Albert Einstein:Perfectly Extraordinary Genius

Quick Facts

Name

Albert Einstein

Occupation

Physicist,Scientist

Birth Date

14th March 1879

Death Date

18th April 1955

Did You Know?

Einstein was asked to be the president of Israel, but he declined: After Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, died in 1952, the country's prime minister offered the job to Einstein.

Did You Know?

Einstein died after refusing surgery, saying, "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."

 Education

Luitpold Gymnasium, Swiss Federal PolytechnicSchool

Place of Birth

Ulm,Germany

Place of Death

Princeton,New Jersey

Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the general theory of relativity. He is considered one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century.

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”

—Albert Einstein

Brief

Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein had a passion for inquiry that eventually led him to develop the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and immigrated to the U.S. in the following decade after being targeted by the Nazis. Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century, with his work also having a major impact on the development of atomic energy. With a focus on unified field theory during his later years, Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Early Life

Born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany, Albert Einstein grew up in a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who with his brother founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-based company that manufactured electrical equipment. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him.
Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. However, he felt alienated there and struggled with the institution's rigid pedagogical style. He also had what were considered to be speech challenges, though he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin that would stay with him into his later years. Most significantly, Einstein's youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry.

Towards the end of the 1880s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Albert. Talmud had introduced his pupil to a children’s science text that inspired Einstein to dream about the nature of light. Thus, during his teens, Einstein penned what would be seen as his first major paper, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields."

Switzerland Native

Hermann Einstein relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after his business lost out on a major contract. Albert was left at a relative's boarding house in Munich to complete his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Faced with military duty when he turned of age, Albert allegedly withdrew from classes, using a doctor’s note to excuse himself and claim nervous exhaustion. With their son rejoining them in Italy, his parents understood Einstein's perspective but were concerned about his future prospects as a school dropout and draft dodger.
Einstein was eventually able to gain admission into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, specifically due to his superb mathematics and physics scores on the entrance exam. He was still required to complete his pre-university education first, and thus attended a high school in Aarau, Switzerland helmed by Jost Winteler. Einstein lived with the schoolmaster's family and fell in love with Wintelers' daughter, Marie. Einstein later renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century.

Marriage and Family

While attending school in Zurich, Einstein developed lasting friendships and alliances, also meeting his future wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian physics student.
After graduating from Polytechnic, Einstein faced major challenges in terms of finding academic positions, having alienated some professors over not attending class more regularly in lieu of studying independently. Meanwhile, Einstein continued to grow closer to Maric, but his parents were strongly against the relationship due her ethnic background. Nonetheless, Einstein continued to see her, with the two developing a correspondence via letters in which he expressed many of his scientific ideas. In 1902 the couple had a daughter, Lieserl, who might have been later raised by Maric's relatives or given up for adoption. Her ultimate fate and whereabouts remain a mystery.
Einstein eventually found steady work in 1902 after receiving a referral for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office. Einstein’s father passed away shortly thereafter, and the young scientist married Milena Maric on Jan. 6, 1903. The couple went on to have two sons, Hans and Eduard.
The marriage would not be a happy one, however, with the two divorcing in 1919 and Maric having an emotional breakdown in connection to the split. Einstein, as part of a settlement, agreed to give Maric any funds he might receive from possibly winning the Nobel Prize in the future. He had also begun an affair some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, whom Einstein wed during the same year of his divorce. He would continue to see other women throughout his second marriage, which ended with Löwenthal's death in 1936.

Magical Year

While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.
In 1905—seen by many as a "miracle year" for the theorist—Einstein had four papers published in the Annalen der Physik, one of the best known physics journals of the era. The four papers focused on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity (the most widely circulated of the write-ups) and the matter/energy relationship, thus taking physics in an electrifying new direction. In his fourth paper, Einstein came up with the equation E=mc2, suggesting that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, foreshadowing the development of atomic power.

Famed quantum theorist Max Planck backed up the assertions of Einstein, who thus became a star of the lecture circuit and academia, taking on various positions before becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1913 to 1933.

Relativity and Nobel Prize

In November, 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which he considered the culmination of his life research. He was convinced of the merits of general relativity because it allowed for a more accurate prediction of planetary orbits around the sun, which fell short in Issac Newton's theory, and for a more expansive, nuanced explanation of how gravitational forces worked. Einstein's assertions were affirmed via observations and measurements by British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson and Sir Arthur Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse, and thus a global science icon was born.
In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics though he wasn't actually given the award until the following year due to a bureaucratic ruling. Because his ideas on relativity were still considered questionable, he received the prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect though Einstein still opted to speak about relativity during his acceptance speech.
In the development of his general theory, Einstein had held on to the belief that the universe was a fixed, static entity, aka a "cosmological constant," though his later theories directly contradicted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux.  Astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe, with the two scientists meeting at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1930.
While Einstein was travelling and speaking internationally, the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, were gaining prominence with violent propaganda and vitriol in an impoverished post-WWI Germany. The party influenced other scientists to label Einstein's work "Jewish physics." Jewish citizens were barred from university work and other official jobs, and Einstein himself was targeted to be killed.

U.S. and Atomic Energy

In 1933, Einstein took on a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey and never went back to his native land. It was here that he would spend the rest of his life working on a unified field theory—an all-embracing paradigm meant to unify the varied laws of physics. Other European scientists also left regions threatened by Germany and immigrated to the states, with there being concern over Nazi strategies to create an atomic weapon.
In 1939, Einstein and fellow physicist Lio Szilard wrote to Prez  F.D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb and to galvanize the United States to create its own nuclear weapons. The U.S. would eventually initiate the Manhattan Project, though Einstein would not take direct part in its implementation due to his pacifist and socialist affiliations. Einstein was also the recipient of much scrutiny and major distrust from FBI director J.E. Hoover.
Not long after he began his career at Princeton, Einstein expressed an appreciation for American "meritocracy" and the opportunities people had for free thought, a stark contrast to his own experiences coming of age. In 1935, Einstein was granted permanent residency in his adopted country and became an American citizen a few years later. During WWII, he worked on Navy-based weapons systems and made big monetary donations to the military by auctioning off manuscripts worth millions.

Global and Domestic Activism

After learning of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, Einstein became a major player in efforts to curtail usage of the a-bomb. The following year he and Szilard founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, and in 1947, via an essay for The Atlantic Monthly, Einstein espoused working with the United Nations to maintain nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conflict.

Around this time, Einstein also became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, seeing the parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany and African Americans in the United States. He corresponded with scholar/activist W.E.B Du Bois as well as performing artist Paul Robeson and campaigned for civil rights, calling racism a "disease" in a 1946 Lincoln University speech.
After the war, Einstein continued to work on his unified field theory and key aspects of the theory of general relativity, such as wormholes, the possibility of time travel, the existence of black holes and the creation of the universe. However, he became increasingly isolated from the rest of the physics community, whose eyes were set on quantum theory. In the last decade of his life, Einstein, who had always seen himself as a loner, withdrew even further from any sort of spotlight, preferring to stay close to Princeton and immerse himself in processing ideas with colleagues.

Final Years and Legacy

On April 17, 1955, while working on a speech to honor Israel's seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was taken to the University Medical Center at Princeton for treatment but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate. "I want to go when I want," he stated at the time. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." Einstein died at the university medical center early the next morning—April 18, 1955—at the age of 76.
During the autopsy, Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain, reportedly without the permission of his family, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience. Einstein's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location, following his wishes. After decades of study, Einstein's brain is now located at the Princeton University Medical Center. A veritable mountain of books have been written on the iconic thinker's life, including Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe, both from 2007. Einstein's own words are presented in the collection The World as I See It. 

Did You Know?

1. Einstein didn’t fail math as a child.

Underachieving school kids have long taken solace in the claim that Einstein flunked math as a youth, but the records show that he was actually an exceptional, if not reluctant, student. He scored high grades during his school days in Munich, and was only frustrated by what he described as the “mechanical discipline” demanded by his teachers. The future Nobel Laureate dropped out of school at age 15 and left Germany to avoid state-mandated military service, but before then he was consistently at the top of his class and was even considered something of a prodigy for his grasp of complex mathematical and scientific concepts. When later presented with a news article claiming he’d failed grade-school math, Einstein dismissed the story as a myth and said, “Before I was 15 I had mastered differential and integral calculus.”

2.No one knows what happened to his first daughter.

In 1896, Einstein renounced his German citizenship and enrolled at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. There, he began a passionate love affair with Mileva Maric, a fellow physicist-in-training originally from Serbia. The couple later married and had two sons after graduating, but a year before they tied the knot, Maric gave birth to an illegitimate daughter named Lieserl. Einstein never spoke about the child to his family, and biographers weren’t even aware of her existence until examining his private papers in the late-1980s. Her fate remains a mystery to this day. Some scholars think Lieserl died from scarlet fever in 1903, while others believe she survived the sickness and was given up for adoption in Maric’s native Serbia.

3.It took Einstein nine years to get a job in academia.

Einstein showed flashes of brilliance during his years at the Zurich Polytechnic, but his rebellious personality and penchant for skipping classes saw his professors give him less than glowing recommendations upon his graduation in 1900. The young physicist later spent two years searching for an academic position before settling for a gig at the Swiss patent office in Bern. Though menial, the job turned out to be a perfect fit for Einstein, who found he could breeze through his office duties in a few hours and spend the rest of the day writing and conducting research. In 1905—often called his “miracle year”—the lowly clerk published four revolutionary articles that introduced his famous equation E=mc2 and the theory of special relativity. While the discoveries marked Einstein’s entrance onto the physics world stage, he didn’t win a full professorship until 1909—nearly a decade after he had left school.

4.He offered his wife his Nobel Prize as part of their divorce settlement.

After his marriage to Mileva Maric hit the rocks in the early 1910s, Einstein left his family, moved to Berlin and started a new relationship with his cousin, Elsa. He and Maric finally divorced several years later in 1919. As part of their separation agreement, Einstein promised her an annual stipend plus whatever money he might receive from the Nobel Prize—which he was supremely confident he would eventually win. Maric agreed, and Einstein later handed over a small fortune upon receiving the award in 1922 for his work on the photoelectric effect. By then, he had already remarried to Elsa, who remained his wife until her death in 1936.

5.A solar eclipse helped make Einstein world famous.

