The Ancient Yoga Strap: A Brief History of the Yogapaṭṭa

Guest blogpost for The Luminescent. Original post can be found here: http://www.theluminescent.org/2018/06/the-ancient-yoga-strap-yogapatta.html

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Abstract

This article will provide a small window onto the longue durée of the yogapaṭṭa, or “yoga strap,” and introduce a brief selection of the textual, visual, and material sources available for constructing its history. It will demonstrate that although the use of a yoga strap in postural yoga is typically credited as an “invention” of BKS Iyengar in the 1960s, the notion of a cloth strap used to support one’s physical yogic practice turns out to be just about as old as the discipline of yoga itself.