What seems significant is that one sutra clearly relates yoga to the clearance of pollution, yoga, in other words, is seen as a tool to construct and maintain social difference – symbolic capital. What effect does it have for the Brahmin to claim that he is free of pollution’? What is the symbolic significance of being pure’ – with the assumption that other people are impure’ or polluted’ – in Axial Age society? I will return these questions in the chapter on monotheistic yoga.
The yoga discourse of the Dharma-sutras seems to indicate that at this time yoga had not successfully conquered the daily life of Brahmins. This genre also seems to indicate a slow acceptance of yoga as later texts put more value and focus on yoga than early ones. Hence this genre confirms similar conclusions made about the Upanishad genre. It is only in the Mahabharata – epic stories for and about the Kshatriyas written down by the Brahmins – that yoga takes a more prominent role and is assumed to be familiar to its Kshatriya audience.
Step your right foot forward on the floor until it is Yoga history under your bent knee and facing straight forward. Bend the left knee, rest it on Yoga history the folded blanket, and raise your foot up the wall. Use more padding under your knee as needed. Try to align the thigh vertically, with the knee directly under or behind the hip. Firm the muscles of both legs, and widen your sitting bones and upper thighs. Lengthen your tailbone down and pull your belly in and up. The stretch will be more intense the closer your knee is to the wall, and the more you pull the tailbone down. Breathe, and stretch up through your spine as well.
