Abstract

This text aims to summarise briefly the history of yoga inculturation in the Slovak and Czech Republics since the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Due to the restriction in accessibility of archival data and time constraints, it does not aspire to give a full outline of the history of yoga in the mentioned countries.

The history of yoga in the area which is now Slovakia and the Czech Republic starts at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. We know that Swami Vivekananda visited Budapest in 1911 and it is possible to assume that he contacted people who were interested in Indian Philosophy. In addition, the famous Hungarian writer Jókai Mór (1825-1904) wrote a essay in which locals try to adapt to Hindu principles, indicating that in the late 19th century Indian philosophy was becoming known. Furthermore, Adelma von Vay (1840-1925) – a clairvoyant – published a number of books that had implications for yoga. In the Czech part of the Monarchy, Buddhist studies were written by G. Meyrink. In 1874 the 4-volume work of F. Čupra – the Teachings of Old India – appeared and he also translated the Bhagavad Gita in 1877. The Theosophical lineage was known both in the Hungarian and Czech areas, with the Theosophical Society being established in Hungary in 1875 and in the Czech area (by V. Procházka) in 1897.  K. Weinfurter established the Psyché association and started publishing books on yoga (The Wonders and Tricks of Indian Fakirs, The Burning Bush, The Royal Path [Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras] or The Lamp of Hatha yoga [Hatha Yoga Pradipika]).  After the First World War, when the Czechoslovak Republic was established, the Bhagavad Gita was published again by R. Janíček (1945). V. Lesný  had been publishing books related to yoga since 1929. In the 1930s the Unitarian N.F. Čapek (1870-1942) published a number of books with yogic context, just as P.A.Toušek had been doing since 1935. The translations of P. Brunton´s book The Search in Secret India in 1937 helped to increase the interest in yoga.  In 1937 D. O’Neel gave a lecture on ‘Tibetan magicians and initiates’ in Brno.  L. Novický translated the Autobiography of a Yogi into Czech. Later a new generation of authors working in the area of Buddhism and Yoga appeared (F. Drtikol, R. Máša, L. Procháska, K. Minařík).

After 1948 when the Communists took over, yoga was forbidden as an ideologically unacceptable subject. Thus, those interested in yoga could study and practise yoga only through old literature (such as that by S. Yesudian and E. Haich etc.), ‘samizdats’ (i.e. books produced on typewriters  with a maximum of six copies) or in underground yoga movements, which existed mainly in Prague and Brno. After 1964 they started to appear also in Slovakia and in 1968 the first book on yoga in Slovak was published by A. Kogler.