  In 1915, Einstein published his theory of general relativity, which stated that gravitational fields cause distortions in the fabric of space and time. Because it was such a bold rewriting of the laws of physics, the theory remained controversial until May 1919, when a total solar eclipse provided the proper conditions to test its claim that a supermassive object—in this case the sun—would cause a measurable curve in the starlight passing by it. Hoping to prove Einstein’s theory once and for all, English astronomer Arthur Eddington journeyed to the coast of West Africa and photographed the eclipse. Upon analyzing the pictures, he confirmed that the sun’s gravity had deflected the light by roughly 1.7 arc-seconds—exactly as predicted by general relativity. The news made Einstein an overnight celebrity. Newspapers hailed him as the heir to Sir Isaac Newton, and he went on to travel the world lecturing on his theories about the cosmos. According to Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson, in the six years after the 1919 eclipse, more than 600 books and articles were written about the theory of relativity.

6.The FBI spied on him for decades.

Shortly before Hitler rose to power in 1933, Einstein left Berlin for the United States and took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His support for pacifist, civil rights and left-wing causes had already drawn suspicion from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and after his arrival on American shores, the Bureau launched what would eventually become a 22-year surveillance campaign. Agents listened to the physicist’s phone calls, opened his mail and rooted through his trash in the hope of unmasking him as a subversive or a Soviet spy. They even investigated tips that he was building a death ray. The project came up empty handed, but by the time Einstein died in 1955, his FBI file totaled a whopping 1,800 pages.

7.Einstein urged the building of the atomic bomb—and later became a proponent of nuclear disarmament.

In the late-1930s, Einstein learned that new research had put German scientists on a path toward creating the atom bomb. The prospect of a doomsday weapon in the hands of the Nazis convinced him to set aside his pacifist principles and team up with Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, who helped him write a letter urging President Franklin D. Roosevelt to conduct atomic research. Though Einstein never participated directly in the Manhattan Project, he later expressed deep regrets about his minor role in brining about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I never would have lifted a finger,” he told Newsweek. He went on to become an impassioned advocate of nuclear disarmament, controls on weapons testing and unified world government. Shortly before his death in 1955, he joined with philosopher Bertrand Russell in signing the “Russell-Einstein Manifesto,” a public letter that stressed the risks of nuclear war and implored governments to “find peaceful means for the settlement of all disputes between them.”

8.He was asked to be president of Israel.

Though not traditionally religious, Einstein felt a deep connection to his Jewish heritage and often spoke out against anti-Semitism. He was never a staunch Zionist, but when head of state Chaim Weizmann died in 1952, the Israeli government offered to appoint him as the nation’s second president. The 73-year-old wasted little time in declining the honor. “All my life I have dealt with objective matters,” Einstein wrote in a letter to the Israeli ambassador, “hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official function.”

9.Einstein’s brain was stolen after his death.

Einstein died in April 1955 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He had requested that his body be cremated, but in a bizarre incident, Princeton pathologist Thomas Harvey removed his famous brain during his autopsy and kept it in the hope of unlocking the secrets of his genius. After winning a reluctant approval from Einstein’s son, Harvey later had the brain cut into pieces and sent to various scientists for research. A handful of studies have been conduced on it since the 1980s, but most have either been dismissed or discredited. Perhaps the most famous came in 1999, when a team from a Canadian university published a controversial paper claiming Einstein possessed unusual folds on his parietal lobe, a part of the brain associated with mathematical and spatial ability.

10.Novel Prize

Einstein never won the Nobel Prize for his famous theory of relativity. His 1922 award was instead presented for his work in explaining the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which metals emit electrons when hit by light.

 

How to Gain your Views on Every Blog in No Time

How is your website or blog doing so far this year? Does your traffic need a boost to increase or improve your customer engagement and sales?
Many businesses hire a professional marketer, create more content for their site, or generate traffic to the website . There are some different ways that you can improve your traffic. But you have to increase targeted traffic, not just general traffic. Getting customized traffic is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your chances of improving your results.
SEO is still used to build natural traffic. But it takes awhile to see the results. Paid ads are a good idea too, but it can get expensive. So, you either end up spending your time or money, either way!

Finding Free Tools to Help Increase Site Traffic

One of the great things about the internet is the fact that there are many free tools available for websites that you can take advantage of to help build your traffic.
Below are 15 free methods and tools that you can use to increase traffic to your site.
1. Stick to top-quality content.– One of the best free methods to increase your traffic is to stick to only the best quality content. Many site owners start off with good quality content. They have articles that resonate with their target audience. They include only good topics and content to lure customers and leads. Then they get in a hurry or start believing that “more is better” and crank out lower quality content. This is committing site suicide. Not only will you lose customers and readers, but you will also lose the respect of Google. Your rankings will suffer, and your level of customer engagement will decrease. It’s not worth it. So stick to top quality content first and foremost.
This is something the team at Blogging.org focuses on heavily, as we rely on our content to not only rank at the top of the search results, but we also want to keep our audience informed and engaged as much as possible. It’s easy to write a 500-word post, but in most cases, it’s not going to get the job done — especially if you are trying to walk something through an in-depth process. Take a look at how to make money blogging online and you will see how we dive deep into the topic, while also adding custom images and even an infographic to the article to make it that much better than what’s currently out there from the competition. If you focus all of your efforts on creating this type of high-quality content, it will be that much easier for your site to rank higher and increase traffic.

2. Work on your backlinks.– There is a lot of disinformation out there today on various topics. One of the bits of disinformation about web design is that you can’t backlink. This is false. Relevant, good content and backlinks are what Google rewards. You need backlinks pointing to your site from various sources including your blog, YouTube channel, social media, and other sources.
3. Comment on relevant blogs.– Another way to help increase your traffic is to comment on blogs that are in your niche area. You can exchange comments with a friend who has a site that is somehow related to your content or ask them to create a guest post for your blog. Make sure the content is natural and honest, though or people will think you are just doing it for rankings and traffic. Not only will you get some great key takeaways, you will also see examples of how to use your profile picture, backlinks to your site and also social profiles to increase engagement and clicks back to your site.
4. Hold a contest.– This method is not totally free since you will have to invest a little for the prize, but holding a contest is a great way of encouraging traffic to your site. There’s nothing that gets people more excited than the chance to get something free! Use an Amazon gift card or another incentive for the prize. Make sure to provide a link to your contest on your blog and website.
5. Offer 15 minutes of fame.– Everyone likes to be recognized for something. One idea you could try is to feature a customer’s name “in lights” with an animated gif or other accent emphasizing their name in exchange for their help promoting your business on their social media or other location. If you are a customer of a product, you can always contact that brand to see if they would like to feature your testimonial on their site for others to see.

 
6. Jazz up your site or blog.
When you create more hype for your site, you will often increase your traffic. This happens because the images get ranked in Google, as well as the text. Also, people notice it more and tend to share it with others.
7. Host a live video feed or webinar.– If you want to increase your following, why not create a live video feed or live webinar. Live web events are gaining in popularity, and this may just prove to be the needed catalyst to increasing your traffic.
8. Feature dedicated readers on your blog.– If you have loyal readers of your posts, you could feature readers on your blog. This is similar to the “15 minutes of fame” idea but gives credit to loyal readers.
9. Ask key influencers to post on your blog.– If you have someone you admire in your niche are, consider connecting to some of the influencers in your industry to offer a guest post. This can increase your popularity and increase traffic immensely. If you are looking for a great way to accomplish this on a mass scale and really increase traffic, link backs and social shares, consider running an expert round-up post.
10. Host a radio show or podcast.– Even if you are not a “radio person,” you can use the technology available today to broadcast your message to the world. Host a free podcast on SoundCloud or another platform such as BlogTalk.com.
11. Invite people to watch a video or listen to a podcast via email.– Remember that not everyone will catch your live video or podcast as it airs. Follow up with an email for those who missed it and give them a chance to listen again.
12. Link out from reputable sites.– If there is a site that is considered a high-authority site, ask them if they will feature a link out to your site. You should offer to return the favor to help their traffic, as well. At the same time, if there are high-authority articles that are providing really good information and value, be sure to include such references within your own content. Site owners often think it’s all about getting backlinks to your own site, but it’s also about who your site is linking to as well. If you were writing an article on infographic marketing and wanted a great reference to back up your statements, any sites like Entrepreneur, Inc., or even Forbes would get the job done!
13. Connect to media outlets.– Media outlets and press releases are important resources when you need to announce a significant event to the public. Just be careful which sources you use and make sure they represent you in a true light.
14. Write your own press release.– PR Web is a good resource to check out if you want to create a press release. There are some costs associated with this, but it’s free to sign up for their services. They have very specific standards for their press releases so make sure and read up on their policies before sending a post.
15. Ask readers what they like.– Create a survey or poll that asks customers what kinds of things they want to see on your site. The more you provide information they want to see, the more you will see your traffic soar.

Focus on Your Audience to Increase Site Traffic

The best thing you can do if you want to see your traffic increase is to start with a good website or blog. Blogger is easy and allows for anyone to go live with a site of their own in just minutes. However, if you want to increase traffic and rank in the search results, it’s all about the type of content you create and where you are providing value to your audience.
Remember, your site is one in a mix of over a billion other active sites creating content. Are your site and content better than what others are offering? If not, then you need to step up your game
Follow each of the actionable tips above, and always keep the end user in mind when creating content. With this in mind, your website or blog will always be moving forward.

 

How to Generate Traffic on your Blogs

 SEO means Search Engine Optimization; which focuses mainly on creating traffic on a website.
SEO is at the top of every bloggers mind and it’s a word that gets tossed around a lot, but not many people actually know what to do with SEO when it comes to making their sites rank higher. WordPress helps us out with a lot of the major problems that non-Wordpress users might have, when it comes to SEO.
The Yoast SEO Plugin (we have a full video series on this plugin within Blogging.org members area) covers most of the basics and allows you to create focus keywords, an SEO title and meta description for each blog post you go live with, and it also allows you to see exactly what your search listing will look like when it’s indexed and found by a search users.

Simple SEO Tips for Bloggers

This tool in itself is one of your best resources when it comes to creating a powerful SEO foundation for your site… however, there are still many others that you can improve upon as well! Here are a few of them.

#1 – Write Headings & Content for People, Not the Search Engines

Gone are the days when you can rank at the top of the search results by stuffing keywords throughout your content and use the exact match domain name, website name and post names. Instead you need to write content and headlines that cater to your audience, while also reading well and including your target keywords as well.
Finding the middle ground between just putting you target keyword as the title and coming up with something too complex is the most complicating part.
I’ve italicized the keyword that you might be trying to rank for, while also adding in a twist or area of focus. The next time you are writing a title for your blog, be sure to read it out loud and ask yourself if it sounds right, draws interest and also includes your target keyword.

#2 – Link Building is Still Very Important

Even with Google slapping sites in and out of the search results for their “unnatural” link building efforts, the success of many of the top ranking sites in the search results does ultimately come down to the link they have going back to their site. So with all of this confusion going on with link building, how can you know which are right?
Here are a few methods that are still working well for sites and blogs of all sizes.

• Guest Blogging – Yes, guest blogging does still work well, when done right . If you are going to focus your efforts on guest blogging, make sure you are writing quality 1,000+ word articles that provide real value. The goal here is to not online create great content, but also get accepted by only the best sites out there. Also focus your efforts on blogs that are within your own niche — guest blogging on relevant blogs in your niche is key.
• Internal Link Building – Your blog probably already has a bunch of content and going live with new articles daily. Within each of these posts you should be building internal links that send users to other pages within your site as well. This also helps Google crawl through your site and see anchor text as well.
• Infographics – Another great way to build links back to your site is through the use of infographics. When creating and distributing infographic for your site, make sure the content is high quality and original. To get more promotion and high quality links back to  your site, try contacting other authority blogs in your space to see if they would like to share the infographic with their audience. One of the site is an infographic created on the top free web hosting companies. Try something similar in your niche!
  
   

#3 – Focus on Your Keywords Before Writing Content

This one seems obvious enough, but for many bloggers and site owners it’s a good reminder of the importance of “keyword focus”. Before writing your next article, it’s important for you to do some research on that keyword first. Here are some things you should be looking for.

• How many people are searching for this keyword per month?
• What quality of sites are ranking on the first page for this keyword?
• Can I create a quality 1000+ article focused around this keyword?

It’s not just the main keyword that you are trying to rank for that will be important, as the article will likely rank for multiple long tail keywords as well. Spend an extra 10-15 mins before writing your blog post to look at your desired keywords and seeing what the search competition and landscape for this keyword already looks like.

#4 – Faster Site Speed Equals Higher Rankings

In addition to all of the new algorithms and penalties that Google has in place for site rankings, they also consider site speed to be another major factor in the ranking process? It’s true, and it could be affecting your site right now!

Even if you have the best site content and the best focus on your keywords and titles, a slow loading page for your site could be keeping you from achieving higher rankings.
A great way to increase the loading times of your site is to make sure that offers minimal downtime. You should also make sure that you are using a high quality and trusted WordPress theme and not clogging up your site with a lot of unused WordPress plugins.
Lastly, if you have any decent traffic flowing through your site or a graphics heavy site, you should also consider using a CDN (content delivery network). We currently use MaxCDN to host all of the images on this blog, which allows for them to load faster, as they are hosted separately on servers throughout the word and are also cached to offer optimum speed and performance issues.

SEO Tips to Help Your Blog Rank Higher

As you can see, we’ve only scratched the surface for SEO (on-site and off-site), while also mentioning a bit about link building as well.
First and foremost… don’t build spammy links to your site. This will only kill your chances of staying clean with Google and if you get a penalty, this could result in thousands of dollars in lost traffic and damage control after words.
In addition to staying clean with your link building, make sure that your content quality is also very high. Yes, Google is penalizing sites for low quality content as well. Blogs used to look for 500+ word articles, now they are focusing on 1000-1500+ minimums — you should do the same.
Follow these tips and take the time to perform the necessary keyword research to create amazing content for your audience and there is no doubt you will see your sites rank higher in the search results in no time! 
More SEO helps you earn more through Monetisation .

 

How to Make Money Blogging

The goal of making money with a blog is something that many bloggers throughout the world struggle with. However, it’s also one of the most common reasons why people want to start a blog in the first place. The good news is that we are going to help you better understand the why some blogs make money, while others best. After reading through our detailed guide and infographic below, you will be on your way to generating revenue through your blog, while also building a powerful brand and business at the same time.

How to Make Money Blogging – From Zero to Profit

To make it in the world of blogging, you need to create value and have a loyal following in the following in the process. This is why it’s so important to build out your blog business concept before getting started. It’s not just about building another blog, it’s about building a blog that can be a business.
If you follow the directions below, there is no reason why you can’t be up and running with a profitable blog, brand and business in no time.

Researching a Topic

Everyone has an idea for a web site, blog, business or even how to make millions of dollars online. The difference between those who succeed and those who fail… is simply those who TAKE ACTION!
Before starting with a blog, you first need to know what you are going to be blogging about. Many blogging will create a blog around something they are passionate about… but passion will only get you so far — you also need a way to make money and create a business around it in the process.

When deciding on what you are going to create your blog on, think about the different ways you might be able to monetize your site and traffic down the road. Below you will find a few questions to ask yourself when choosing a niche.

• Is this a topic I can write about for 6-12 months without running out of content?
• Do I enjoy writing this type of content or will it need to be outsourced?
• How can I monetize this topic down the road? (product creation, affiliate marketing, adsense)
• Are there currently advertisers in Google search for related keywords to this topic?
• What can I learn from other competing blogs and sites in this niche right now?

Before going live with your blog, go through each of these questions and really think about where you want your blog to be 6-12 months from now.

Niching Down

Now that you’ve found a good topic for your site, it’s time to niche down.
The reason why niching down is important, is that you want your brand or blog to eventually become the authority in that space. If you pick a topic that is way too generic (like weight loss or basketball), you aren’t going to have a good idea of what your audience is looking for or how you can cater all of your content to them.
By choosing a niche that is too wide range, it also gives you a much bigger chance to get lost in the mix and not have much of a chance to compete against the much larger and established players within your niches.
Niching Down Example:

Let’s say for example you wanted to create a blog on basketball and your end goal was to try and sell basketball merchandise and game tickets. While this might seem like a good idea because a lot of people are interested in basketball — it’s actually not. Think about it… no one goes to ESPN or other major sports sites to buy anything — they only want news, scores and highlights. The only reason why a site like ESPN can make money is because they are serving billions of visitors every month, which means they can sell a ton of advertising.

Instead you should take a different approach like this. You can still focus on “basketball”, but you need to niche down and pick a focus. Let’s go with “basketball skills training”. This is niche, but still not niche enough. You can go one level deeper and pick “basketball jump training”. This is very specific and it will allow you to figure out exactly what your audience wants, and you can give it to them and monetize it every time.

Creating an Editorial Calendar

You found your topic and broke it down into a niche that’s not only very specific, but it’s also profitable. Everything you write on your blog around this topic is going to provide real value to your audience and might even make you money in the process.
Before going live with your blog, the last thing you should do is make an editorial calendar to figure out if you have enough high quality content to write about. There are many different ways to find what people are searching for in Google, which you can then turn into articles of your own.
An easy way to do this is to simply search for your main keyword topic and see what other keywords Google suggests.
From this alone we can come up with some great articles, such as:

• Best resistance bands for jump training
• How to increase your vertical jump in 4 weeks
• 12 must see exercises to excel you basketball jump training

The idea here is to write out as many potential article headlines for your blog before getting started. If you find that you are having trouble coming up with 20+ different headlines, this might not be the best niche focus for you to start a blog on.

Choosing a Domain Name & Web Host

With all of the prep work now behind us, it’s now time to setup your domain name and web hosting.
Picking the Best Domain Name
When choosing your domain name, still with a .com, .net or .org TLD. Also don’t use hyphens, numbers or try to get too creative.

Your domain name should be somewhat short and give people a good idea of what your site is about, without need any additional description.
Once choosing a domain name, it’s time to setup your web hosting.
Setting Up Your Web Hosting
Ordering and setting up your first hosting account might seem like a big deal, but it’s actually pretty easy. Once you are setup, you will rarely ever need to login to your account again.
We highly recommend that you go with Blogger for the hosting of your site, as it’s extremely easy to setup and its 100% free of cost as well.

Creating Quality Content

One of the most important aspects of any successful blog is the content that is posted to the site.
When it comes to creating content for your audience, you should be thinking about how you can provide value to them, why they are at your site in the first place and how to make your content better than what your competition has to offer.
Going back to the previous example of “basketball jump training” — if you were going to create a blog for this audience, you should be focusing your content on “How to” posts and resources for people to learn from. The reason behind this is simple… anyone searching for “jump training” related terms, most likely wants to know how to jump higher.
Another important focus when creating your content is to make sure they are in-depth, provide value and give the user what they want. All of your blog content should include the following:

• Minimum of 800-1200 words per article
• Quality images that relate to the article content
• Headers, paragraphs, and subtitles to break apart the content
• An end “call to action” — where you can tell the visitor what to do next

These are the major components to create quality content that all comes back to building a success blog, brand and business online — and NOT JUST A BLOG.
Once you’ve built up a decent amount of high-quality content on your site, now it’s time for you to start doing some content promotion, such asguest blogging. By guest blogging on other established sites in your niche, not only will you gain powerful backlinks to your site, you’ll also increase your exposure and brand reach in the process.

Social Network Coverage

With over 1.3 billion users on Facebook and another few hundred million on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest — you simply can’t ignore what social media has to offer and how you can funnel it’s traffic back to your site 24/7.
The biggest blogs in the world today are all using social media to bring new traffic to their site, establish a brand and have their audience share their content in the process.
The easiest way to set this up is by adding social sharing buttons to your site. One of the best free plugins out there for setting this up is  floating social bar plugin. Once setup you will see Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other buttons that will appear at the top or bottom of each blog post. Visitors to your site can easily click any of these social buttons to then share your content with their audience.

It’s also important to note that you should create individual social profiles and Fan Pages for each of your sites. This way you can build a unique following around each of your sites that can grow over time, while also keeping your followers updated on new content being posted to your site.

Setting Up a Mailing List

The content of your site is extremely important, but the real money behind any successful website or blog is in the mailing list.
The sad truth is that 70% of the people that come to your site will never come back. It doesn’t have so much to do with your site or content, but just that there is already so much out there already and people get distracted and easily forget about sites they’ve been to before.
However, with a mailing list you can get people to keep coming back to your site time and time again.
Just like web hosting, setting up a mailing list is also quick and easy.

Once you have an active Aweber account, you can walk through the newsletter setup wizard and then add a subscribe form to your site.
To see how some of the top bloggers in the world are growing their mailing list through popup windows, free giveaways and great call to actions.

Product & Service Creation

Last but not least, we have product and service creation.
The monetization methods of your site are going to play a huge part in how you make money from your audience. We’ve listed a few methods for you below.

