Yoga is my passion.  I teach it to the people of my town and they've been very receptive.
It's a really great practice for spirituality, and also the physical and mental. It actually originated in ancient India.
Yeah, it has religious links, but I tell most of my students that it's mainly for low impact exercise.  I'm not running a church here, heh.
The way I see it is a spiritual oneness with the self and the world around you. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all revolve around that thought in relation to yoga.
Yeah I had a few students get really into the spirutal part of it and on became a Buddhist.  I wonder if he was heading that way already, and yoga helped him.
That's pretty cool. It's amazing how long it has been around. They found Hatha yoga texts from around the 11th century.
That long, eh?  I used to make a pretty good money teaching yoga, but it got way more popualr and usddenly I have a lot of competition.
Yeah, it's been on an upward popular trend since the 1980s and I don't see it slowing down any time soon in the Western World.
I think we'll hit peak Yoga sooner than later though, once a new popualr exercise emerges.  then I can be left to study and teach yoga to true adherents who aren't chasing fads.
My own personal belief is that it is here to stay because of the spiritual component, but in India they see it as meditative as well.