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Yoga Classes
Search the Boston area directory for yoga classes, including Ashtanga, Anusara, Forrest, Iyengar, Kundalini, Power, Vinyasa Flow, and Gentle and Restorative.
What Is Yoga?
Yoga is a healing practice that focuses on movement, breath, and meditation. There is a large variety
of yoga styles. Some are gentle and slow while others are fast and vigorous. Some emphasize the importance
of controlled breathing, others emphasize meditation or athleticism.
Read descriptions of the different styles to see what each is like.
The Origins of Yoga
"Yoga" is a Sanskrit word that means "to unite". It can be found in millennia-old Indian texts, including Vedas texts, the Upanishads, and The Bhagavad Gita.
In ancient India, yoga referred to a system of practices intended to guide people toward living a balanced and harmonious life. Roughly 2,000 years ago, a man named Patanjali laid out these practices in a book called the Yoga Sutra. Patanjali organized yoga into 8 areas to master, ranging from developing a strong moral character to gaining heightened physical stamina to developing higher powers of concentration, meditation and release of the ego (see sidebar). The yoga we practice in the West tends to focus largely on the part of the Yoga Sutra that focuses on the physical practice, known as asana. The practice was intended to increase physical stamina in order to enable long periods of sitting meditation. As a result, the poses suggested at that time focused on sitting poses.
The extensive range of yoga poses practiced today is the result, in part, of the European gymnastics brought
to India about 150 years ago, during British colonization of the country. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries
a few Indian gurus brought this more acrobatic version of yoga to the United States. Many contemporary
styles of yoga have developed from this centuries-old tradition.
Styles of Yoga
Below is a list of different styles of yoga that are offered in classes throughout the Boston area. Click on the links to read in-depth descriptions of each style and find additional resources (videos, books, interviews, websites) for learning more about each style.
