Yoga

Yoga is physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that aim to transform body and mind. The term denotes a variety of schools, practices and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism (including Vajrayana and Tibetan Buddhism) and Jainism,the best-known being Hatha yoga and Raja yoga. The term yoga is derived from the literal meaning of "yoking together" a span of horses or oxen,
but came to be applied to the "yoking" of mind and body.

The origins of Yoga have been speculated to date back to pre-vedic Indian traditions, but most likely developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in the same ascetic circles as the early sramana movements. The earliest accounts of yoga-practices are in the Buddhist Nikayas. Parallel developments were recorded around 400 CE in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which combines pre–philosophical speculations and diverse ascetic practices of the first millennium BCE with Samkhya-philosophy. Hatha yoga emerged from tantra by the turn of the first millennium.

Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the west, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century.In the 1980s, yoga became popular as a system of physical exercise across the Western world. This form of yoga is often called Hatha yoga.

Yoga physiology described humans as existing of three bodies (physical, subtle and causal) and five sheets (food sheet, prana-breath, mind sheet, intellect, and bliss) which cover the atman, and energy flowing through energy channels and concentrated in chakras.

Many studies have tried to determine the effectiveness of yoga as a complementary intervention for cancer, schizophrenia, asthma, and heart disease


Goal of Yoga
The ultimate goal of Yoga is moksha (liberation) though the exact definition of what form this takes depends on the philosophical or theological system with which it is conjugated.

According to Jacobsen, "Yoga has five principal meanings:

Yoga as a disciplined method for attaining a goal;
Yoga as techniques of controlling the body and the mind;
Yoga as a name of one of the schools or systems of philosophy (darśana);
Yoga in connection with other words, such as "hatha-, mantra-, and laya-," referring to traditions specialising in particular techniques of yoga;
Yoga as the goal of Yoga practice."
According to David Gordon White, from the 5th century CE onward, the meanings of the term "yoga" became more or less fixed, but having various meanings:

Yoga as an analysis of perception and cognition;
Yoga as the rising and expansion of consciousness;
Yoga as a path to omniscience;
Yoga as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments;