Yoga In The West

Yoga as a concept was introduced in the West a long time ago. It is only now that more and more Americans are taking it more seriously than they ever did before.

Yoga as a way of life is catching on fast with the Westerners as more and more people familiarize themselves with the truth behind this centuries-old Indian practice.

It was towards the end of the eighteenth century that Western scholars began to understand how closely related the Indian languages are with their European counterparts. The study of such an interconnectedness that ensued introduced them to the concept of yoga as it was present in the Indian sacred texts.

A breakthrough came when Englishman Charles Wilkins pioneered the translation of Sanskrit text of The Bhagvad Gita to English. It was also the efforts of American statesman Alexander Hamilton who closely studies the Indian culture, tradition, languages and even delivered a lecture in Paris about India in the year 1802-03.

By the nineteenth century, the knowledge of yoga was spreading among the Westerners who were involved closely with the study of Indian texts. They were able to trace the development of the concept from its source, now that English translations of the texts were available to them. Notable in this field and worthy of mention are the efforts of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson who made the above mentioned possible. Also, during the same time, a strain of the though processes behind yoga also began to be felt in the works of the American and European Romantics.

However, as is commonly known, and earlier mentioned, yoga has become a way of life with many Westerners. It has not only been incorporated in the daily lives of people, but also in their way of thinking.

This knowledge of yoga as a concept came into the popular consciousness of westerners through several instances of cross-fertilization due to close interaction between the two cultures. Swami Vivekananda, an Indian intellectual, contribution to making Indian culture familiar to the West is notable. His address at Chicago in 1893 to the World’s Parliament of Religions is perhaps the most important event that helped India to reach out to the world. Indian guru Parmahansa Yogananda I another important figure who made yoga popular in the West, through his teachings, the Self-Realization Fellowship that he set up, and through his own autobiography.

Other figures worthy of mention are B.K.S. Iyengar (founder of Iyengar Yoga), Swami Rama (the Himalayan Institute), Swami Satchidananda (Integral Yoga), and Swami Vishnu-devananda (Sivananda Yoga).