"Because the technique was handed down orally from teachers to students, yoga’s precise beginnings are unknown, but it is thought to have originated more than five thousand years ago in northern India. The Yoga Sutras, one of the earliest texts on yoga (it dates from the year around 1 AD), attempts to organize its previously diverse practices into one system based on eight doctrines, or “limbs.” The third, fourth, and fifth of these limbs evolved into modern Western yoga asana, or physical exercises, pranayama or breating techniques and prathyahara or meditation (literally recovering)."