When we think back to the original yogis in India, we can recall them sleeping outside, with food only gather by donations and absolutely no care for their physical bodies. These yogis had no care for their bodies.
Physical earth was merely a highway and their bodies vehicles on a journey to enlightenment. A true yogi believed that there is no use for our physical bodies, that they are just a way for our mind to interact with world to satisfy God.
It's hard to believe that we went from this form of yoga to ashtanga or even as far as butti yoga. The journey of postural yoga seems to happen overnight. Practices that are considered classical yoga (such as Iyuengar and Ashtanga) center around manipulating the body in certain positions in order to heighten the spiritual effects that yoga can offer.
In today's western yoga, physical fitness and health are the priority of yoga over mental clarity and spiritual awakening. Rather than allowing our bodies to starve and our muscles to fatigue, many compliment yoga with other holistic and "eastern approaches" to care such as a vegetarian diet, essential oils, Himalayan salt lamps, and lotus flower tattoos. Yoga is studied now for the claims that western yoga have for benefiting the body. For instance, every pose in Bikram yoga claims to benefit a different part of the body such as kidney function, circulation, digestion, etc.
It is very hard to find an instructor that does not use main stream media to supplement their practice. And that is the big difference between many ways yoga is practiced now. If you try to find the "proper" way to do yoga, you won't find an answer. Although I may not fully agree with this notion, there is no proper way to do yoga. Yoga is a basic idea that is open to interpretation. (Although no part of yoga should include twerking *cough cough*).
:)
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