The ox feels the wooden bar settle across the base of its neck before dawn. The farmer fits the second animal beside it, binds them at the yoke, and the two that grazed apart all night now pull as one thing. The plow bites and the soil turns. Behind them, the field opens for the season's seed. That wooden bar has a name that reaches further than the farmer ever knew.

The Sanskrit word yug means to join. From it came the practice called Yoga, and from the same root came the plain English word you already use for the harness on those animals. Yoke. To become a yogi is to get into harness. To buckle yourself to the work and pull.

Most people picture a yogi as a body folded into a posture, still and serene. The image gets the effort backwards. Watch the ox and you see the truth of the word. Its worth is in the ground it breaks and the field it opens behind it. A yogi is someone who has agreed to pull a heavy load across a long field, day after day, whether or not the morning feels like it.