Early modern yoga was the form ofyoga created and presented to the Western world byMadame Blavatsky,Swami Vivekananda and others in the late 19th century. It embodied the period's distaste foryoga postures (asanas) as practised byNath yogins by not mentioning them. As such it differed markedly from the prevailingyoga as exercise developed in the 20th century byYogendra,Kuvalayananda, andKrishnamacharya, which was predominantly physical, consisting mainly or entirely of asanas.

Early modern yoga was created and presented to the Western world in different forms byVivekananda,Madame Blavatsky, and others in the late 19th century. It embodied the period's distaste for asanas andhatha yoga more generally, as practised by the despisedNath yogins, by not mentioning them.^[1]

Blavatsky, who co-founded theTheosophical Society in 1875, helped to pave the way for the spread of yoga in the West by encouraging interest inoccult andesoteric doctrines and a vision of the "mystical East".^[2] She had travelled to India in 1852-53, and became greatly interested in yoga in general, while despising and distrusting hatha yoga, which she frequently contrasted with her Theosophical version of "true yoga".^[3]Her Theosophy accordingly views modern asana-based yoga as hatha yoga, a combination of "good exercise",^[4] in which it is not much interested, andmeditation. It is rather more interested inmantra yoga, which it compares to Westernplainsong, stating that it is useful for spiritual awareness; and in other forms of yoga such askarma yoga, the path of action;bhakti yoga, the path of devotion; andjnana yoga, the path of knowledge, which Blavatsky thought the yoga most suitable for the Western world. Finally, Theosophy considersraja yoga, which "incorporates the main features of all the others", to be the royal road to self-realisation as "a divine immortal being identical with the universal Divine Life."^[4]

In the 1890s, Vivekananda taught a mixture of yoga breathwork (pranayama),meditation, and the distinctively Western idea of positive thinking, derived from theNew Thought movement. He explicitly rejected the practice of asanas and hatha yoga. High-caste Hindus like him had traditionally held low-caste beggars,fakirs, andyogins in contempt for practising dramatic asanas in return for money. His attitude was reinforced by the equally ancient distaste of Western visitors to India, including both scholars and colonial officers, for such street people and any postures they were seen to practice.^[5]

In 1913, the occultistAleister Crowley published hisMagick (Book 4) which mixed some yoga philosophy into his esoteric teachings. He followed this in 1939 with his account of theYoga Sutras of Patanjali,Eight Lectures on Yoga.^[6] His writings reinforced the Western association of yogis with practitioners of magic.^[7]

The 1737Joga Pradīpikā written by Jayatarāma, the 1790Yogāsanamālā, and a few other manuscripts, all from northwest India (Rajasthan andPunjab) describe similar assemblages of more than 100 asanas.Jason Birch andJacqueline Hargreaves describe these as "many, complex seated, forward-folding, inverted, and supine postures", including more than 10 balancing on the sitting bones with legs and arms raised. The asanas were practised by yogins from different sects, including theRāmānandī andNatha Sampradayas. Asanas in this group do not appear to have influenced modern yoga as exercise.^[8]

In the 19th century, books ofasanas, yoga postures, began to appear in India. The unpublishedYogāsana, probably from Rajasthan, combined illustrations ofJain ascetics in 108 postures, with texts inGujarati,Hindi, andSanskrit.^[8] TheCaurāśi Āsana ("84 Asanas") was printed in Hindi late in the 19th century, illustratingShaivite andVaishnavite ascetics in 98 postures. The GujaratiŚrīyogakaustubha, presents a similar collection of 100 asanas. TheMarathiSacitra Vyāvahārika Yoga athavā Samādhi-Mārga covers 42 asanas, again mostly like those of theYogāsana. The range of languages used in these texts indicates that this group of asanas was widely practised across central and north India by 1950. The asanas differ from those of theJoga Pradīpikā, with poses now widely used in yoga classes such asGarudasana,Sarvangasana, andPavanamuktasana, often pressing the feet or fingers against a part of the body; theheadstand, uniquely, has the head on the fingers.^[8] In 1934,Sivananda published his bookYoga Asanas in English. It copied most of the asanas from theCaurāśi Āsana, using the same names for the poses. Sivananda mentions secular authors on yoga such asKuvalayananda,Yogendra, and Srisundaram, implying physical culture rather than religious practice. Many of the asanas are similar, too, to the set of 84 asanas taught by thephysical culture advocatesBishnu Charan Ghosh (Yogananda's younger brother) andBuddha Bose.Sivananda yoga and Sivananda'sDivine Life Society helped to shape modernyoga as exercise.^[8]

A third early group of asanas includes those in the c. 18th centuryHaṭhābhyāsapaddhati and the 19th centuryŚrītattvanidhi. These were practised in south India includingMaharashtra andKarnataka. The asanas include energetic poses with repeated movements, positions used to link asanas together, and counter-poses (such asbackbends afterforward bends). TheHaṭhābhyāsapaddhati in particular states that the purpose of asana practice is to make the body "firm" and ready for theṣaṭkarma purifications. The dynamic sequences of asanas may derive fromvyāyāma) non-yoga exercises or military training. These asanas were adopted byKrishnamacharya, who was teaching yoga in theMysore Palace in Karnataka in the 1930s and 1940s: illustrated copies of both texts were available to him in the palace.^[8]

A non-religious form of yoga, the prevailingyoga as exercise, was created byYogendra,Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya, starting in the 1920s. It was predominantly physical, consisting mainly or entirely of asanas. They advocated these under the guise of the supposed specificmedical benefits of particular postures, encouraged by the prevailingIndian nationalism which needed something to build an image of a strong and energetic nation. The yoga that they created, however, was taken up predominantly in the English-speaking world, startingwith America andBritain.^[5]

• Meade, Marion (1980).Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth.Putnam.ISBN 978-0-399-12376-4.
• Singleton, Mark (2010).Yoga Body: the origins of modern posture practice.Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-539534-1.OCLC 318191988.

• Modern yoga