In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores the meaning of yoga and how its traditional understanding developed from the idea of connection.

The word yoga, like many Sanskrit words, originally had a very practical, real-world meaning. It literally meant what we call in English a “yoke.” The words yoga and yoke sound similar because they come from the same Proto-Indo-European root.

A yoke is something placed around the neck of a horse, mule, donkey, ox, or other draft animal so that the animal can pull a cart, plow, chariot, or whatever it is meant to pull. Even today, throughout India, you can see what are generally called bullock carts, where the animals are connected to these yokes and pull various loads.

So originally, yoga meant that yoke. When an animal was connected to the thing it needed to pull, it was connected through the yoke. We could say that the animal was yoked, meaning that a connection had been created.

It did not take long for yoga to move from meaning simply a yoke to meaning a connection. Then it extended to represent the chariot that was connected through the yoke, and from there it moved to the activity associated with the chariot, which was warfare. At one point in the Rigveda, yoga was used in contrast with kshema, which at that time referred to peace.

Over time, the meaning continued to develop. The expression aprāptasya prāptanam yogaha means that when something you have not obtained is obtained, that is called yoga. When you become connected with something, when you are yoked to it, that is yoga. When you protect and preserve what you have obtained, that is called kshema.

Words change, and meanings change, but the central idea of yoga has remained the creation of a connection and the activity that comes from that connection.

In Ayurveda, when we speak of a yoga, we are referring to combining substances such as herbs, minerals, and sometimes animal products in a particular way to create a preparation that can be useful for treatment.

In Jyotisha, yoga refers to combinations, such as the relationship between a planet and a star, a planet and a constellation, a planet and a particular house, or other combinations that create circumstances from which possible results can be interpreted.

The word yoga has many other meanings as well. It can even refer to things such as espionage and other activities that may seem unrelated. But all of these meanings come from the same basic idea: a connection between one thing and another that produces some kind of result.

Eventually, even within Vedic traditions, yoga developed another meaning. In the Mahabharata, when a warrior on a chariot realized that he was about to die, he could be understood as being connected to another kind of chariot, one that would carry him to the heavenly realm where warriors were believed to exist through the Sun.

There are also references to gods and goddesses traveling through space using yogas. Sometimes the word vimana is used, but yoga can also refer to a subtle or celestial vehicle.

Does this mean a flying saucer? Nobody knows. But it does indicate that there were ideas of conveyances in subtle realms as well as in the physical world.

This is only a small portion of the possible meanings and implications of the word yoga. So when you use the word yoga, it is important to remember the many layers of meaning contained within it.