• Google Adsense – On-site advertising is one of the most common methods for monetizing a site. The easiest way to do this is by joining the Google Adsense program. All you need to do is place a line of code on your site and Google serves the banner ads. Your site then earns money everyone a visitor clicks on one of Google’s ads.
• Direct Ad Placements – If you have a popular site with target audience, you can start selling your own advertising at a high premium rate. Advertising is usually sold on a monthly or CPM (cost per thousand) basis to advertisers directly.
• Affiliate Marketing – Informational and review sites do extremely well with affiliate marketing, which is the concept of getting paid a commission for referring a lead or sale to another site. With affiliate marketing, you don’t need to create any products, hold inventory, process sales or even talk directly with customers.
• Product Creation – Many blogs start out as sources for information, but as they grow a following and brand loyalty, they also tend to create their own ebooks, courses and products to generate business.
• Services – If you are an expert in your niche and offer consulting and online teaching, services would be a great monetization method for your site.

No matter which method you choose, each is scalable and can be applied to nearly any niche.
Find your niche market, cater to your audience, gain traffic for more views and monetize in the process.

How to Start Writing Blogs within 10 minutes

  How to Start a Blog in 3 Simple Steps

I wanted to make this process as simple and fast for you as possible, so I’ve broken it all down in three simple steps. Here’s what you will need to know before getting started.

1. Select the Right Blogging Platform – This is how you will create a blog and new content for your site.
2. Set up Your Domain Name and Hosting – These are required to make your site content accessible around the world.
3. Creating a Blog with Purpose – Once your blog is live, I’ll show you how to make it look amazing and professional.

If some of these don’t make sense to you right now, don’t worry about it. I’m going to show you how simple it is to go live with a blog in just minutes, while also requiring no technical or programming skills.

Step 1 – Choosing the Right Blogging Platform

Starting a blog or a website today is much easier, faster and cheaper today than it was in previous years. This is mainly due to free software solutions becoming available that allow site owners to create content and go live with a site without the need to know any programming or have any design skills. In short, if you know how to type or send an email, you are more than well-equipped to start a blog of your own.I do use Blogger and will suggest you to use it.

Here are a few reasons why you will love using Blogger:

• It’s 100% Free – Amazingly enough, one of the most powerful software solutions in the world today is 100% free! No gimmicks, no up-sells… just free.
• Extremely Easy for Beginners – Bloggers has become one of the most popular platforms in the world today not only because it’s free, but also because it’s so easy to use. Instead of requiring site owners to use custom designs or programming, there are thousands of free Blogger themes and Plugins that you can use to customize all aspects of your blog. 
• Blogger Looks Great on Mobile – With more people using their mobile devices to access the internet than ever before, it’s important to make sure your blog looks great on all devices as well. This is another area that WordPress has you taken care of. Create a blog in minutes and your site and content will look great on desktops, tablets, mobile devices and more.

Now that you’ve seen why and how Blogger is being used to make blogging and site creation so easy, let’s move along in the process and get you started with a site of your own. The next step in the process is to select a hosting provider and pick a great domain name for your site. This is one of my favorite parts when launching a new site or blog!

Step 2 –  Selecting Your Domain Name and Blog Hosting

With Blogger being selected as our blogging platform, it’s now time to set up the other two most important factors to getting your blog live:

• A Domain Name – This is the address you type in whenever you want to visit a site. (www.name.com)
• A Hosting Provider – This is the service that places your site content on the internet for others to see.

Again, even if you never created a website or blog before, don’t worry! The process of setting these up is extremely simple and once it’s done, you won’t need to mess around with any of these settings again.

How to Get a Free Domain Name

Anyone can register a domain name. The toughest part is simply coming up with an original name that isn’t already registered yet. On average, domain names will cost around $15 per year to register. However, Blogger gives you a free platform to create your own domain free of cost.

• Keep it short and simple
• Stay away from numbers and dashes
• Pick a name that is easy to spell and memorable
• Don’t use any copyright or trademarked names
• Use keywords that are relevant to your topic
• Stick with a .com, .net or .org domain extension
• If it’s available, always try to register YourName.com

Thousands of domain names are registered every day, so if you keep finding that your requested domain name is already taken, don’t get discouraged. If you can’t think of anything unique, I always recommend seeing if your personal name is available as a domain. This is always good to try and register, as it likely won’t be available forever!
Which extension should you pick for your domain name?
Also, when choosing a domain name, you will have a few different options as for the type of domain extension you want to use. The ‘.com’ is always going to be the most popular, followed by ‘.net’ and then ‘.org’. However, there are many other extensions to choose from — though I recommend you stick with any of the three mentioned here. They are the most professional and well-known around the world.
Very exciting! We decided on using WordPress as our blogging platform and also know how to setup hosting and selecting a domain name for your site. Now it’s time to bring it all together and put it in motion.

Wait! Make sure you do the next steps correctly!

Step 1 – Setup Your Blog with Blogger

Step 2 – Follow the step-by-step instructions below on how to setup your blog with Blogger.

My Step-By-Step Guide to Going Live with Your Blog

As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, I want to make this is as easy for you to set up as possible, so I went through the process myself and explains along the way. Now you can follow along here as a reference when you are setting up your Blogger account and blog.

First, click this link www.Blogger.com to open a new browser tab.

After clicking the link, you should see the Blogger site.
On this page, you will notice an icon "Create Your Blog".You can install Blogger;its has 24/7 support.
Next, click on the big button that says "Create Your Blog".
Now you can see 3 icons(Title,Address & Theme simultaneously).
Choose a title of your own but it should be eye catching.
Your address need to be unique but easy.
Choose theme of your own choice(you can also change it later).
Now press "Create Blog" and your blog website is all ready for your use.
Congratulations! Your process for free blog is now complete and we can move forward with going live with your blog.
After clicking the ‘create blog’ button, you will then see your blog website which confirms that your account is now live and that a message has been sent to your email account. This email will contain information about your account.

Step 3 – How to Create a Blog with Purpose

Now it’s time to start having some fun! There is nothing more excited than finally getting to work on your blog once it’s live. Best of all, it’s your blog… so you get to write about whatever you want!
Before you start writing about what you ate last night for dinner or saw on your way to work… you should first think about where you want your blog to be a few months down the road from now.
In short, your blog is one in a few hundred million — so if you want to it be read by lots of people and stand out from the crowd, you are going to need to create content that provides value and has a purpose.

Click here for how to write your first blog post and change your Blogger theme of you choice which looks better and seems related to your posts.Just check left of your blog home menu,you will see a theme icon,just click on that and change theme of your own by picking one from option and apply it.

This section is a quick walk through of how to write your first blog post.

With your domain name and Blogger;all setup, you can dive right into Blogger and start creating content for your site.you should have also received your login details for Blogger through your E-mail.
Once logged in you will see a screen area. You can then click on the “Posts” tab on the left side menu and select “New Post”.

You will then be sent to a new screen where you can start writing your blog content. If you know how to use Microsoft Word, then you will master Blogger in a matter of minutes.
The main areas are your Title and the actual Blog Post Content. Once you are happy with your content and title and ready to go live, all you have to do is click the “Publish” button on the right side of the page.But choose your title as eye catching & content useful to accumulate crowd.

You can also easily change the look and feel of your blog through the use of WordPress Themes. To change your theme, simply click on “Appearance” on the left side menu and then click on “THEMES”.
When you are on the Themes page you will see your existing themes and also add a new theme by clicking on the “Add New” button on the top of the page. This will send you to the WordPress Themes gallery and allow you to upload any other themes you might have.Themes make it look better such that people can enjoy it.

BONUS: Frequently Asked Questions When Blogging

When it comes to doing anything for the first time, we all have questions. To help with this process, I wanted to provide you with some of the most frequent questions I get asked on a daily basis.
How can I get more visitors to my blog?
Did you know that there are currently over a billion active websites and blogs on the internet today? It’s true… and while there are plenty of people already on the internet, that is still a lot of websites and content to compete against. When launching a new website or blog, traffic and visitors to your site might be a bit slow. However, as you continue to come out with new content on your site, rank in the search results and share content with your friends, traffic to your site will continue to grow over time. If you want to implement some actionable methods to start increasing traffic to your site today just read my next post.
When will my site start showing in Google?
Google will automatically find your website or blog once it’s been around for a few days and has some content published and people visiting your site. A great way to speed up this process is to link to your blog from your social profile or anywhere else that might be relevant. Keep in mind, just because your site has been indexed by Google, that doesn’t mean it will necessarily start ranking high in the search results or for generic keywords that you think it should. The process of ranking a site in Google is quite complex.
How can I make money with my blog?
The ultimate goal for many bloggers is to eventually make money with their site and content. I actually wrote a complete guide on how to make money Blogging,read it in my next post. Not only does it break down the process of how to choose a niche market or different monetization methods to use, I also show you real examples of how this is being done today. If you want to find financial success with blogging, it’s all about providing value to your audience. Billions of people are using Google and visiting sites on a daily basis to find solutions to their problems. If your website or blog can help solve those problems, there is a good chance you can start making some money in the process.

Can I get famous from starting a blog?

Often times we will see everyday people become overnight success stories through the use of websites, social media, YouTube and even blogs. The first thing to note is that most of these ‘overnight’ success stories aren’t really overnight and have a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind them. You can definitely can get famous or become and industry leader within your market through the use of a blog. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with your site, a lot of things can happen. With a blog, if you put in the time and effort to make it great, you can definitely become famous, successful and even wealthy in the process.

 

YOGA:An Indian Culture & Orthodox Science to remain Fit &Healthy

Brief

Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India. There is a broad variety of Yoga schools, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Among the most well-known types of yoga are Hatha yoga and Rāja yoga^.
The origins of yoga have been speculated to date back to pre-Vedic Indian traditions, it is mentioned in the Rigveda, but most likely developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in ancient India's ascetic and śramaṇa movements.The chronology of earliest texts describing yoga-practices is unclear, varyingly credited to Hindu Upanishads. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the first half of the 1st millennium CE, but only gained prominence in the West in the 20th century. Hatha yoga texts emerged around the 11th century with origins in tantra^.
Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the west^, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century^.,In the 1980s, yoga became popular as a system of physical exercise across the Western world^, Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core. One of the six major orthodox schools of Hinduism is also called Yoga, which has its own epistemology and metaphysics, and is closely related to Hindu Samkhya philosophy.
Many studies have tried to determine the effectiveness of yoga as a complementary intervention for cancer, schizophrenia, asthma, and heart disease.The results of these studies have been mixed and inconclusive, with cancer studies suggesting none to unclear effectiveness, and others suggesting yoga may reduce risk factors and aid in a patient's psychological healing process.On December 1, 2016, Yoga was listed as UNESCO’s Intangible cultural heritage.

