Modern yoga 

is a wide range of practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various

forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha
yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.

Yoga was presented to the Western world in different forms by Vivekananda, Madame Blavatsky,
and others in the late 19th century. It embodied the period's distaste for yoga postures and hatha
yoga more generally, as practised by the despised Nath yogins, by not mentioning them.
[1]
 Blavatsky helped to pave the way for the spread of yoga in the West by encouraging interest
in occult and esoteric doctrines and a vision of the "mystical East".[2] She had travelled to India in
1852-3, and became greatly interested in yoga in general, while despising and distrusting hatha
yoga.[3] In the 1890s, Vivekananda taught a mixture of yoga breathwork (pranayama), meditation,
and positive thinking, derived from the new thought movement, again explicitly rejecting the
practice of asanas and hatha yoga.

Yoga as exercise
A few decades later, a very different form of yoga, the prevailing yoga as exercise, was created
by Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya, starting in the 1920s. It was predominantly
physical, consisting mainly or entirely of asanas, postures derived from those of hatha yoga, but
with a contribution from western gymnastics. They advocated this form of exercise under the
guise of the supposed specific medical benefits of particular postures, quietly dropping its
religious connotations, encouraged by the prevailing Indian nationalism which needed something
to build an image of a strong and energetic nation. The yoga that they created, however, was
taken up predominantly in the English-speaking world, starting with America and Britain.

Traditional Yoga vs. Modern Yoga

Traditional yoga is a complete system, according to the ancients. The yoga

postures that we now understand as being ¨yoga¨, were actually just a
small part of this system. Yoga was actually a spiritual discipline, made up
of several distinct ¨yogas¨:

 Raya Yoga, which aimed to cultivate the mind through mental

discipline and meditation
 Hatha Yoga, which included cleansing techniques, breath control
methods, bandhas (locks), mudras (seals) and remaining in asanas
(poses) for extended periods of time
 Ghatastha Yoga, or purely physical yoga exercises

This gives you a rough idea of the added layers of yoga that seem to be
missing from our modern practice, or comprise just a few minutes of a
typical class.
Yoga is actually a subject of intense debate! But what it boils down to is
this: the prominence of non-postural practices was significant in ancient
yoga.
Your Modern Yoga Class

So what does yoga look like now? Though the range of activities you might
enjoy in any one yoga class depends on the school, teacher and their
specific schedule for that session, here is a typical breakdown of what
might occur:
Sun salutations
Specific postures held for a slightly longer period of time
5-20 minutes in Savasana (lying down) and/or Pranayama (breathing
exercises)
If your teacher is more advanced, you might also do some meditation,
mudras, pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), discuss values (yama) or
perform kriyas (specific movements to access spiritual energy in the spine).
But there is actually little evidence that yoga was even practiced in groups!