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Yoga

Joining, gathering, growing still

Yoga (yoga · योग) is a Sanskrit word and means “union”, “yoking”, “gathering”. It names a path of practice from India that is thousands of years old and brings body, breath and mind together. On this page you can read where the word comes from, why we say “der Yoga” in German, how the path has changed over the centuries, and what part women play in its history.

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What it means

Yoking, joining, gathering

The Sanskrit word yoga (योग) goes back to the verbal root yuj: “to yoke, to harness, to join”. The same Indo-European root sits in the German Joch, in the Latin iugum and in the English yoke. In the Rigveda, the oldest text of India, yoga still means, quite tangibly, the harnessing of horses to the chariot.

The image becomes a practice: whoever harnesses the senses like horses gains command of their own mind. The Katha Upanishad compares the body to a chariot, the senses to the horses and the intellect to the charioteer. Patanjali sums it up in the second line of his Yoga Sutra: yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ, “yoga is the coming to rest of the movements of the mind”.

The Bhagavad Gita adds two meanings that still carry today: “equanimity is called yoga” (samatvaṁ yoga ucyate, 2.48) and “yoga is skill in action” (yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam, 2.50). The body moves to the centre only late, in the hatha yoga of the Middle Ages. That yoga is associated above all with postures today is the youngest layer of a long history of meaning.

yujThe root of the word: to yoke, to join, to gather. Related to “Joch” and “yoke”.

Yoga Sutra195 terse aphorisms by Patanjali, roughly 2nd to 4th century. The foundational text of classical yoga. To the eight limbs →

Yogi · YoginiThe practitioner, male and female. In the old texts almost always imagined as a man. To the women in yoga →

The language

Der Yoga or das Yoga?

In Sanskrit, yoga is a masculine noun: yogaḥ, a noun ending in -a like dharma or deva. When the word entered German in the 19th century by way of Indology, it brought its grammatical gender along. That is why German says der Yoga, and likewise der Hatha Yoga, der Raja Yoga.

The Duden today lists “Yoga, der oder das”, with the masculine in first place. The neuter arose within German: loanwords whose gender is not known often receive the neuter article, and with Yoga the related Joch resonates as well. In Austria and Switzerland, das Yoga is the usual form. Neither of the two is wrong. We say der Yoga, because it matches the origin of the word and is the customary form in German-language yoga literature.

General usage is not entirely consistent here. Prāṇa and mantra are masculine in Sanskrit too, yet German has settled on das Prana and das Mantra. We follow the path to its end and go by the original gender for every Sanskrit term: der Prana, der Mantra, das Asana, die Mudra. You will find the complete overview in the article Sanskrit terms. And die Yoga does not exist: Yogini is the female practitioner, Yogi the male one.

Sanskritयोगः · yogaḥ, masculine

Articleder Yoga, also das Yoga (Duden)

Genitivedes Yoga or des Yogas

Pluralnot in use

SpellingYoga; the variant Joga has become rare

RegionalAustria and Switzerland: mostly das Yoga

RelatedJoch (German), iugum (Latin), yoke (English), zygón (Greek)

The origin

From the Vedas to the present day

Yoga is not a single system but a stream that has taken on ever new forms over some three thousand years. The most important stations:

c. 1500 to 1000 BCE

The Rigveda

The word yoga denotes the harnessing of horses. Asceticism (tapas) and absorption are known; a system of yoga does not yet exist.

c. 800 to 300 BCE

The Upanishads

The Katha Upanishad names yoga for the first time as a discipline that tames the senses and the mind. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad already describes the seated posture and control of the breath. To the Upanishads →

c. 400 BCE to 200 CE

Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita

The Gita unfolds yoga as a way of living: action without attachment, knowledge, devotion. In parallel, Buddhism and Jainism develop meditation paths of their own.

c. 2nd to 4th century CE

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali

195 aphorisms order the existing knowledge: the eight limbs, the obstacles, the goal. Yoga becomes one of the six classical philosophical systems of India. To the eight limbs →

c. 9th to 15th century

Tantra and hatha yoga

The body becomes an instrument of liberation. Nath yogis around Gorakshanath develop asanas, pranayama, mudras and bandhas; the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (15th century) brings them together.