There was a revival of interest in yoga in the 1960s, when the political pressure started to ease a bit, but misconceptions about yoga were rife. Group practices began to spread in  Klárov (Prague) the Unitarian brother J. Holub educated some other practitioners such as Dr. K. Maier and J. Čupera in yoga. The first papers by B. Merhaut and M. Bartonova were published in the Novy Orient journal and articles by other authors in various periodicals also appeared. The practice of Hatha Yoga asanas aroused wide interest among both the medical and physical education audiences, and practices were organised by the Trade unions (ROH), the Czechoslovak Women’s Union, in physical education clubs, and in district cultural centres. The approach to yoga practices was, however, not uniform at that time. In 1968, the first Czech book on Hatha Yoga, written by a leading Indologist Dr. K. Werner, was published, comprehensively presenting hatha yoga as a physical education system.  In the 1960s he founded and led the Yoga Club in Brno, which continued even after his emigration in 1968. Apart from him,  practices were also fostered by B. Houser (Brno)  and Dr.Z. Bašný and the ‘Prague School of Yoga’, founded and initiated by J. Holub and his disciple Dr. J. Mayer, began to develop.  After the publication of the previously mentioned Hatha yoga book, yoga began to be used on a wider scale and yoga clubs were formed in many places and Brno became the cradle of Czechoslovak yoga. At the State Pedagogical publishing house, V. Knížetová led yoga courses in the Central Institute of Physical Culture (ÚÚTK), which was the centre of the future organisational structure of  Dr. M. Bartoňová, who participated in the first international yoga teacher training course, conducted by Swami Satyananda in Munger, India. Dr. Bartoňová was a pioneer of yoga teaching who started to organise courses with her collaborators in Prague. She was an inspiring personality and her students (V. Hošek, Dr. Kubíčková and others) further developed her understanding of yoga and yoga practices. The Unitaria, where she taught yoga, was visited in 1960 by Swami Premananda, and in 1966 by Ma Yogashakti, a disciple of Satyananda and Sri Janardan. Luisa Ossius – Zábranská, a native of Strakonice, who was already in a wheelchair after a car accident, but was inspired by Swami Vishnudevananda,  came from Florida in 1967 as an 82-year-old yoga teacher. Her teacher also came to Czechoslovakia in 1968 with a group of students. In that year, a preparatory committee for the coordination of yoga in Czechoslovakia met, but due to disunity it did not continue its activities. The first summer camp took place near Mladá Vozica in 1967, and there were others later at Kopná, Moravské Budějovice, Komorní Lhotka and Vidžín, as well as other places.  Z. Bronislavská, ballerina at the National Theatre in Prague, who was another participant in the International Yoga School (BSY) in Munger together with J. Čumpelík, a student of Swami Devamurti, developed a system of yoga positions for ballet. In those years other important intellectual personalities were active in Prague, including Dr. Z. Bašný, Dr. I. Fišer, Indologist Dr. D. Zbavitel, Dr. V. Miltner, Dr. J.A. Máša, Dr. E. Tomáš, Dr. M. Frýba and many others. All of them revived interest in the wisdom of ancient India and its specific legacy – yoga – and they attracted many people interested in yoga.

The spread of yoga in health and physical education could not be separated, because both fields have evolved simultaneously and in cooperation with each other. From the early 1970s onwards, many physicians like Dr. Z. Pinta, O. Gregor, Doc. J. Dvořák and others got acquainted with yoga through the courses of M. Bartoňová. Experimental research was started by Dr. Z. Bašný, head physician at the Psychiatric Hospital in Prague, who initiated yoga practice at a branch of J.E. Purkyně’s Czechoslovak Medical Society. Dr. Engel, the chief physician, incorporated yoga exercises into rehabilitation in the Vltava sanatorium in Mariánské Lázně and in Prague along with Dr. Fr. Véle at the neurological clinic of Professor Lewit. After a time, an interdisciplinary team was formed, which attempted to summarise the knowledge of different types of yoga. It evaluated its potential in sport, physical education, rehabilitation and psychotherapy. The first result of that work was the publication Yoga – from Ancient India to Today, with a distinctly cultural and historical orientation, by the authors Bartoňová-Bašný-Merhaut-Skarnitzl.

For the practical teaching of yoga practices, regular visits by Dr. M.V. Bhole, at that time the director of the research section of the Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute in Lonavla, India, were especially important. He first visited Czechoslovakia in 1972 and came back regularly until he passed away. In 1978, he also had a period of study at the Institute of Physiological Regulation of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague (Prof. C. Dostálek). In 1977 G.M. Timčák and P. Mišík visited India upon the invitation of S. Goyal and were able to meet yoga masters there, including B.K.S. Iyengar, and brought this knowledge to yoga practitioners at home. In 1980 G.M. Timčák  stayed in India for nearly a year and – apart from his professional commitments – interacted with a number of yogis (Prabhúdatta Brahmachari, Deoraha Baba, Swami Ashishananda, Ananada Mai Ma, Swami Vireshwarananda, Swami Nirvananda, Suren Goyal and others). In the same year, J. Jablonská, another Košice-based yoga teacher, visited India and its yogis. In 1983 the already existing Košice yoga organisation was also in dialogue with the Indian Academy of Yoga and that same year an unexpected yogi came from the Soviet Union – V.I. Voronin, who visited most of the Czech and Slovak Yoga organisations.

