The Sanskrit word asana derives from the verbal root as, meaning "to sit" or "to be present," and, in the context of the Yoga tradition, means "to be established in a particular posture."
Historically the term refers to a wide range of bodily postures that have been transmitted by teachers in India for thousands of years. Because the forms of many of these postures have been more or less precisely defined in the classic texts of the Hatha Yoga tradition, each asana is characterised by certain objective criteria; and, in fact, one traditional definition of asana is "the arrangement of the different components of the body in a specific way." However, the history of Asana is not a record of the possibilities of bodily contortion, nor simply a record of an ancient form of physical culture; rather, Asana evolved as an integral part of a comprehensive spiritual practice oriented toward purification, accomplishment, and realisation.
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