Yoga's global dispersal is the transmission of forms of yoga from the Indian subcontinent to the rest of the world. The process began by the 7th century CE with the arrival of Hinduism in the islands of Southeast Asia (modern Indonesia). Most of the yoga there was meditative but temple statues in Central Java attest to the presence of yoga postures.
From the 8th to the 12th centuries, Tibetan Buddhists translated many yoga texts from Sanskrit. Tibetan yoga is tantric, with meditations, visualisations, and sequences of movements.
Vivekananda's 1893 visit to the US started the development of transnational anglophone yoga. This became mainly postural when Krishnamacharya in the 1930s combined haá¹Âha yoga, Indian wrestling exercises, and modern Western gymnastics. This was spread to the Western world by his pupils Pattabhi Jois, B.K.S. Iyengar, and others. Japan and Korea too acquired yoga in the 20th century, while Latin America took it on after Yogananda's visit to Mexico in 1929.
Yoga is a group of practices that arose in the Indian subcontinent, such as asceticism, meditation, and visualisation, as described in ancient Sanskrit documents including Patañjali's Yoga Sà «tras.
Yoga reached the islands of Southeast Asia by the 7th century CE and continued its spread there until at least 1500 CE. Hinduism survives in Bali but has largely been replaced by Islam elsewhere in the region. Yoga using asanas was a minority practice in Bali and in Java, but seated meditation poses are attested in relief statues at the 9th century Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, while the bodhisattva Maitreya is depicted in a one-legged standing pose at the 9th century Buddhist temple of Borobudur, also in Central Java. Texts in Old Javanese attest to multiple forms of yoga, including PÃÂtañjali's eight-limbed aá¹£á¹ÂÃÂá¹ gayoga and tantric Shaivism's six-limbed á¹£aá¸Âaá¹ gayoga, and combinations of the two. The Dharma PÃÂtañjala expounds the Javanese version of Shaivite SiddhÃÂnta, along with detailed coverage of PÃÂtañjala yoga, paraphrasing and explaining the Yoga Sutras.
The practice of sadyotkrÃÂnti is attested in both Old Javanese and Indian texts; it calls for forceful expulsion of the breath to bring about death, so as to ensure liberation. The practice survives in the religion of modern Bali, where the soul can be recalled during a funeral to improve the outcome. Old Javanese texts on sexual yoga have survived in Bali; they call for meditative sexual union, effectively identifying the partners with the deities KÃÂma and Rati. The ten sacred syllables, the daà Âaká¹£ara, related to the three parts A, U, M of the sacred sound Om à ¥Â, feature prominently in modern Bali, along with the use of mantras.
In modern times, postural yoga has become popular in Indonesian cities, despite a 2009 fatwa against its practice by Indonesian Muslims. Practitioners are however essentially unaware of Bali and Java's medieval traditions of yoga. Many yoga retreats are held in Bali, centred on the town of Ubud.
The Sanskrit word 'yoga' was translated to the Tibetan naljor (rnal âÂÂbyor) in the 8th century, meaning a philosophy-based meditative practice. It was applied both to tantric systems and to Tibetan Buddhist yoga systems such as KÃÂlacakra and MahÃÂmudrÃÂ. A mass of yoga texts was translated from the 8th until the 12th centuries, spurring the growth of Tibetan Buddhism. The six KÃÂlacakra yogas are pranayama, pratyahara, dhyana, dharana, anusmà Âti, and samadhi: all but anusmà Âti ("recollection") share names with branches of PÃÂtañjali's eight-limbed aá¹£á¹ÂÃÂá¹ gayoga. The 11th century Tibetan yogi Milarepa practised tantric yoga, becoming enlightened through "inner heat".
From the 12th century, the 'New Order' classified tantras into four: KriyÃÂtantra, with rituals using a shrine or image of a deity; CaryÃÂtantra, like KriyÃÂtantra with practices like seed-syllable meditation; Yoga tantra, with visualisations of the practitioner as a deity; and Unsurpassed Yoga tantra (Anuttara-yoga-tantra), visualising oneself as a deity and meditating on one's empty nature at the same time.
Tibetan monks continue to practice inner heat yoga in the 21st century at Namdroling Monastery in Karnataka, India. The Sky Dharma (gnam chos) Book Two, Winds, Channels, and Inner Heat, covers 9 trul khor; these are sequences of movements accompanied by holding the breath, deity yoga, and visualisations of the subtle body. Some monks have returned to Tibet to teach.
Yoga came to the Anglophone world beyond India partly because many yoga teachers in India spoke English under the British Raj. Yoga was introduced to the Western world by the spiritual leader Vivekananda's 1893 visit to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and his 1896 book Raja Yoga. However, he rejected Haá¹Âha yoga and its "entirely" physical practices such as asanas as difficult and ineffective for spiritual growth, out of a widely shared distaste for India's wandering yogins. Yoga asanas were brought to America by the yoga teacher Yogendra. He founded a branch of The Yoga Institute in New York state in 1919, starting to make Haá¹Âha yoga acceptable, seeking scientific evidence for its health benefits, and writing books such as his 1928 Yoga Asanas Simplified and his 1931 Yoga Personal Hygiene. The flowing sequences of salute to the sun, Surya Namaskar, now accepted as yoga and containing popular asanas such as Uttanasana and upward and downward dog poses, were popularized by the Rajah of Aundh, Bhawanrao Shrinivasrao Pant Pratinidhi, in the 1920s.