From 1973 onwards, P.S. Maheshwarananda and his system of Yoga in Daily Life (adopted at that time mostly from the Satyananda system) began to be applied in rehabilitation and spa treatments. In 1974, the publication of Fundamentals of Hatha Yoga, Pranayama and Mudras (lecture notes in Prague) by Swami Gitananda appeared. There were several visits by Gérard Blitz (who attempted to integrate Czechoslovak yoga into the EUY in 1976), A. van Lysebeth and Prof. Singh as well as visits by Scandinavian yoga teachers, all of which contributed to the  great interest in the practice of yoga in Czechoslovakia. In 1973, Aviyogi Suren Goyal from New Delhi, creator of the 4×4 system, which he was refining up to his passing away, also began to visit Czechoslovakia.

Since the 1970s, the mechanisms of the effects of yoga practices in terms of their potential use for healing (especially of civilisational diseases) were studied at the Institute of Physiological  Regulations of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences  whose director  was the Academician C. Dostálek. The first experimental study in our country was, however, published by Bena and Formánek in 1971. They monitored changes in heart and brain activity in the headstand position. In addition to the staff of the Institute (Dr. V. Lepičovská, Dr. E. Roldán and others),  staff at other institutions (Dr. F. Véle, Dr. J. Faber and others) were also working on yoga-related medical research. Dostálek’s attempt to explain the action mechanism of yoga practices was favourably received in India itself (Academician Dostálek was elected a founding member of the Indian Academy of Yoga) and in Europe (there were invitations to lecture in Italy, Great Britain and France). The working and friendly relations of this Institute were also mutually beneficial for cooperation between the Institute of  Physiological Regulations of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and the Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute in Lonavla, the University of Varanasi and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. On the basis of this collaboration exchanges of researchers and yoga practitioners began. Academician C. Dostalek visited several Indian research institutions several times, in 1982 the psychologist Dr. V. Doležalová from Prague was given a scholarship by the Ministry of Education to study the therapeutic experience of yoga in India and later Dr. J. Motajová from Bratislava also travelled there.

Publication activity in this field was also increasingly rich. In 1969, P. Plch’s booklet ‘Hatha Yoga’ was published by Olympia PC as a teaching text of the Czechoslovak Sports Organisation (CSTV); in 1970 C. Dostálek’s article  ‘Research on Yoga in contemporary India’ appeared and in 1972, Z. Bronislawska, inspired by her teacher Swami Satyananda, published Yoga – the Sunny Way to Beauty and Health with her co-author V Jindřich.  In that year the book Yoga written by the leading Belgian yoga teacher A.van Lysebeth was translated for the first time into Czech. This and other books of van Lysebeth were very popular  among Czechoslovak yoga practitioners.  In 1977, the child neurologist Dr. M. Zemánková started to organise classes in Ostrava for children with mild brain dysfunction. Similarly, in cooperation with other physicians, and together with M. Durasová, she ran a class for asthmatic children in Pilsen and Dr. Filípková in Brno used yoga with children with muscle tension disorder.

In 1977, Dr. V. Doležalová started yoga practices as an experimental technique in rehabilitation. In the same year, the Commission for yoga in rehabilitation was established as part of the Czech and Slovak Rehabilitation Society. During the first 10 years of the Commission’s work on the use of yoga in rehabilitation, more than 300 medical practitioners  – rehabilitation workers and nurses, psychologists, and others – became members, and many of them gained positive experience in the regular practice of yoga. Many yoga branches were formed for different health impairments, in cooperation with yoga supporters, health professionals and yoga instructors from the CSTV sections and then friendly relations were established between physicians and other health professionals and experienced yoga instructors. Elements of yoga also began to be used by the Disabled People’s Association, especially with multiple sclerosis patients and cardiac patients. The Commission for the Use of Yoga in Rehabilitation organised national conferences, a number of professional days, seminars and courses, which still take place in the Czech Republic. The first conference on the application of yoga in rehabilitation medicine in Šaca, Slovakia, took place in 1978 and other conferences were also held, where yoga was discussed in specifically professional sections. Unfortunately, this continuity was interrupted.  The first international conference within the framework of the activities of the Medical as well as the Rehabilitation Society, was organised in 1978 especially by Dr. Š. Szöke, Dr. V. Salzmann and G.M. Timčák PhD in Šaca. The proceedings of the conference were published, but at that time it could only be termed ‘Abstracts’. For the first time in Slovakia, it was then also possible to teach Transcendental Meditation (through R. Dayal, a disciple of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). In 1978, yoga began to be used in the therapy of patients in the oncology ward at Motol University Hospital in Prague and in 1986 Dr. O. Dostálová, who led yoga practices for cancer patients, published a book, Psychotherapy of Cancer, where she also wrote about the use of yoga as a therapeutic tool.