Origin

In Sanskrit, the word yoga comes from the root yuj which means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common senses. By figurative extension from the yoking or harnessing of oxen or horses, the word took on broader meanings such as "employment, use, application, performance" (compare the figurative uses of "to harness" as in "to put something to some use"). All further developments of the sense of this word are post-Vedic. More prosaic moods such as "exertion", "endeavour", "zeal", and "diligence" are also found in Indian epic poetry.
There are very many compound words containing yoga in Sanskrit. Yoga can take on meanings such as "connection", "contact", "union", "method", "application", "addition" and "performance". In simpler words, Yoga also means "combined". For example, guṇáyoga means "contact with a cord"; chakráyoga has a medical sense of "applying a splint or similar instrument by means of pulleys (in case of dislocation of the thigh)"; chandráyoga has the astronomical sense of "conjunction of the moon with a constellation"; puṃyoga is a grammatical term expressing "connection or relation with a man", etc. Thus, bhaktiyoga means "devoted attachment" in the monotheistic Bhakti movement. The term kriyāyoga has a grammatical sense, meaning "connection with a verb". But the same compound is also given a technical meaning in the Yoga Sutras (2.1), designating the "practical" aspects of the philosophy, i.e. the "union with the supreme" due to performance of duties in everyday life.
According to Pāṇini, a 6th-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian, the term yoga can be derived from either of two roots, yujir yoga (to yoke) or yuj samādhau (to concentrate). In the context of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the root yuj samādhau (to concentrate) is considered by traditional commentators as the correct etymology.In accordance with Pāṇini, Vyasa who wrote the first commentary on the Yoga Sutras,states that yoga means samādhi (concentration).
According to Dasgupta, the term yoga can be derived from either of two roots, yujir yoga (to yoke) or yuj samādhau (to concentrate).Someone who practices yoga or follows the yoga philosophy with a high level of commitment is called a yogi (may be applied to a man or a woman) or yogini (traditionally denoting a woman)^.

Goals

The ultimate goal of Yoga is moksha (liberation), although the exact definition of what form this takes depends on the philosophical or theological system with which it is conjugated.
According to Jacobsen, "Yoga has five principal meanings:

1. Yoga, as a disciplined method for attaining a goal;
2. Yoga, as techniques of controlling the body and the mind;
3. Yoga, as a name of one of the schools or systems of philosophy (darśana);
4. Yoga, in connection with other words, such as "hatha-, mantra-, and laya-," referring to traditions specialising in particular techniques of yoga;
5. Yoga, as the goal of Yoga practice.^"

According to David Gordon White, from the 5th century CE onward, the core principles of "yoga" were more or less in place, and variations of these principles developed in various forms over time.

1. Yoga, is a meditative means of discovering dysfunctional perception and cognition, as well as overcoming it for release from suffering, inner peace and salvation; illustration of this principle is found in Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and Yogasutras, in a number of Buddhist Mahāyāna works, as well as Jain texts;
2. Yoga, as the raising and expansion of consciousness from oneself to being coextensive with everyone and everything; these are discussed in sources such as in Hinduism Vedic literature and its Epic Mahābhārata, Jainism Praśamaratiprakarana, and Buddhist Nikaya texts;
3. Yoga, as a path to omniscience and enlightened consciousness enabling one to comprehend the impermanent (illusive, delusive) and permanent (true, transcendent) reality; examples are found in Hinduism Nyaya and Vaisesika school texts as well as Buddhism Mādhyamaka texts, but in different ways;
4. Yoga, as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments; these are, states White, described in Tantric literature of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as the Buddhist Sāmaññaphalasutta;James Mallinson, however, disagrees and suggests that such fringe practices are far removed from the mainstream Yoga's goal as meditation-driven means to liberation in Indian religions.

White clarifies that the last principle relates to legendary goals of "yogi practice", different from practical goals of "yoga practice," as they are viewed in South Asian thought and practice since the beginning of the Common Era, in the various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical schools.

Schools

The term "yoga" has been applied to a variety of practices and methods, including Jain and Buddhist practices. In Hinduism these include Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, Laya Yoga and Hatha Yoga.
The so-called Raja Yoga refers to Ashtanga Yoga, the eight limbs to be practiced to attain samadhi, as described in the Yoga Sutras of Pantajali.The term raja yoga originally referred to the ultimate goal of yoga, which is usually samadhi, but was popularised by Vivekananda as the common name for Ashtanga Yoga.

Hinduism

Classical yoga

Yoga is considered as a philosophical school in Hinduism.Yoga, in this context, is one of the six āstika schools of Hinduism (those which accept the Vedas as source of knowledge).
Due to the influence of Vivekananda, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are nowadays considered as the foundational scripture of classical yoga, a status which it only acquired in the 20th century.Before the twentieth century, other works were considered as the most central works, such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Vasistha,while Tantric Yoga and Hatha Yoga prevailed over Ashtanga Yoga.

Ashtanga yoga

Swami Vivekananda equated raja yoga with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Yoga as described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali refers to Ashtanga yoga.The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is considered as a central text of the Yoga school of Hindu philosophy, It is often called "Rāja yoga", "yoga of the kings," a term which originally referred to the ultimate, royal goal of yoga, which is usually samadhi, but was popularised by Vivekananda as the common name for Ashtanga Yoga.
Ashtanga yoga incorporates epistemology, metaphysics, ethical practices, systematic exercises and self-development techniques for body, mind and spirit. Its epistemology (pramanas) is same as the Samkhya school. Both accept three reliable means to knowledge – perception (pratyākṣa, direct sensory observations), inference (anumāna) and testimony of trustworthy experts (sabda, agama). Both these orthodox schools are also strongly dualistic. Unlike the Sāṃkhya school of Hinduism, which pursues a non-theistic/atheistic rationalist approach,the Yoga school of Hinduism accepts the concept of a "personal, yet essentially inactive, deity" or "personal god". Along with its epistemology and metaphysical foundations, the Yoga school of Hindu philosophy incorporates ethical precepts (yamas and niyamas) and an introspective way of life focused on perfecting one's self physically, mentally and spiritually, with the ultimate goal being kaivalya (liberated, unified, content state of existence).

Hatha yoga

A sculpture of Gorakshanath, a celebrated 11th century yogi of Nath tradition and a major proponent of Hatha yoga.

Hatha yoga, also called hatha vidyā, is a kind of yoga focusing on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures described primarily in three texts of Hinduism:

1. Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Svātmārāma (15th century)
2. Shiva Samhita, author unknown (1500 or late 17th century)
3. Gheranda Samhita by Gheranda (late 17th century)

Many scholars also include the preceding Goraksha Samhita authored by Gorakshanath of the 11th century in the above list. Gorakshanath is widely considered to have been responsible for popularizing hatha yoga as we know it today.
Vajrayana Buddhism, founded by the Indian Mahasiddhas, has a series of asanas and pranayamas, such as tummo (Sanskrit caṇḍālī),and trul khor which parallel hatha yoga.

Shaivism

Main articles: Shaivism, Shaiva Siddhanta, and Nath

In Shaivism, yoga is used to unite kundalini with Shiva.

Buddhism

16th century Buddhist artwork in Yoga posture.

Buddhist meditation encompasses a variety of meditation techniques that aim to develop mindfulness, concentration, supramundane powers, tranquility, and insight.
Core techniques have been preserved in ancient Buddhist texts and have proliferated and diversified through teacher-student transmissions. Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward Enlightenment and Nirvana. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā, and jhāna/dhyāna.

Jainism

Jain meditation has been the central practice of spirituality in Jainism along with the Three Jewels. Meditation in Jainism aims at realizing the self, attain salvation, take the soul to complete freedom. It aims to reach and to remain in the pure state of soul which is believed to be pure conscious, beyond any attachment or aversion. The practitioner strives to be just a knower-seer (Gyata-Drashta). Jain meditation can be broadly categorized to the auspicious Dharmya Dhyana and Shukla Dhyana and inauspicious Artta and Raudra Dhyana.

History

The origins of yoga are a matter of debate.There is no consensus on its chronology or specific origin other than that yoga developed in ancient India. Suggested origins are the Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1900 BCE),and pre-Vedic Eastern states of India, the Vedic period (1500–500 BCE), and the śramaṇa movement. According to Gavin Flood, continuities may exist between those various traditions:

This dichotomization is too simplistic, for continuities can undoubtedly be found between renunciation and vedic Brahmanism, while elements from non-Brahmanical, Sramana traditions also played an important part in the formation of the renunciate ideal.

Pre-philosophical speculations of yoga begin to emerge in the texts of c. 500–200 BCE. Between 200 BCE–500 CE philosophical schools of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were taking form and a coherent philosophical system of yoga began to emerge. The Middle Ages saw the development of many satellite traditions of yoga. Yoga came to the attention of an educated western public in the mid 19th century along with other topics of Indian philosophy.

Upanishads

The first known appearance of the word "yoga", with the same meaning as the modern term, is in the Katha Upanishad, probably composed between the fifth and third century BCE,where it is defined as the steady control of the senses, which along with cessation of mental activity, leading to a supreme state. Katha Upanishad integrates the monism of early Upanishads with concepts of samkhya and yoga. It defines various levels of existence according to their proximity to the innermost being Ātman. Yoga is therefore seen as a process of interiorization or ascent of consciousness. It is the earliest literary work that highlights the fundamentals of yoga. White states:

The earliest extant systematic account of yoga and a bridge from the earlier Vedic uses of the term is found in the Hindu Katha Upanisad (Ku), a scripture dating from about the third century BCE.It describes the hierarchy of mind-body constituents—the senses, mind, intellect, etc.—that comprise the foundational categories of Sāmkhya philosophy, whose metaphysical system grounds the yoga of the Yogasutras, Bhagavad Gita, and other texts and schools.

The hymns in Book 2 of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, another late first millennium BCE text, states a procedure in which the body is held in upright posture, the breath is restrained and mind is meditatively focussed, preferably inside a cave or a place that is simple, plain, of silence or gently flowing water, with no noises nor harsh winds.
The Maitrayaniya Upanishad, likely composed in a later century than Katha and Shvetashvatara Upanishads but before Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, mentions sixfold yoga method – breath control (pranayama), introspective withdrawal of senses (pratyahara), meditation (dhyana), mind concentration (dharana), philosophical inquiry/creative reasoning (tarka), and absorption/intense spiritual union (samadhi).
In addition to the Yoga discussion in above Principal Upanishads, twenty Yoga Upanishads as well as related texts such as Yoga Vasistha, composed in 1st and 2nd millennium CE, discuss Yoga methods.

