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Yoga is one of those words that almost everyone recognises until someone asks what it actually means.
For some, it is stretching. For others, it is fitness. It can be stress relief after a long day, a heated class, a room full of mirrors, carefully aligned postures, expensive leggings, incense, retreats, or social media photographs taken in impossibly beautiful locations.
Every answer contains something true.
Even so, the more I have reflected on yoga over the years, the more I have come to wonder whether much of its original meaning has quietly drifted into the background.
According to many interpretations, the word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning "to yoke" or "to unite". At its heart, yoga points towards union: the integration of body, mind, breath and spirit, and ultimately the relationship between the individual and something greater than the self.
That understanding feels quite different from how yoga is often presented today.
The modern world has become remarkably good at packaging almost everything as something to consume, and yoga has hardly escaped that process.
Spend a few minutes online and it is not difficult to find beautifully photographed studios, increasingly advanced postures and endless advice about flexibility, strength and physical transformation. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Physical practice has genuine value, and many people first discover yoga through movement alone.
The question, at least for me, is whether we sometimes mistake one part of yoga for the whole.
When attention becomes centred almost entirely on how a posture looks rather than how it feels, or what it quietly reveals within us, something deeper can easily be overlooked.