originally published on Healthline.com

Get your yoga start with Tiffany Cruikshank, founder of Yoga Medicine
Known as a teacher’s teacher, international yogi, author, and health and wellness expert Tiffany Cruikshank founded Yoga Medicine as a platform to connect people and doctors with experienced yoga teachers. Yoga Medicine’s ever-expanding community of teachers are trained to understand body anatomy, biomechanics, physiology, and the traditional practice of yoga.

And with this fortitude of knowledge, they’re able to create individualized, effective yoga programs for each student. Ready to channel your inner yogi? Get your start with this comprehensive guide, crafted by Tiffany and her team of accomplished Yoga Medicine teachers, trainers, and contributors.

The history of yoga and how it developed into the practice you know today

By Dana Diament, a Yoga Medicine instructor based in Byron Bay, Australia. You can follow her journey at danadiament.com.

Ask any yoga practitioner to define yoga, and you’re likely to get a myriad of answers. For some, it’s a way to feel good in their bodies. For others, it’s a spiritual practice, and for many, a way of life. But regardless of your approach, yoga can help reshape and unravel your habitual or unconscious patterns.

Practicing yoga helps provide a foundation and tools to building good habits, such as discipline, self-inquiry, and nonattachment. This exercise Yoga is also a pathway to empower you to make conscious choices to live a healthy and fulfilling life. Today, many agree that the word yuj — which yoga derives from — refers to greater internal states, such as clarity, peace, and happiness.

One prevalent definition comes from “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” compiled before 400 A.D. In the second verse of the first book, yoga is defined as the “cessation of mind wandering.” The sutras also provide an eight-limb system that guides the practitioner to transcend beyond the mind and attain freedom.

 

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