After his famous address at the Parliament of religions in Chicago in September 1893, Swami Vivekananda founded the Vedanta society in New York. He began giving free private classes in yoga and Vedanta. He spent two years in the city by which time the popularity of Yoga began growing. It was also accepted as a healthy technique for exercise and a mentally liberating spiritual philosophy.
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The Hindu God Shiva is considered as the first Guru (Adi Guru) or first Yogi of Yoga. According to Hindu scriptures regarding yoga, it was the God Shiva who imparted the knowledge of Yoga to the seven saints or saptarishi. These were seven spiritual representatives of various Hindu Gods as mentioned in Vedic literature.
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Maharishi Patanjali is a saint believed to have lived during the 2nd Century BCE. He is regarded as the father of modern yoga. The word Yoga is also attributed to him as it appeared in his first treatise the “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali”. Vedic scholars and history regard Patnajali’s Yoga sutras as the first valid compilation of Yogic Philosophy.
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