The Origins of Yoga

The word yoga is much less old than that. Development of what became yoga probably started around like 1500 BC. The school of yoga that was kind of most influential to what people in Los Angeles mean when they talk about yoga is called Hatha yoga, which was heavily influenced by Buddhism. Several of the earliest Hatha texts, which date from around 1000 AD or so, focus on the preservation of vital force. This is often embodied by semen or menstrual fluid, which was believed to drip out of the body. That's how the book hell bent yogis explain it: forceful fusing of opposites.