Sutras of Hindu philosophies

Yoga is discussed in the ancient foundational Sutras of Hindu philosophy. The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of the Vaisheshika school of Hinduism, dated to have been composed sometime between 6th and 2nd century BCE discusses Yoga. According to Johannes Bronkhorst, an Indologist known for his studies on early Buddhism and Hinduism and a professor at the University of Lausanne, Vaiśeṣika Sūtra describes Yoga as "a state where the mind resides only in the soul and therefore not in the senses".This is equivalent to pratyahara or withdrawal of the senses, and the ancient Sutra asserts that this leads to an absence of sukha (happiness) and dukkha (suffering), then describes additional yogic meditation steps in the journey towards the state of spiritual liberation.
Similarly, Brahma sutras – the foundational text of the Vedanta school of Hinduism, discusses yoga in its sutras. Brahma sutras are estimated to have been complete in the surviving form sometime between 450 BCE to 200 CE, and its sutras assert that yoga is a means to gain "subtlety of body" and other powers.The Nyaya sutras – the foundational text of the Nyaya school, variously estimated to have been composed between the 6th-century BCE and 2nd-century CE, discusses yoga in sutras. This ancient text of the Nyaya school includes a discussion of yogic ethics, dhyana (meditation), samadhi, and among other things remarks that debate and philosophy is a form of yoga.

Early Buddhist texts

Werner states, "The Buddha was the founder of his [Yoga] system, even though, admittedly, he made use of some of the experiences he had previously gained under various Yoga teachers of his time. He notes:

"But it is only with Buddhism itself as expounded in the Pali Canon that we can speak about a systematic and comprehensive or even integral school of Yoga practice, which is thus the first and oldest to have been preserved for us in its entirety."

The chronology of completion of these yoga-related Pali Canons, however, is unclear, just like ancient Hindu texts. Early known Buddhist sources like the Majjhima Nikāya mention meditation, while the Anguttara Nikāya describes Jhāyins (meditators) that resemble early Hindu descriptions of Muni, Kesins and meditating ascetics, but these meditation-practices are not called yoga in these texts. The earliest known specific discussion of yoga in the Buddhist literature, as understood in modern context, is from the third- to fourth-century CE scriptures of the Buddhist Yogācāra school and fourth- to fifth-century Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosa.
A yoga system that predated the Buddhist school is Jain yoga. But since Jain sources postdate Buddhist ones, it is difficult to distinguish between the nature of the early Jain school and elements derived from other schools. Most of the other contemporary yoga systems alluded in the Upanishads and some Pali canons are lost to time.
The early Buddhist texts describe meditative practices and states, some of which the Buddha borrowed from the śramaṇa tradition.The Pali canon contains three passages in which the Buddha describes pressing the tongue against the palate for the purposes of controlling hunger or the mind, depending on the passage. However, there is no mention of the tongue being inserted into the nasopharynx as in true khecarī mudrā. The Buddha used a posture where pressure is put on the perineum with the heel, similar to even modern postures used to stimulate Kundalini.

Uncertainty with chronology

Alexander Wynne, author of The Origin of Buddhist Meditation, observes that formless meditation and elemental meditation might have originated in the Upanishadic tradition. The earliest reference to meditation is in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest Upanishads. Chandogya Upanishad describes the five kinds of vital energies (prana). Concepts used later in many yoga traditions such as internal sound and veins (nadis) are also described in the Upanishad. Taittiriya Upanishad defines yoga as the mastery of body and senses.

Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita ('Song of the Lord'), uses the term "yoga" extensively in a variety of ways. In addition to an entire chapter (ch. 6) dedicated to traditional yoga practice, including meditation, it introduces three prominent types of yoga:

• Karma yoga: The yoga of action.
• Bhakti yoga: The yoga of devotion.
• Jnana yoga: The yoga of knowledge.

The Gita consists of 18 chapters and 700 shlokas (verses), with each chapter named as a different yoga, thus delineating eighteen different yogas. Some scholars divide the Gita into three sections, with the first six chapters with 280 shlokas dealing with Karma yoga, the middle six containing 209 shlokas with Bhakti yoga, and the last six chapters with 211 shlokas as Jnana yoga; however, this is rough because elements of karma, bhakti and jnana are found in all chapters.

Mahabharata

Description of an early form of yoga called nirodhayoga (yoga of cessation) is contained in the Mokshadharma section of the 12th chapter (Shanti Parva) of the Mahabharata. The verses of the section are dated to c. 300–200 BCE. Nirodhayoga emphasizes progressive withdrawal from the contents of empirical consciousness such as thoughts, sensations etc. until purusha (Self) is realized. Terms like vichara (subtle reflection), viveka (discrimination) and others which are similar to Patanjali's terminology are mentioned, but not described. There is no uniform goal of yoga mentioned in the Mahabharata. Separation of self from matter, perceiving Brahman everywhere, entering into Brahman etc. are all described as goals of yoga. Samkhya and yoga are conflated together and some verses describe them as being identical. Mokshadharma also describes an early practice of elemental meditation.
Mahabharata defines the purpose of yoga as the experience of uniting the individual ātman with the universal Brahman that pervades all things.

Classical yoga

During the period between the Mauryan and the Gupta eras (c. 200 BCE–500 CE) philosophical schools of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were taking form and a coherent philosophical system of yoga began to emerge.
Yoga as a philosophy is mentioned in Sanskrit texts dated to be completed between 200 BCE–200 CE.

Samkhya

Further information: Samkhya

Many traditions in India began to adopt systematic methodology by about first century CE. Of these, Samkhya was probably one of the oldest philosophies to begin taking a systematic form. Patanjali systematized Yoga, building them on the foundational metaphysics of Samkhya. In the early works, the Yoga principles appear together with the Samkhya ideas. Vyasa's commentary on the Yoga Sutras, also called the Samkhyapravacanabhasya (Commentary on the Exposition of the Sankhya Philosophy), describes the relation between the two systems. The two schools have some differences as well. Yoga accepted the conception of "personal god", while Samkhya developed as a rationalist, non-theistic/atheistic system of Hindu philosophy. Sometimes Patanjali's system is referred to as Seshvara Samkhya in contradistinction to Kapila's Nirivara Samkhya.
The parallels between Yoga and Samkhya were so close that Max Müller says that "the two philosophies were in popular parlance distinguished from each other as Samkhya with and Samkhya without a Lord."

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Traditional Hindu depiction of Patanjali as an avatar of the divine serpent Shesha.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali[159]
Pada (Chapter)	English meaning	Sutras
Samadhi Pada	On being absorbed in spirit	51
Sadhana Pada	On being immersed in spirit	55
Vibhuti Pada	On supernatural abilities and gifts	56
Kaivalya Pada	On absolute freedom	34

In Hindu philosophy, yoga is the name of one of the six orthodox (which accept the testimony of Vedas) philosophical schools.Karel Werner, author of Yoga And Indian Philosophy, believes that the process of systematization of yoga which began in the middle and Yoga Upanishads culminated with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
There are numerous parallels in the concepts in ancient Samkhya, Yoga and Abhidharma Buddhist schools of thought, particularly from 2nd century BCE to 1st century AD, notes Larson. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is a synthesis of these three traditions. From Samkhya, Yoga Sutras adopt the "reflective discernment" (adhyavasaya) of prakrti and purusa (dualism), its metaphysical rationalism, as well its three epistemic methods to gaining reliable knowledge. From Abhidharma Buddhism's idea of nirodhasamadhi, suggests Larson, Yoga Sutras adopt the pursuit of altered state of awareness, but unlike Buddhist's concept of no self nor soul, Yoga is physicalist and realist like Samkhya in believing that each individual has a self and soul. The third concept Yoga Sutras synthesize into its philosophy is the ancient ascetic traditions of meditation and introspection, as well as the yoga ideas from middle Upanishads such as Katha, Shvetashvatara and Maitri.
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras are widely regarded as the first compilation of the formal yoga philosophy. The verses of Yoga Sutras are terse. Many later Indian scholars studied them and published their commentaries, such as the Vyasa Bhashya (c. 350–450 CE). Patanjali's yoga is also referred to as Raja yoga. Patanjali defines the word "yoga" in his second sutra:
This terse definition hinges on the meaning of three Sanskrit terms. I. K. Taimni translates it as "Yoga is the inhibition (nirodhaḥ) of the modifications (vṛtti) of the mind (citta)". Swami Vivekananda translates the sutra as "Yoga is restraining the mind-stuff (Citta) from taking various forms (Vrittis)." Edwin Bryant explains that, to Patanjali, "Yoga essentially consists of meditative practices culminating in attaining a state of consciousness free from all modes of active or discursive thought, and of eventually attaining a state where consciousness is unaware of any object external to itself, that is, is only aware of its own nature as consciousness unmixed with any other object."
If the meaning of yoga is understood as the practice of nirodha (mental control), then its goal is "the unqualified state of niruddha (the perfection of that process)", according to Baba Hari Dass. In that context, "yoga (union) implies duality (as in joining of two things or principles); the result of yoga is the nondual state", and "as the union of the lower self and higher Self. The nondual state is characterized by the absence of individuality; it can be described as eternal peace, pure love, Self-realization, or liberation."
Patanjali's writing also became the basis for a system referred to as "Ashtanga Yoga" ("Eight-Limbed Yoga"). This eight-limbed concept is derived from the 29th Sutra of the Book 2 of Yoga Sutras. They are:

1. Yama (The five "abstentions"): Ahimsa (Non-violence, non-harming other living beings),Satya (truthfulness, non-falsehood),Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacharya (celibacy, fidelity to one's partner), and Aparigraha (non-avarice, non-possessiveness).
2. Niyama (The five "observances"): Śauca (purity, clearness of mind, speech and body),Santosha (contentment, acceptance of others and of one's circumstances), Tapas (persistent meditation, perseverance, austerity), Svādhyāya (study of self, self-reflection, study of Vedas), and Ishvara-Pranidhana (contemplation of God/Supreme Being/True Self).
3. Asana: Literally means "seat", and in Patanjali's Sutras refers to the seated position used for meditation.
4. Pranayama ("Breath exercises"): Prāna, breath, "āyāma", to "stretch, extend, restrain, stop".
5. Pratyahara ("Abstraction"): Withdrawal of the sense organs from external objects.
6. Dharana ("Concentration"): Fixing the attention on a single object.
7. Dhyana ("Meditation"): Intense contemplation of the nature of the object of meditation.
8. Samadhi ("Liberation"): merging consciousness with the object of meditation.