1893

Vivekananda in Chicago

At the World's Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda presents yoga as a philosophy. His book “Raja Yoga” (1896) shapes the Western picture: meditation, hardly any physical exercises.

1920s to 1940s

Modern hatha yoga emerges

Krishnamacharya teaches in Mysore, Kuvalayananda researches yoga scientifically in Lonavla, Swami Sivananda founds the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh in 1936. Out of asana, breath and relaxation grows the practice we know today.

1960s to today

Yoga goes global

राजयोग

Raja Yoga

The royal path

The path of meditation and training of the mind, as Patanjali's eightfold path describes it.

ज्ञानयोग

Jnana Yoga

The path of knowledge

Discerning what is transient and what remains: study, reflection and self-enquiry, as the Upanishads teach them.

भक्तियोग

Bhakti Yoga

The path of devotion

Love of the divine in prayer, ritual and song. Mantras and kirtans belong here.

कर्मयोग

Karma Yoga

The path of action

Doing what is to be done without clinging to the fruits. The Gita calls it skill in action.

हठयोग

Hatha Yoga

The path through the body

Asana, pranayama, bandhas and mudras prepare body and breath for stillness. The origin of almost every style of yoga practised in the West today.

The other half of the story

Women in the history of yoga

The history of yoga, as it is usually told, is a history of men: rishis, ascetics, gurus. That is down to the sources. Almost all surviving texts were written by men and address male practitioners. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika consistently speaks to the yogi and mentions women almost only as a danger to his asceticism or as a partner in tantric practices. What women practised and taught in those same centuries was rarely written down.

And yet women are there from the beginning. The Rigveda preserves hymns attributed to female seers (ṛṣikā), among them Lopamudra, Ghosha and Vak Ambhrini. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has Gargi Vachaknavi challenge the sage Yajnavalkya in a public debate and Maitreyi speak with him about the immortality of the self. In the tantric yoga of the 9th to 12th centuries, yoginis count as bearers of power; temples of their own are dedicated to them, for instance in Hirapur in Odisha. In the Bhakti movement, poets such as Akka Mahadevi, Lalla and Mirabai find a language for the path of devotion that is still sung today.

At the same time, women were long denied access to Vedic education. The Manusmriti, a legal text from around the turn of the era, prescribes dependence on the husband and excludes them from reciting the Vedas. It is no accident that the women whose names we know mostly stand outside orthodoxy: in debate, in tantra, in Bhakti poetry.

In the 20th century the tide turns. Sita Devi Yogendra publishes a yoga book for women as early as the 1930s. Krishnamacharya, the teacher of B.K.S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois, accepts Indra Devi in Mysore as the first woman from the West to become his student; in 1947 she opens a studio in Hollywood and makes yoga popular among women. Geeta Iyengar shapes the women's perspective in Iyengar yoga with “Yoga: A Gem for Women” (1983). In Germany, yoga was for a long time almost exclusively a practice of women: in 2014, according to the survey of the professional association of yoga teachers (BDY), six percent of women and one percent of men practised, in 2018 nine percent of women and still one percent of men. Since then the men have been catching up: in 2023, 22 percent of women and 17 percent of men practised yoga. Among teachers, women are still clearly in the majority. To the chart →

The numbers show the shift, but also the imbalance that remains. The names of the great lineages are men's names, and in several of these lineages abuse of power and assaults on female students have come to light in recent decades. Whoever teaches yoga today teaches in a tradition whose texts hardly had women in mind, and in a present in which women still predominantly carry and teach it. Both belong to the history of yoga. That, too, is why we have set down how we treat each other in a code of ethics.

