Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual practice or discipline which originated in India. There is a broad variety of schools, practices and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism (particularlyVajrayana Buddhism) and Jainism. The best-known are Hatha yoga and Rāja yoga.

The origins of yoga have been speculated to date back to pre-Vedic Indian traditions, but most likely developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in ancient India’s ascetic and śramaṇa movements. The chronology of earliest texts describing yoga-practices is unclear, varyingly credited to Hindu Upanishads and Buddhist Pāli Canon, probably of third century BCE or later. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the first half of the 1st millennium CE, but only gained prominence in the 20th century. Hatha yoga texts emerged around the 11th century with origins in tantra.