Question

How did Yoga spread around the world?

Answer 1

Swami Vivekenanda is seen as the man who brought yoga to the West. The monk from Kolkotta traveled to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1894 and spoke about India and Hinduism before embarking on an influential lecture tour of the United States.

His book Raja Yoga was written in Manhattan in 1896 and had a major impact on Western understandings of what yoga was. Over the coming decades, more teachers and disciples of Indian gurus would travel to Europe and America.

For 5,000 years a few Indian monks had practiced yoga as a way of attaining mindfulness. Yet between the 1890s and now 2 billion peoplehave come to practice it worldwide. For perspective on just how quickly yoga spread, most of our grandparents’ parents were born in the 1890s.

We take this rapid communication and cultural exchange for granted now, but it’s not normal, historically speaking. It’s not by chance that Swami Vivekenanda wrote the book that jumpstarted yoga as a global phenomenon in Manhattan.