If you were to envisage yoga as a pie, modern yoga as it is commonly practised in the Western world would see the vast majority of that pie taken up by yoga postures ( āsanas ) and some breathwork ( prāṇāyāma ), with only a tiny sliver devoted to meditation or yoga philosophy. Yet when we look back to the roots of yoga, the earliest descriptions define yoga not as a physical practice, but as the stilling of the mind: Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ ( Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra , 1.2) In this...