893. Paramahansa Yogananda, author of "Autobiography of a Yogi," began to establish his U.S. following in 1920. But the man most responsible for yoga as it is known today is Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Born in 1888, among his disciples were four of the world's most famous yoga teachers: B.K.S. Iyengar, known for his Iyengar method; Pattabhi Jois, who established Ashtanga vinyasa yoga; Indra Devi, who brought yoga to women across America in the 1950s; and Krishnamacharya's son, Desikachar. Most of the major schools of yoga have been influenced by these four teachers' techniques. Because Krishnamacharya lived for a long time and changed his teaching over the course of his life, these four disciples wound up with very different approaches.
Modern Yoga
Yoga gained momentum in America in the 1950s, and exploded in the 1960s. Richard Hittleman, who studied yoga in India with Ramana Maharshi, came back to New York to teach yoga in 1950. Over the next decades, he appeared on television and sold millions of his non-religious books on the physical benefits of yoga. Other important media that shaped Western views of yoga included Swami Vishnu-devananda's 1960 book The "Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga," Iyengar's 1966 "Light on Yoga," and Lilias Folan's yoga TV show, which debuted in 1972. By 2011, a hobby that used to be on the fringe has become a mainstream exercise taught in gyms, schools and businesses.
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