Quick links to other pages on this site | Still can't find it? see Site Index Brad Nettles/StaffRachel Glowacki leads Melissa Brandts first-grade class in yoga exercises at Sullivans Island Elementary School.

Rachel Glowacki wears black yoga pants and a peaceful smile, poised to show 50 adults some basic yoga breaths and stretches. But before they start, she issues a note of caution.

For centuries, yoga has been integral to Hinduism, Buddhism and other world religions although the practice of yoga appears to originate before those faiths. Scholars are not certain about the precise origins of yoga, which predates written history.

Archaeologists have discovered stone carvings of figures in what appear to be yoga positions in the Indus Valley dating back 3,000 years or more.

The written term first appears in the oldest sacred Hindu texts, the Rig Veda, around 400 B.C. Buddha also stressed meditation and the use of physical postures.

Hindu monks brought yoga to the West in the late 1800s. In the 1980s, yoga became popular as a system of health exercises.

In Sanskrit, the term means to join or yoke together. What is commonly referred to as yoga in the U.S. often is a system of breathing, stretching and exercise techniques used to unite the mind and body.

Today, there are more than 100 schools of yoga used throughout the world.

Sources: American Institute of Vedic Studies, American Yoga Association, Yoga Journal

Nothing incorporates a religion, says Glowacki, teacher and partner at Kids Yoga Journey.

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