In 1978 at the Institute of Yoga, in collaboration with V. Kaplánová from the Central Physical Education School of the ČSTV (Czechoslovak Association for Physical Culture), the Yoga Commission organised the first yoga teacher training course. The methodological commission was headed by V. Knížetová. It turned out that in many cities there were already numerous yoga organisations where interested individuals led regular yoga practices and organised larger events (e.g. week-long courses of TJ Yoga Olomouc in Kopná, organised by M. Renotierová,  Ing. V. Hošek in Pilsen, Ing. V. Zeman in Brno, Ing. G.M. Timčák in Kopná and near Košice, as well as others).

In 1984 new perspectives for the application of yoga practices in ZRTV (Basic recreational physical education and sport) were opened up and 105 yoga groups became part of it at the ČSTV. The membership pool represented almost all age groups. Due to the massive interest a subcommittee of yoga practices was formed under the health commission of the ZRTV and later also under a national sub-commission of yoga practices.

A methodical conference started to be organised by the staff of the ZRTV, members of the yoga section of the TJ Geofyzika Brno under the leadership of V. Zeman and members of the Institute of Physiological Regulation of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences under the leadership of C. Dostálek. At the second conference in 1985 Prof. Dr. P. Beohar from the Faculty of Medicine, University of New Delhi and Dr. M.V. Bhole were guests from India. A paper was also sent by Prof. M.D. R.H. Singh from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Benares. All  made significant contributions to a modern, highly rational interpretation of  traditional Yoga and shed light on its application in our contemporary medicine and physical education. Professional papers began to appear monthly in the magazine Basic and Recreational Physical Culture. In 1988 Yoga through the eyes of doctors was published by a group of physicians – Dr. V. Doležalová, CSc., Academician C. Dostálek, DrSc., Dr. V. Lepičovská, CSc., Dr. K. Nešpor, Dr. J. Šedivý, Dr, J. Votava, CSc.  In 1987, the second amended edition of the yoga TTC study programme ‘Content of the physical education process in the yoga exercise sections of the ZRTV’ was approved, which included the structure of the curriculum of TTC and yoga courses. This was the basis for post-1990 versions of the TTC curricula.

In 1982 seminars of yoga practices were held in Darkov and Bardejov and in 1983 the first summer courses were held in Slovakia. In 1986 M. Rosner visited Slovakia,  leading to the establishment of the Danubius Centre. Rossner and Rossner conducted training courses in the field of Yoga for children.

In Slovakia yoga was publicly taught from 1970 onwards within the TJ Vinohrady in Bratislava. In Košice yoga started to be publicly practised within the TJ Slavia VŠT Košice – yoga practice section from 1974. The first Slovak yoga textbooks were published by M. Polášek (Bratislava) and G.M. Timčák (Košice).

The first certified yoga teachers  graduated from Czechoslovak TTC programmes in Prague (from 1978), the first certified yoga teachers in Slovakia being M. Polášek and G.M. Timčák. In 1992 the Slovak Yoga Association (SAJ) was founded, bringing together at that time 7 (presently 6)
Slovak organisations teaching yoga. From 1992 it had an accredited 300h- TTC programme through the Ministry of Education and since 1998 has also offered teacher training courses in Hungary. In 2000 the SAJ became a member of the European Union of Yoga, and its 500h-/4-year TTP was approved by the EUY in 2010. More than 500 students have now graduated from the original SAJ TTC courses and SAJ  teachers have been invited to teach at the Zinal Congress since 1995.

In the Czech Republic yoga teachers and practitioners were associated in a number of organisations, such as the Združení učitelů jogy ČR. Český svaz jogy  and  Unie jogy.

After 1990 the development of various types of yoga and the appearance of international and global yoga schools made the full spectrum of yoga types available to those interested. Its branching and development would require a far more extensive paper.