National YogaFit Day – September 25, 2026

History of National YogaFit Day

There is no consensus on the origins or chronology of yoga other than its development in ancient India. Speculations about yoga began to emerge in the early Upanishads of the first half of the first millennium B.C., as expositions also appeared in Jain and Buddhist texts between 500 B.C. and 200 B.C. During this time, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism were taking shape; teachings were received as sutras, and a philosophical system of “Patanjali Yogashastra” began to emerge.

Yoga satellite traditions began to develop in the Middle Ages having surfaced among educated Western public elites during the mid-19th century. The Vedas, which are the only texts preserved from the early Vedic period and codified between 1200 B.C. and 900 B.C., contain references to yogic and other such practices primarily related to ascetics and on the fringes of Brahmanism. According to the Rig Veda’s Nasadiya Sukta, yoga was an early Brahmanic contemplative tradition. There are mentions of breath control techniques and vital energies in the “Atharvaveda” and in the “Brahmanas,” which is the second layer of the Vedas, composed between 1000B.C. to 800 B.C.

Yoga and other aspects of Indian philosophy came to the attention of the educated Western public during the mid-19th century, and N. C. Paul published his “Treatise on Yoga Philosophy” in 1851. Swami Vivekananda, who was the first Hindu teacher to advocate and disseminate elements of yoga to a Western audience, toured Europe and the United States in the 1890s.