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Vivekananda poses wearing all black and a turban, his hands crossed. Includes a handwritten quote in Bengali on the left and his signature.
Portrait of Swami Vivekananda (1893).

Swami Vivekananda documented as the first practitioner to introduce yoga on a large scale to the U.S.

1893

TFCM
Portrait of Swami Vivekananda (1893).

While it is assumed that yoga practitioners had already been teaching in the U.S., this is the first documented large-scale teaching, and it takes place at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He will open two groups for the teaching of yoga and publish a book on his practices, but his community of followers in the U.S. will remain small in this time period. Vivekananda focuses exclusively on pranayama, meditation and positive thinking, bringing with him prejudices against asanas and other physical movements as being a kind of "low class" performance.