Overview
A yogi is a practitioner of Yoga, a term that broadly encompasses a sannyasin or one engaged in meditation within the Indian religious traditions. The feminine form of the word, occasionally used in English, is yogini.
The term has carried varied connotations across centuries. From around the 12th century CE, yogi has also denoted members of the Nath siddha tradition within Hinduism. In Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the word is additionally used to describe a practitioner of tantra, reflecting the wider spiritual and ascetic spectrum within which the figure of the yogi is situated.
In Hindu mythology, the god Shiva and the goddess Parvati are depicted together as an emblematic yogi–yogini pair, representing the ideal union of yogic discipline and spiritual partnership. This iconography has had a lasting influence on the religious imagination associated with yogic practice across the subcontinent.