15 Aug 2026
issue 15 August 2026
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‘Well, we all have areas of ignorance,’ said my husband with a little too much relish, I thought. He was responding to my admission that I had reached a ripe old age without realising that the words yoga and yoke had the same origin.
Yoke has been used in English for more than 1,000 years and yoga only since about 1785, but it had been in use in Sanskrit since the first millennium bc. The meaning of yoga was held to be either the yoking and reining in of the senses, or the yoking and joining oneself to the Prana (life force), the Om (absolute) and the Universe.
