The Different Faces of Yoga For a large majority of people, including many Americans, yoga is a ritualistic series of body contorting movements done while being totally oblivious to any external facets of life. For others, an image of a wise old man sitting atop a mountain appears in their head. These people fail to grasp that these are just superficial aspects of the ancient Indian philosophy that dates back into the time before the existence of Christ. Yoga is actually a religion that has its roots in Vedanta philosophy (Prabhavananda and Isherwood vii). It is also very similar to another Indian religion, Samkha (Eliade 5