Why yoga at home is simple, fun and rewarding (by Lucy Greeves, 23 Oct

2022) an excerpt

Push back ___ sofa and roll out your mat for Hatha yoga sessions in your front
room
Yoga studios had ___ tough ___ pandemic. Just as ___ public’s interest in ___
yoga reached ___ all-time peak, in-person classes – with all that close bodily
proximity and deep breathing – came to ___ abrupt stop. But ___ new paradigm
emerged almost overnight: coffee tables were pushed aside for yoga mats and this
ever-evolving form with its roots in ___ ascetic practices of medieval India entered
___ Zoom world. ___ teachers grappled with ___ video conferencing and ___
online payments, while ___ students figured out how to use ___ mute button to
stop ___ kids’ Fortnite sessions from interrupting everyone’s savasana.
Yoga, it turned out, was coming ___ home. ___ whopping 91% of yoga students
and 86% of teachers continued their classes from ___ home, more than double
___ number who had ever tried ___ online class before. Two and ___ half years
on, there’s ___ new normal. Many studios have reopened and, much like office life,
yoga has settled into ___ hybrid pattern that combines in-person and at-home
practice. But look closer and it isn’t so new at all.
In ___ medieval yoga handbook known as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, any serious
student is directed to live alone, in ___ well-administered and virtuous kingdom,
and to maintain ___ spotlessly clean practice room. [...]

For ___ great majority of hatha yoga’s history (___ kind of yoga that includes
physical postures, not just philosophy or meditation), ___ combination of ___
personal instruction and solitary practice at home was typical. You would go to your
guru for ___ new piece of instruction, then return ___ home and practise
diligently until you were ready for ___ next lesson. The group yoga class, where
___ room full of people all perform ___ same set of ___ postures simultaneously,
is largely ___ 20th-century invention. From ___ 1930s onwards, hatha yoga
experienced ___ great revival in its native India.