Singleton, Yoga Body, notes

However, in spite of the immense popularity of postural yoga worldwide, there is little or no evidence that asana (excepting certain seated postures of meditation) has ever been the primary aspect of any Indian yoga practice tradition-including the medieval, body-oriented hatha yoga-in spite of the self-authenticating claims of many modern yoga schools (see chapter 1). The primacy of asana performance in transnational yoga today is a new phenomenon that has no parallel in premodern times.

Consider modern yoga on its own terms. Look at it as a homonym

Krishnamacharya grafted gymnastic or aerobic asana with the yogasutras, creating a new tradition; his teachings were experimental and he innovated on the spot

Yoga considered poor man's physical culture because it was available for free, in contrast to Iyer's body building at Mysore Palace; but it presented an alternative to western body building and had the advantage of being indigenous, cultural a significant part of Krishnamacharya's task was to develop spectacular asana and rescue yoga's tainted reputation and partly for sheer entertainment;  impart the ashtanga vinyasa flow was designed for performance; demonstrations were a hook, theatre, to interest people in yoga, related to contortionism ad fakirs

Krishnam. Used gymnastics texts freely and inherited the gymnastics hall with ropes and other equipment

Modern Indian physical culture grew up in reaction to foreign, colonial forms from Maclaren and Ling; bukh's Primary Gymnastics was Dutch influence 

His teachings mixed cultural adaptation, radical innovation and fidelity ot tradition; he drew on a lot but it doesn't invalidate the method

Singleton argues that today's asanas are not mere gymnastics; doesn't follow thet are lacking in seriousness dignity or profundity.  Feurstein argues that western yoga has stripped it of spirituality. Singleton argues against that. Vivekananda was first expression of transnational yoga; Today's yoga started in India, not north America; (location 217 in book), possibility of physical fitness as spiritual practice

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