Yoga (group)

Considering all that Osho talks about Yoga -- and it's a lot, ten vols of Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega (series) -- extolling the virtues of Patanjali's scientific system of using the mind and body to go beyond the mind and body, it is perhaps surprising that there appears to have been so little offered in the way of Yoga groups.

Maybe more will turn up, but for now all we can find is one small run in Feb-Mar 1976, according to the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water. It is not known whether this little group was a drop-in type or days-long intensive. It was led by Sw Pujari (potential middle name unknown), this infobit from a Darshan Diary, more precise ref coming soon.

The page on the Yoga (series) referenced above addresses what may be a key point in the mystery of the non-appearance of a Yoga group. It notes, "In his previous long-running series of talks in English, The Book of the Secrets / Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, ended just a month before the Yoga series started, Osho had expounded on the value of 'let-go', non-control and spontaneity, over what he characterized as yoga's focus on effort. Here, celebrating the strengths of Patanjali's approach, it is not effort but science".

It may be this element of "effort", and Osho's occasional characterization of Yoga as repressive that has doomed any would-be Yoga group. Although Osho wanted to give Patanjali his due -- and noting the appeal of Yoga in the West -- it may have had too much baggage to have much of a place in his ashram. See also the hybrid Tantra Yoga, which had somewhat of a longer run.