Paths of Yoga: a Brazilian pilgrimage from Rishikesh to the sources of the Ganges

The Brazilian crew arrived in India looking for postures, breathing and meditation, the yoga the West knows from the gym. They came back talking about devotion, renunciation and 14-kilometer hikes to temples more than 3,000 meters above sea level. Caminhos do Yoga (Paths of Yoga), a 2004 Brazilian documentary, records that change of course.

The film is directed by journalist Daisy Rocha and screenwriter Tereza Freire, who also wrote and narrates the text. Pedro Kupfer served as yoga consultant. It is an independent production by Terra Comunicação. Over 52 minutes, it follows a month-long trip by four people, among them a yoga teacher and a photographer, through what is now the state of Uttarakhand, in the north of the country.

Rishikesh, city of ashrams

The starting point is Rishikesh, on the banks of the Ganges at the foot of the Himalayas, which became famous in the West after the Beatles' visit in the 1960s. The film works almost as a guide to the ashrams, the communities of study and practice that host visitors: Sivananda's, founded by a physician and still running a hospital; postural yoga schools full of foreigners; and the ashram of Swami Dayananda, where there is no physical yoga at all, only the study of the Vedas and philosophy, like a college with a monastery's routine.

Devotion as a path

Little by little, the film trades postures for rituals. It shows puja, the ceremony in which a deity is received as a guest, bathed and adorned with flowers, and the aarti of Haridwar, the offering of lights to the river at nightfall. The narration presents these gestures as bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, and recalls that the central source of yoga philosophy is the Bhagavad Gītā, the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna about acting without clinging to results.

Toward the sources

The final part is the pilgrimage. The crew climbs to Badrinath, to Kedarnath, which requires a trek on foot, and to Gangotri, which symbolizes the source of the Ganges. For Hindus, seeing the sacred image in the temple and bathing in the river are forms of purification. The landscapes are the film's high point.

What to keep in mind

The narration claims yoga is at least 5,000 years old. Historians are more cautious: the Yoga Sutras, attributed to the sage Patañjali, were compiled in the early centuries of the Common Era, drawing together older traditions. The film also has the tone of a travel diary, with a sometimes romantic view of India, and more than twenty years separate its images from the India of today.

Why watch

Because it shows, with rare footage of the high Himalayas, that yoga in India is much more than exercise: it is study, ritual and a path walked on foot. For anyone who only knows the mat, it is a welcome widening of the horizon.