Patanjali Never Named a Single Asana

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras never name a single asana. So why does almost every yoga teacher training start there? My teacher training, where we read Patanjali last: https://explore.yoga Daily practice and the path: https://ancientscience.com Patanjali altars, handmade in Finland: https://templeartisan.com (Temple Artisan is a project I'm part of. My friend builds the altars.) 0:00 An impossible place to start 0:26 Looking for the manual in Dharamsala 0:57 Three short lines on asana 1:42 Why yoga classes thank a half-serpent 2:19 Forgotten for 700 years 3:27 A snake who wrote books? 4:56 The birth of Patanjali 7:43 What the myth gets right 8:23 Ananta Shesha: the endless remainder 9:39 What's left when everything is taken away 10:28 The one who fell into the hands 11:39 196 lines of someone else's notes 12:21 The whirlpool and the river 14:19 Eight limbs or six? 15:31 You experience the world the way you breathe 16:23 What nose breathing does in the brain 17:15 The chapter most trainings skip 18:09 Dharana, dhyana, samadhi: taking aim 19:23 Are the powers real? 20:09 A materialist from Lapland 21:00 The word trainings avoid: God 22:04 The way of the sun 23:28 The way of the moon 24:47 Taking off the headset, or waking from a dream 25:49 Two endings in the last line 26:32 If you're not planning to become a monk 27:38 An acceptable place to end Sutra translations on screen are my own (transl. Miska Käppi) unless marked otherwise. Sources David Gordon White, The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography (Princeton, 2014) Zelano et al. 2016, Nasal Respiration Entrains Human Limbic Oscillations and Modulates Cognitive Function, J Neurosci 36(49):12448–12467 Rama Prasada (transl.), Patanjali's Yoga Sutras with the commentary of Vyasa and the gloss of Vachaspati Misra (1924) B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Credits Illustrations of the Patanjali myth and other paintings: AI-assisted (Pahari miniature style). Archive images: Penn Libraries (Kislak Center), Wellcome Collection, British Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Met, British Library, Leiden University Library (KITLV), NASA. Thumbnail manuscript: Penn Libraries Ms. Coll. 390 Item 1924 (Public Domain Mark). “Dharamsala View” by Jpatokal, CC BY-SA 4.0 · “Illiterati Cafe Jogiwara” by Sasha India, CC BY-SA 2.0 Chidambaram ceiling paintings: Rainer Halama, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wellcome Collection (Rādhātantra palm-leaf bundle; Teacher and pupil, MS Sanskrit ε 2), CC BY 4.0 “Saltstraumen” by Elena Giglia, CC BY 2.0 · “Saltstraumen” by Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 Northwestern University Weber Arch: Eric Fredericks, CC BY-SA 2.0 Zelano et al. 2016 figures CC BY 4.0 (Fig. 8A adapted: faces removed) “Getting dark after sunset at Pallastunturi” and “Saana & Ala-Kilpisjärvi” by Ximonic (Simo Räsänen), CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY 2.5 “Ivalojoki” by Ninara, CC BY 2.0 Unsplash: Animesh Chauhan, Sarvesh Phansalkar, Sudhakar Chandra, Deepak Singh, Dilip Poddar, Romain Virtuel, Harri P, Jaakko Kemppainen, Austin Curtis, Maxim Tolchinskiy Video: Pexels (yoga classes) #yoga #yogasutras #patanjali