Other forms: yogas
Yoga is a practice of held body positions and controlled breathing, usually done on a mat. Do yoga, a yoga class, yoga mat.
In the West it is mostly physical exercise, but in its Indian origins yoga is a spiritual discipline of which the postures are one part. The postures are called asanas and have Sanskrit names — downward dog, warrior, tree. Common styles include hatha, vinyasa, ashtanga and bikram. Note yogi, a person who practises it seriously, and that pronunciation is YOH-ga in English and closer to YOH-g in Sanskrit.
1nounyogaA practice of held body positions and controlled breathing.
“She has done yoga every morning for eleven years.”
yoga is a physical and spiritual practice.
Sanskrit yoga means yoking or union, from a root meaning to join — the very same Proto-Indo-European root that gives English yoke and Latin jungere, to join. Yoga and junction are cousins, and the union in question is of body and mind.
Sanskrit
योग॑
English, today
yoga
Built from
Borrowed from Sanskrit योग॑. Sanskrit योग (“yoking, union”), from inc-pro yáwgas, from Proto-Indo-Iranian yáwgas, from Proto-Indo-European yéwg-o-s, from yewg- (“to join”) (whence also yoke).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA