Contemporary yoga is taught in many named styles, each with its own vocabulary, etiquette and loyal following. Most descend from a small number of twentieth-century teachers, which means the differences between them arose recently and for identifiable reasons.
A narrow root and a wide canopy
A handful of influential teachers trained students who later founded their own schools, often after periods of study that varied considerably in length and emphasis.
Each student naturally carried away part of what was taught, shaped by what they had been ready to absorb and what their own bodies favoured.
Systematised and named, those partial inheritances became distinct methods, which is why the styles feel different while sharing so much material.
Sequencing became a defining choice
One school fixes the order of postures so that practitioners repeat an identical sequence, making progress visible against a constant background.
Another varies sequence by class and teacher, which allows responsiveness but removes that comparison and places more weight on the teacher's judgment.
Neither choice is obviously correct, and each produces a different relationship between student and practice over years of attendance. One rewards patience with a fixed form; the other rewards adaptability.
Pace and duration separate the room
Holding a posture for several minutes and moving through it in a breath are different activities, and styles diverge sharply on which they favour.
Long holds emphasise structural detail and tolerance of discomfort, since there is time to notice both. Continuous movement emphasises breath coordination and sustained effort, since there is not.
Students often discover they respond to one far more than the other, which explains much of the loyalty individual styles attract.
Props and adaptation
Some lineages developed extensive use of supports so that postures could be approached by bodies that could not otherwise take the shape.
That decision made the practice available to more people and shifted attention toward alignment, since supports make small positional differences legible.
Other schools kept adaptation minimal, treating the difficulty itself as part of the training. The disagreement is about what the posture is for.
Why the styles still overlap heavily
Underneath the branding the postural vocabulary is largely shared, and a teacher trained in one method usually recognises everything happening in a class taught under another name.
Differences concentrate in presentation, sequencing and the culture of the room rather than in the substance of what is practised.
Seen against that shared inheritance, style loyalty looks less like doctrinal division and more like preference among arrangements of common material.