There’s a lot of interest in yoga these days. But also a lot of confusion about what it is. A majority of Westerners think that it’s choreographed stretching in special clothes, and sometimes the state of relaxation that results from all that stretching. That’s what I thought it was when I started fourteen years ago. But, this postural yoga that has become synonymous with yoga in the West is just a tiny portion of yoga, and is actually a fairly recent development (primarily developed in the last hundred years or so).

So what is yoga?