ASANA : POSTURE

Sanskrit āsana: manner of sitting, from āste: he sits

In yoga, asana refers both to the place in which a practitioner (yogi if male, yogini if female) sits and the posture in which he or she sits.. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali defines "asana" as "to be seated in a position that is firm, but relaxed. Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of Yoga.

The first yoga asanas, were most probably seated positions for meditation. It is not until fairly recently in yoga's history (and with the influence of the Western physical culture movement) that asana developed such a wide array of poses and became the most widely practiced aspect of yoga.