[Shivani Devi]

Yoga is one of the world's most ancient practices.

There are seals from Mojendro Dharo in the Indus Valley showing a being seated in moolbhandasana (root chakra lock) also, there are commentaries on oneness and wholeness in the Rig Veda (5,000 - 10,000 BCE).

Shamanism and animism is also one of the oldest (if not the oldest) spiritual practices with people believing in spirits and the unseen world.

So, what happened to cause the centralisation of values? Christianity, disease, scientific rationalism and the capitalist West happened... that's what.

Missionaries started converting what were seen with biased religious zeal as "barbaric savages". That happened during the "Dark Ages" (probably why it was called thus).

Influenza, tuberculosis and syphilis wiped out about half the world's ancient population because they had no resistance to it, science came in then and called the beliefs of the old cultures and ways "superstitious" and "backward" and so people stopped their culture and rituals in the name of "progressive attitude" and much knowledge about the healing powers of medicinal plants was lost.

Lastly, those who lived in poverty, sought to emulate the ways of countries like USA and Europe (Rome and Greece during the Renaissance) as they believed it would bring all the prosperity THEY had.

Internal values were swapped for external ones, humanity became socially based as opposed to traditionally based, books started getting printed and knowledge became the property of those who could afford it..

Wars and pestilence killed off half the world's population again, with many wars fought on either religious or territorial issues, as soon as all those "lines on a map" were created...and the Crusades did a great job of making martyrs out of those who weren't Christian anyway.

The Church of England was established, Martin Luther drew up the reformation... anybody who was considered a "witch" was killed, when that was all just political anyway...and the true Barbarians were the ones who killed all the other Barbarians for being barbaric..

...and the rest, we say is history.