Yoga

The yogic tradition and teachings throughout the ages has been for the purpose of an individual experiencing a spiritual, peaceful, creative and harmonious life for one’s self and to overcome suffering and imbalance in life due to one’s karmic journey and set things right – clean the slate!

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Today, yoga is a global, but what is understood of the purpose, aim, principles and focus of yoga in the classical and traditional system has been lost!

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At the Tyoga Kurukulam we teach yoga from its roots.

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Yoga can be divided into three distinct periods: an early period, Civa’s time; a middle period, the time of Patanjali and others; and the present period of yoga.

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Ancient Citters are immortals. Civa as the first Citter – the ‘Adiguru’ gave mankind yoga. This is Civa's period. These teachings continued through Muruga and thereafter propagated by others down the line of which Citter Tirumular was one. This is a yoga of Tantra.

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The middle period is the period of Sage Patanjali, who is the reference point for today’s yoga practices. The original yogas from the early period were reclassified and renamed as raja yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, hatha yoga, kriya yoga, and kundalini yoga by this second group of masters. These rishis and sages also wrote the classical texts and books which are referred to today. Patanjali wrote his Yoga Sutras, a thesis on raja yoga and mind management; Swatmarama developed and propagated the practices of hatha yoga for balancing the lunar and solar forces to promote health and well-being in the text Hatha Yoga Pradipika; Narada and Shandiliya developed the practice and principles of bhakti yoga for emotional management. A total of twenty-two Yoga Upanishads were written in this period by twenty-two different authors, thinkers and seers. They blended the vedic and upanishadic philosophy and the structures of tantra with the yogic system and philosophy.

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The late period is the present age, beginning from the nineteenth century, when yoga was brought to the west. One of the first to integrate and talk about the tradition in a language that society could understand was Swami Vivekananda. Another tradition that emerged was associated with a remote Himalayan yogi called Babaji, whose followers included Sri Yukteshwar, Lahiri Mahashaya and Paramahamsa Yogananda. Their contemporaries included Ramana Maharshi who followed the paths of jnana yoga and bhakti yoga respectively. Finally, yoga of Swami Sivananda Saraswathy who explored other forms of classical yogas and to develop a system of yoga to integrate the faculties of head, heart and hands and awaken the self, and a hatha yoga tradition base improvised, that evolved from Mysore revived by Krishnamacharya.