Yoga and Vedanta

Yoga and Vedanta are the two largest surviving schools of Hindu traditions. They share many thematic principles, concepts and belief in self/soul, but diverge in degree, style and some of their methods. Epistemologically, Yoga school accepts three means to reliable knowledge, while Advaita Vedanta accepts six ways. Yoga disputes the monism of Advaita Vedanta. Yoga school believes that in the state of moksha, each individual discovers the blissful, liberating sense of himself or herself as an independent identity; Advaita Vedanta, in contrast, believes that in the state of moksha, each individual discovers the blissful, liberating sense of himself or herself as part of Oneness with everything, everyone and the Universal Self. They both hold that the free conscience is aloof yet transcendent, liberated and self-aware. Further, Advaita Vedanta school enjoins the use of Patanjali's yoga practices and the reading of Upanishads for those seeking the supreme good, ultimate freedom and jivanmukti.

Jainism

Tirthankara Parsva in Yogic meditation in the Kayotsarga posture.

According to Tattvarthasutra, 2nd century CE Jain text, yoga is the sum of all the activities of mind, speech and body.Umasvati calls yoga the cause of "asrava" or karmic influx as well as one of the essentials—samyak caritra—in the path to liberation. In his Niyamasara, Acarya Kundakunda, describes yoga bhakti—devotion to the path to liberation—as the highest form of devotion. Acarya Haribhadra and Acarya Hemacandra mention the five major vows of ascetics and 12 minor vows of laity under yoga. This has led certain Indologists like Prof. Robert J. Zydenbos to call Jainism, essentially, a system of yogic thinking that grew into a full-fledged religion. The five yamas or the constraints of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali bear a resemblance to the five major vows of Jainism, indicating a history of strong cross-fertilization between these traditions.
Mainstream Hinduism's influence on Jain yoga can be see in Haribhadra's Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya which outlines an eightfold yoga influenced by Patanjali's eightfold yoga.

Yogacara school

In the late phase of Indian antiquity, on the eve of the development of Classical Hinduism, the Yogacara movement arises during the Gupta period (4th to 5th centuries). Yogacara received the name as it provided a "yoga," a framework for engaging in the practices that lead to the path of the bodhisattva. The yogacara sect teaches "yoga" as a way to reach enlightenment.

Middle Ages (500–1500 CE)

Middle Ages saw the development of many satellite traditions of yoga. Hatha yoga emerged in this period.

Bhakti movement

The Bhakti movement was a development in medieval Hinduism which advocated the concept of a personal God (or "Supreme Personality of Godhead"). The movement was initiated by the Alvars of South India in the 6th to 9th centuries, and it started gaining influence throughout India by the 12th to 15th centuries. Shaiva and Vaishnava bhakti traditions integrated aspects of Yoga Sutras, such as the practical meditative exercises, with devotion. Bhagavata Purana elucidates the practice of a form of yoga called viraha (separation) bhakti. Viraha bhakti emphasizes one pointed concentration on Krishna.

Tantra

Tantra is a genre of yoga that arose in India no later than the 5th century CE.George Samuel states, "Tantra" is a contested term, but may be considered as a school whose practices appeared in mostly complete form in Buddhist and Hindu texts by about 10th century CE. Over its history, some ideas of Tantra school influenced the Hindu, Bon, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. Elements of Tantric yoga rituals were adopted by and influenced state functions in medieval Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms in East and Southeast Asia.
By the turn of the first millennium, hatha yoga emerged from tantra.

Hatha Yoga

The earliest references to hatha yoga are in Buddhist works dating from the eighth century. The earliest definition of hatha yoga is found in the 11th century Buddhist text Vimalaprabha, which defines it in relation to the center channel, bindu etc. Hatha yoga synthesizes elements of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras with posture and breathing exercises. It marks the development of asanas (plural) into the full body 'postures' now in popular usage and, along with its many modern variations, is the style that many people associate with the word yoga today.

Sikhism

Various yogic groups had become prominent in Punjab in the 15th and 16th century, when Sikhism was in its nascent stage. Compositions of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, describe many dialogues he had with Jogis, a Hindu community which practiced yoga. Guru Nanak rejected the austerities, rites and rituals connected with Hatha Yoga. He propounded the path of Sahaja yoga or Nama yoga (meditation on the name) instead. The Guru Granth Sahib states:

Listen "O Yogi, Nanak tells nothing but the truth. You must discipline your mind. The devotee must meditate on the Word Divine. It is His grace which brings about the union. He understands, he also sees. Good deeds help one merge into Divination."

 

Modern history

[[File:|Siddhasana|99px]] Various yoga asanas

Yoga came to the attention of an educated western public in the mid-19th century along with other topics of Indian philosophy. In the context of this budding interest, N. C. Paul published his Treatise on Yoga Philosophy in 1851.
The first Hindu teacher to actively advocate and disseminate aspects of yoga to a western audience, Swami Vivekananda, toured Europe and the United States in the 1890s. The reception which Swami Vivekananda received built on the active interest of intellectuals, in particular the New England Transcendentalists, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), who drew on German Romanticism and the interest of philosophers and scholars like G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the brothers August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), Max Mueller (1823–1900), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), and others who had (to varying degrees) interests in things Indian.
Australia's Bette Calman is the oldest female yoga teacher at 83 years old. She teaches at the Indian mental and physical discipline of yoga.
Theosophists also had a large influence on the American public's view of Yoga. Esoteric views current at the end of the 19th century provided a further basis for the reception of Vedanta and of Yoga with its theory and practice of correspondence between the spiritual and the physical. The reception of Yoga and of Vedanta thus entwined with each other and with the (mostly Neoplatonism-based) currents of religious and philosophical reform and transformation throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. M. Eliade, himself rooted in the Romanian currents of these traditions,^{[citation needed]} brought a new element into the reception of Yoga with the strong emphasis on Tantric Yoga in his seminal book: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. With the introduction of the Tantra traditions and philosophy of Yoga, the conception of the "transcendent" to be attained by Yogic practice shifted from experiencing the "transcendent" ("Atman-Brahman" in Advaitic theory) in the mind to the body itself.
The American born yogi by the name of Pierre Arnold Bernard, after his travels through the lands of Kashmir and Bengal, founded the Tantrik Order of America in 1905. His teachings gave many westerners their first glimpse into the practices of yoga and tantra.
The modern scientific study of yoga began with the works of N. C. Paul and Major D. Basu in the late 19th century, and then continued in the 20th century with Sri Yogendra (1897–1989) and Swami Kuvalayananda. Western medical researchers came to Swami Kuvalayananda's Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center, starting in 1928, to study Yoga as a science.
Outside of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain traditions in Asia, the term "yoga" has been usually synonymous with its asanas (postures) or as a form of exercise. This aspect of Yoga was adopted as a cultural trend in Europe and North America starting in the first half of the 20th century. There were periods of criticism and paranoia against yoga as well. By the 1960s, western interest in Hindu spirituality reached its peak, giving rise to a great number of Neo-Hindu schools specifically advocated to a western public. During this period, most of the influential Indian teachers of yoga came from two lineages, those of Sivananda Saraswati (1887–1963) and of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989). Teachers of Hatha yoga who were active in the west in this period included B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014), K. Pattabhi Jois (1915–2009), Swami Vishnu-devananda (1927–1993), and Swami Satchidananda (1914–2002).^{[230][231][232]} Yogi Bhajan brought Kundalini Yoga to the United States in 1969. Comprehensive, classical teachings of Ashtanga Yoga, Samkhya, the subtle body theory, Fitness Asanas, and tantric elements were included in the yoga teachers training by Baba Hari Dass (1923–), in the United States and Canada.
A second "yoga boom" followed in the 1980s, as Dean Ornish, a follower of Swami Satchidananda, connected yoga to heart health, legitimizing yoga as a purely physical system of health exercises outside of counter-culture or esotericism circles, and unconnected to any religious denomination. Numerous asanas seemed modern in origin, and strongly overlapped with 19th and early-20th century Western exercise traditions.

A group of people practicing yoga in 2012.

Since 2001, the popularity of yoga in the USA has expanded. The number of people who practiced some form of yoga has grown from 4 million (in 2001) to 20 million (in 2011). It has drawn support from world leaders such as Barack Obama who stated, "Yoga has become a universal language of spiritual exercise in the United States, crossing many lines of religion and cultures,... Every day, millions of people practice yoga to improve their health and overall well-being. That's why we're encouraging everyone to take part in PALA (Presidential Active Lifestyle Award), so show your support for yoga and answer the challenge".
The American College of Sports Medicine supports the integration of yoga into the exercise regimens of healthy individuals as long as properly-trained professionals deliver instruction. The College cites yoga's promotion of "profound mental, physical and spiritual awareness" and its benefits as a form of stretching, and as an enhancer of breath control and of core strength.

Exercise and health applications

Yoga has been studied and is increasingly recommended to promote relaxation, reduce stress and some medical conditions such as premenstrual syndrome in Europe as well as in the United States. According to Dupler and Frey, Yoga is a low-impact activity that can provide the same benefits as "any well-designed exercise program, increasing general health and stamina, reducing stress, and improving those conditions brought about by sedentary lifestyles". It is particularly suited, add Dupler and Frey, as a physical therapy routine, and as a regimen to strengthen and balance all parts of the body. Yoga has also been used as a complete exercise program and physical therapy routine.
In 2015 the Australian Government's Department of Health published the results of a review of alternative therapies that sought to determine if any were suitable for being covered by health insurance; Yoga was one of 17 practices evaluated for which no clear evidence of effectiveness was found, with the caveat that "Reviewers were limited in drawing definite conclusions, not only due to a lack of studies for some clinical conditions, but also due to the lack of information reported in the reviews and potentially in the primary studies."
While the practice of yoga continues to rise in contemporary American culture, sufficient and adequate knowledge of the practice's origins does not. According to Andrea R. Jain, Yoga is being marketed as a supplement to a cardio routine with health benefits, but in Hinduism it is more than exercise and incorporates meditation with spiritual benefits.

Potential benefits for adults

While much of the medical community regards the results of yoga research as significant, others point to many flaws which undermine results. Much of the research on yoga has taken the form of preliminary studies or clinical trials of low methodological quality, including small sample sizes, inadequate blinding, lack of randomization, and high risk of bias. A 2013 systematic review found strong evidence that yoga was effective for low back pain in the short-term, and moderate evidence that it was effective in the long-term.
There has been an emergence of studies investigating yoga as a complementary intervention for cancer patients. Yoga is used for treatment of cancer patients to decrease depression, insomnia, pain, and fatigue and to increase anxiety control. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs include yoga as a mind-body technique to reduce stress. A study found that after seven weeks the group treated with yoga reported significantly less mood disturbance and reduced stress compared to the control group. Another study found that MBSR had showed positive effects on sleep anxiety, quality of life, and spiritual growth in cancer patients.
Yoga has also been studied as a treatment for schizophrenia.^[247] Some encouraging, but inconclusive, evidence suggests that yoga as a complementary treatment may help alleviate symptoms of schizophrenia and improve health-related quality of life.
Implementation of the Kundalini Yoga Lifestyle has shown to help substance abuse addicts increase their quality of life according to psychological questionnaires like the Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale and the Quality of Recovery Index.
Yoga has been shown in a study to have some cognitive functioning (executive functioning, including inhibitory control) acute benefit.
A 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis found no evidence that yoga was effective for metabolic syndrome.

