Since the explosion and the trendsetters that started the process, yoga has burst onto the North American exercise scene. By the 60s and 70s, yoga had taken over many people’s lives. Numerous residential communities were born during this time, allowing people to embrace and surround themselves with yogic practices, such as Mount Madonna in California and the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts.
Within a decade the fitness craze began and exercise studios were cropping up all over the place. However, of those who started out with good intentions running, lifting weights or doing aerobics almost half suffered serious enough injuries to stop, according to several recent studies.
Because of this, many exercise buffs decided to move towards the ‘easy do it’ attitude, and this is where yoga started to fit in seamlessly. It also grew in popularity because of the increase in alternative health choices being made by North Americans, such as the demand by health professionals for their patients to increase their wellness through a whole-body approach, using diet, exercise, behavior modification, and positive thinking as the basis for a healthy lifestyle.
Today, most people have access to one form of yoga or another. You can learn more through eBooks or online articles like this one before you go in-person to a yoga studio, research more online, take a video out from your public library or watch a class on public television. If you are a beginner with no experience at all with yoga, this is a great thing because your resources are now limitless, as opposed to the struggles some exercise enthusiasts found only twenty years ago.
Despite all of these shifts in popularity, the actual practice of yoga hasn’t changed in centuries. The exercises, postures, meditation, breathing techniques and mindset are still the same, as are the goals: to create the yoke between mind, body and spirit.
