Posture Sequences and Flow In Pre-Modern Yoga

"As Mark [Singleton] points out in Yoga Body, the number of basic gymnastic or contortionist postures that the body can assume is finite and similarities between yogic āsanas and such postures as practised in the West cannot be put down to influence either way. But one feature of certain styles of modern postural yoga identified by Mark as an innovation brought in under the influence of modern Western gymnastics does set it apart from pre-modern yoga: the linking of āsanas into sequences. With a couple of anomalous and trivial exceptions it is clear from textual sources, travellers’ reports and my own fieldwork among ascetic yogis today that in traditional yoga practice āsanas, like the poses held by ascetics mentioned in the Mahābhārata and other ancient texts, are to be held for relatively long periods and that no fixed order is prescribed for their practice. Such a conclusion is unsurprising in the light of the implication of sedentariness expressed by the word āsana itself."

From "A Response to Mark Singleton's Yoga Body" by James Mallison