Physical injuries

A small percentage of yoga practitioners each year suffer physical injuries analogous to sports injuries; therefore, caution and common sense are recommended. Yoga has been criticized for being potentially dangerous and being a cause for a range of serious medical conditions including thoracic outlet syndrome, degenerative arthritis of the cervical spine, spinal stenosis, retinal tears, damage to the common fibular nerve, "Yoga foot drop," etc. An exposé of these problems by William Broad published in January, 2012 in The New York Times Magazine resulted in controversy within the international yoga community. Broad, a science writer, yoga practitioner, and author of The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards, had suffered a back injury while performing a yoga posture. Torn muscles, knee injuries, and headaches are common ailments which may result from yoga practice. An extensive survey of yoga practitioners in Australia showed that about 20% had suffered some physical injury while practicing yoga. In the previous 12 months 4.6% of the respondents had suffered an injury producing prolonged pain or requiring medical treatment. Headstands, shoulder stands, lotus and half lotus (seated cross-legged position), forward bends, backward bends, and handstands produced the greatest number of injuries.
Some yoga practitioners do not recommend certain yoga exercises for women during menstruation, for pregnant women, or for nursing mothers. However, meditation, breathing exercises, and certain postures which are safe and beneficial for women in these categories are encouraged.
Among the main reasons that experts cite for causing negative effects from yoga are beginners' competitiveness and instructors' lack of qualification. As the demand for yoga classes grows, many people get certified to become yoga instructors, often with relatively little training. Not every newly certified instructor can evaluate the condition of every new trainee in their class and recommend refraining from doing certain poses or using appropriate props to avoid injuries. In turn, a beginning yoga student can overestimate the abilities of their body and strive to do advanced poses before their body is flexible or strong enough to perform them.
Vertebral artery dissection, a tear in the arteries in the neck which provide blood to the brain can result from rotation of the neck while the neck is extended. This can occur in a variety of contexts, but is an event which could occur in some yoga practices. This is a very serious condition which can result in a stroke.
Acetabular labral tears, damage to the structure joining the femur and the hip, have been reported to have resulted from yoga practice.

Pediatrics

It is claimed that yoga can be an excellent training for children and adolescents, both as a form of physical exercise and for breathing, focus, mindfulness, and stress relief: many school districts have considered incorporating yoga into their P.E. programs. The Encinitas, California school district gained a San Diego Superior Court Judge's approval to use yoga in P.E., holding against the parents who claimed the practice was intrinsically religious and hence should not be part of a state funded program.

Physiology

Seven chakras of a yogin

Over time, an extended yoga physiology developed, especially within the tantric tradition and hatha yoga. It pictures humans as composed of three bodies or five sheaths which cover the atman. The three bodies are described within the Mandukya Upanishad, which adds a fourth state, turiya, while the five sheaths (pancha-kosas) are described in the Taittiriya Upanishad. They are often integrated:

1. Sthula sarira, the Gross body, comprising the Annamaya Kosha
2. Suksma sarira, the Subtle body, composed of;
   1. the Pranamaya Kosha (Vital breath or Energy),
   2. Manomaya Kosha (Mind)
   3. the Vijnanamaya Kosha (Intellect)
3. Karana sarira, the Causal body, comprising the Anandamaya Kosha (Bliss)

Within the subtle body energy flows through the nadis or channels, and is concentrated within the chakras.

Yoga and specialized meditation

Zen Buddhism

Zen, the name of which derives from the Sanskrit "dhyāna" via the Chinese "ch'an" is a form of Mahayana Buddhism. The Mahayana school of Buddhism is noted for its proximity with yoga.In the west, Zen is often set alongside yoga; the two schools of meditation display obvious family resemblances.This segregation deserves attention because yogic practices integrally exist within the Zen Buddhist school. Certain essential elements of yoga are important both for Buddhism in general and for Zen in particular.

Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism

In the Nyingma tradition, the path of meditation practice is divided into nine yanas, or vehicles, which are said to be increasingly profound. The last six are described as "yoga yanas": "Kriya yoga", "Upa yoga," "Yoga yana," "Mahā yoga," "Anu yoga" and the ultimate practice, "Ati yoga." The Sarma traditions also include Kriya, Upa (called "Charya"), and Yoga, with the Anuttara yoga class substituting for Mahayoga and Atiyoga.
Other tantra yoga practices include a system of 108 bodily postures practiced with breath and heart rhythm. The Nyingma tradition also practices Yantra yoga (Tib. "Trul khor"), a discipline that includes breath work (or pranayama), meditative contemplation and precise dynamic movements to centre the practitioner. The body postures of Tibetan ancient yogis are depicted on the walls of the Dalai Lama's summer temple of Lukhang. A semi-popular account of Tibetan yoga by Chang (1993) refers to caṇḍalī (Tib. "tummo"), the generation of heat in one's own body, as being "the very foundation of the whole of Tibetan yoga." Chang also claims that Tibetan yoga involves reconciliation of apparent polarities, such as prana and mind, relating this to theoretical implications of tantrism.

Reception in other religions

Christianity

Some Christians integrate yoga and other aspects of Eastern spirituality with prayer and meditation. This has been attributed to a desire to experience God in a more complete way.In 2013, Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, servicing Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, having worked for over 23 years with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI),said that for his Meditation, a Christian can learn from other religious traditions (zen, yoga, controlled respiration, Mantra), quoting Aspects of Christian meditation: "Just as "the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions," neither should these ways be rejected out of hand simply because they are not Christian. On the contrary, one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured. It is within the context of all of this that these bits and pieces should be taken up and expressed anew." Previously, the Roman Catholic Church, and some other Christian organizations have expressed concerns and disapproval with respect to some eastern and New Age practices that include yoga and meditation.
In 1989 and 2003, the Vatican issued two documents: Aspects of Christian meditation and "A Christian reflection on the New Age," that were mostly critical of eastern and New Age practices. The 2003 document was published as a 90-page handbook detailing the Vatican's position.The Vatican warned that concentration on the physical aspects of meditation "can degenerate into a cult of the body" and that equating bodily states with mysticism "could also lead to psychic disturbance and, at times, to moral deviations." Such has been compared to the early days of Christianity, when the church opposed the gnostics' belief that salvation came not through faith but through a mystical inner knowledge. The letter also says, "one can see if and how [prayer] might be enriched by meditation methods developed in other religions and cultures" but maintains the idea that "there must be some fit between the nature of [other approaches to] prayer and Christian beliefs about ultimate reality." Some fundamentalist Christian organizations consider yoga to be incompatible with their religious background, considering it a part of the New Age movement inconsistent with Christianity.Another view holds that Christian meditation can lead to religious pluralism. This is held by an interdenominational association of Christians that practice it. "The ritual simultaneously operates as an anchor that maintains, enhances, and promotes denominational activity and a sail that allows institutional boundaries to be crossed."

Islam

In early 11th century, the Persian scholar Al Biruni visited India, lived with Hindus for 16 years, and with their help translated several significant Sanskrit works into Arabic and Persian languages. One of these was Patanjali's Yogasutras. Al Biruni's translation preserved many of the core themes of Patañjali 's Yoga philosophy, but certain sutras and analytical commentaries were restated making it more consistent with Islamic monotheistic theology. Al Biruni's version of Yoga Sutras reached Persia and Arabian peninsula by about 1050 AD. Later, in the 16th century, the hath yoga text Amritakunda was translated into Arabic and then Persian^. Yoga was, however, not accepted by mainstream Sunni and Shia Islam. Minority Islamic sects such as the mystic Sufi movement, particularly in South Asia, adopted Indian yoga practises, including postures and breath control.Muhammad Ghawth, a Shattari Sufi and one of the translators of yoga text in 16th century, drew controversy for his interest in yoga and was persecuted for his Sufi beliefs.
Malaysia's top Islamic body in 2008 passed a fatwa, prohibiting Muslims from practicing yoga, saying it had elements of Hinduism and that its practice was blasphemy, therefore haraam. Some Muslims in Malaysia who had been practicing yoga for years, criticized the decision as "insulting." Sisters in Islam, a women's rights group in Malaysia, also expressed disappointment and said yoga was just a form of exercise. This fatwa is legally enforceable. However, Malaysia's prime minister clarified that yoga as physical exercise is permissible, but the chanting of religious mantras is prohibited.
In 2009, the Council of Ulemas, an Islamic body in Indonesia, passed a fatwa banning yoga on the grounds that it contains Hindu elements.These fatwas have, in turn, been criticized by Darul Uloom Deoband, a Deobandi Islamic seminary in India. Similar fatwas banning yoga, for its link to Hinduism, were issued by the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa in Egypt in 2004, and by Islamic clerics in Singapore earlier.
In Iran, as of May 2014, according to its Yoga Association, there were approximately 200 yoga centres in the country, a quarter of them in the capital Tehran, where groups can often be seen practising in parks. This has been met by opposition among conservatives. In May 2009, Turkey's head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, Ali Bardakoğlu, discounted personal development techniques such as reiki and yoga as commercial ventures that could lead to extremism. His comments were made in the context of reiki and yoga possibly being a form of proselytization at the expense of Islam.

International Day of Yoga

On 11 December 2014, The 193-member United Nations General Assembly approved by consensus, a resolution establishing 21 June as "International Day of Yoga".The declaration of this day came after the call for the adoption of 21 June as International Day of Yoga by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his address to UN General Assembly on 27 September 2014. In suggesting 21 June, which is one of the two solstices, as the International Day of Yoga, Narendra Modi had said that the date is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and has special significance in many parts of the world.The first International Day of Yoga was observed world over on 21 June 2015. About 35,000 people, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a large number of dignitaries, performed 21 yoga asanas (yoga postures) for 35 minutes at Rajpath in New Delhi. The day devoted to yoga was observed by millions across the world. The event at Rajpath established two Guinness records – largest Yoga Class with 35,985 people and the record for the most nationalities participating in it—eighty four.