In 1924, the yoga teacher Kuvalayananda founded the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center in Maharashtra, combining asanas with gymnastics, and like Yogendra seeking a scientific and medical basis for yogic practices.
In 1925, Kuvalayananda's rival Paramahansa Yogananda, having moved from India to America, set up the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, and taught yoga, including asanas, breathing, chanting and meditation, to "tens of thousands of Americans". In 1923, Yogananda's younger brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh, founded the Ghosh College of Yoga and Physical Culture in Calcutta.
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888âÂÂ1989), "the father of modern yoga", claimed to have spent seven years with one of the few masters of Haá¹Âha yoga then living, Ramamohana Brahmachari, at Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, from 1912 to 1918. He studied under Kuvalayananda in the 1930s, and then in his yogashala in the Jaganmohan Palace in Mysore created "a marriage of Haá¹Âha yoga, [Indian] wrestling exercises, and modern Western gymnastic movement, and unlike anything seen before in the yoga tradition." The Maharajah of Mysore Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV was a leading advocate of physical culture in India, and a neighbouring hall of his palace was used to teach Surya Namaskar classes, then considered to be gymnastic exercises. Krishnamacharya adapted these sequences of exercises into his flowing vinyasa style of yoga.
Krishnamacharya's pupils included some influential yoga teachers: the Russian Eugenie V. Peterson, known as Indra Devi (from 1937), who moved to Hollywood, taught yoga to celebrities, and wrote the bestselling book Forever Young, Forever Healthy; Pattabhi Jois (from 1927), who founded the flowing style Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga whose Mysore style makes use of repetitions of Surya Namaskar, in 1948, which in turn led to styles of yoga in America such as Power Yoga; and B.K.S. Iyengar (from 1933), his brother-in-law, who founded Iyengar Yoga, with its first centre in Britain. Together they made yoga popular as exercise across the Western world.
Japan has a tradition of meditation from the 6th century, when Buddhism was introduced to the country. Yoga was brought to Japan by the businessman Matsuda Reiyà Â, a pupil of Fujita Reisai (1868âÂÂ1957) who advocated Tanden-style breathing techniques. Reiyà  translated the writings of the American occultist and New Thought advocate Yogi Ramacharaka (from 1916), into Japanese. Among the spiritual practices influenced by New Thought was Tempu Nakamura's (1876âÂÂ1968) Shinshin-tà Âitsu-dà  ("way of mind-body unification", dubbed 'Japanese yoga'); Nakamura claimed he had studied yoga in India. After the Second World War, Oki Masahiro (1921âÂÂ1985) led people to live communally with yoga and meditation. The cult Aum Shinrikyà  grew from Asahara Shoko's Tokyo yoga school which had been founded in 1984. The cult developed a syncretistic doctrine based on both Hinduism and esoteric Buddhism; in 1995, it launched a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway. Since then, yoga in Japan has become less political under the influence of global capitalism, and is practised for personal and psychological goals.
Modern yoga came to Latin America linked to meditation and a desire for spirituality, sometimes with Buddhist meditation. It often conforms to the image of an unbranded "hatha yoga" that Beatrix Hauser has described as a "gentle, recreational, feminized, pacifist, and non-competitive practice". It has been seen there as a belief, a health technique, a philosophy, a practice, and a religious path. An early influence was Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, available in Spanish from 1951. Before that, early in the 20th century, Mexico's president Francisco I. Madero mentioned Indian philosophy; the English occultist Aleister Crowley practised yoga in Mexico; and Yogananda visited Mexico in 1929. Practitioners, "yogis", are usually urban, not formally initiated, and not renunciates, but many are vegetarians and believe in non-violence. There is an orientalism and a religious feeling in yoga spaces. Yoga is practised mainly by converts from Catholicism. Each country has its own national yoga association. "Hatha yoga" is followed in popularity by VinyÃÂsa yoga, Iyengar Yoga, and Ashtanga Yoga as established in the US and Europe. Yoga retreats are often held in attractive places like forests and beaches.
A major group in the region is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which Srila Prabhupada brought to Mexico in 1971; it practises a devotional and ethical (but not physical) yoga, and is established in at least 17 Latin American countries. Swami Muktananda visited Mexico in 1975, establishing his Siddha Yoga there; it has spread to 5 other Latin American countries. Devotees practise meditation, chanting, and mantra repetition. Yoga as exercise was encouraged by the French guru Serge Raynaud de la Ferrière, who visited Venezuela in 1948, establishing the Universal Great Brotherhood (); it has spread to countries including Mexico and Costa Rica. In Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, syncretisms of meditation, yoga, and indigenous purification rituals have been created.
A yoga centre was founded in Seoul in 1955. In the 1980s, in the form of meditation and controlled breathing (pranayama). These aligned with Korean approaches to the breath, and in the 1990s, many Koreans travelled to India to learn more. Around 2000, a more asana-centred yoga was introduced. By 2020, Korea had some 10 yoga organisations providing hatha yoga, hot yoga, and yoga as therapy, and community yoga classes are widespread. Korean scholars are starting to research multiple aspects of modern yoga, and medieval haá¹Âha yoga texts are being translated into Korean. One of the first was the Haá¹Âha yoga pradëpika, translated in 2015.