Six women, six centuries

c. 8th to 7th century BCE · Videha

Gargi Vachaknavi

The philosopher

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, challenges the sage Yajnavalkya at the court of King Janaka before the assembled scholars. One of the few women the Upanishads hand down by name and with a voice of her own.

c. 8th to 7th century BCE · Videha

Maitreyi

The questioner

Asks her husband Yajnavalkya whether possessions make one immortal, and receives the teaching of the self (atman): one of the most famous dialogues of the Upanishads, in which a woman asks the decisive question.

c. 1320 to 1392 · Kashmir

Lalla (Lal Ded)

The mystic

Wandering ascetic and poet of Shaiva yoga. Her verses (vākh) speak of breath, Om and the body as a temple; they are still sung in Kashmir today, by Hindus and Muslims alike.

c. 1498 to 1546 · Rajasthan

Mirabai

The Bhakti poet

A princess who left court and convention to sing of Krishna. Her bhajans belong to the core of the Bhakti tradition and are still sung in kirtan today.

1899 to 2002 · Riga, Mysore, Hollywood

Indra Devi

The bridge builder

Born Eugenie Peterson in Riga. Krishnamacharya accepts her in Mysore as the first Western woman. In 1947 she opens a studio in Hollywood; her books make yoga known in America and later in Latin America.

1944 to 2018 · Pune

Geeta Iyengar

The teacher

Daughter of B.K.S. Iyengar. Her book “Yoga: A Gem for Women” (1983) is the first to take menstruation, pregnancy and menopause systematically into yoga practice.

The present

Yoga in the West today

What counts as yoga in the West is young. Vivekananda brought the philosophy in 1893; the physical practice arrived only in the 1920s to 1940s from Mysore, Lonavla and Rishikesh, and was spread through Europe and America from the 1950s on by students such as Indra Devi, B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois and Swami Vishnudevananda. In Germany the first yoga schools appeared from the 1950s; in 1967 the professional association of yoga teachers (BDY) was founded.

Today yoga here is above all a practice of postures, breathing and relaxation, embedded in preventive health care, sport and wellness. According to the BDY surveys, three percent of Germans practised yoga in 2014, five percent in 2018 and twenty percent in 2023; the strongest growth came from young adults and from men. A second GfK survey for Yoga Vidya counts 13 percent in 2023 under a narrower definition, around eleven million people. Health insurers subsidise prevention courses, clinics use yoga alongside treatment.

What gets lost on the way remains a point of criticism: in many places a path of practice towards stillness became a fitness product, and the Indian origin often turns into a backdrop. At the same time more people practise yoga than ever before, and through it find their way back to breath, meditation and the old texts. Both are the present of yoga.

Yoga in numbers

Share of yoga practitioners in Germany

6 %

1 %

2014

9 %

1 %

2018

22 %

17 %

2023

WomenMenTotal: 3 % · 5 % · 20 %

Source: representative GfK surveys commissioned by the BDY, population aged 14 and over (2014, 2018, 2023). A second GfK survey in 2023 for Yoga Vidya (ages 18 to 74, narrower definition) arrives at 13 % overall, 16 % of women and 10 % of men.

World's Parliament of Religions 1893 · BDY 1967 · International Day of Yoga 21 June

With us

Yoga at Vinayaki-Yoga

Our classes stand in the holistic hatha yoga after Swami Sivananda, with elements of Yin yoga and Vinyasa. Of the five paths it is the synthesis Sivananda taught: asana and pranayama for the body, relaxation, meditation and mantra for the mind, and knowledge you can take with you into everyday life.

For us, yoga is a way of living, not only an hour on the mat. What that means in practice you can read on the page about the Vinayaki-Yoga style; when and where you can join in is in the schedule.

Vinayaki-Yoga style →Schedule →Yoga courses →

Going deeper

Wiki · yoga knowledgeUpanishadsThe wisdom texts in which yoga first appears as a path.Wiki · yoga knowledgePranaThe life energy the breath carries, and its five currents.Wiki · yoga knowledgePranayamaThe fourth limb: observing, leading and widening the breath.Wiki · yoga knowledgeThe BandhasEnergy locks of hatha yoga: holding, gathering and guiding prana.

Would you like to practise yoga with us?

In our courses in Lauenburg and Witzeeze we practise hatha yoga in small groups, for beginners and the experienced alike.

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