| I see what you're trying to get at ... but unfortunately this is not true. Yoga is effectively Religion (you could argue 'Spiritual Philosophy'). This is not an 'interpretation' - it's literally an orthodox branch of Hinduism. [1] Hatha Yoga - a subset - is more physically involved and it's the branch of Yoga we see in Western Yoga studios. We really can't reduce it to a bunch of poses. Yes, much of the 'spiritual language' is often removed, but the objective remains the same, which is putting you on the path to enlightenment. 'Calming the mind' is really just the first step of that. By the way 'Hatha' means 'Force' in Sanksrit, and by 'Force' in this context they mean to force or the journey to Enlightenment by will, as opposed to it coming more passively, or by other practices. Western studios can avoid using these kinds of ideas and language, but that almost renders it pointless, or maybe worse, paternalistic, in that students are not even told the true nature of what they are being taught, kind of like children. To someone from India, it must be kind of bizarre seeing all of these Western people participating in something Indians designed for a purpose, whereupon Westerners seem to be kind of ignorant of it all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga |
With that said, there is rhyme and reason to this. The physical aspect is important because you can't meditate effectively if you can't even get into a comfortable pose (and I really do mean comfortable, not convoluted) without pain. You can't focus on your breath or heartbeat if it's erratic, heavy, or you are distracted by pain, indigestion, uppers, etc. So the physical aspect can be understood as a way to facilitate deep meditation.
This ties in with your "calming the mind point". Here is where it gets shady - nobody really knows what this means. We have "let go of all thoughts, be a passive observer, lol transcendental mantras", etc. In reality, reading "Altered Traits" and other meditation books, we get that maybe, maybe it helps with willpower (frontal lobe development according to "The Willpower Instinct") and focus. I will venture that it helps with working memory, and potentially IQ-related tasks.
Extrapolating from that, we can tie in with the Egyptian concept of "not losing yourself in the afterworld" (or dreams, or every day life), by being engaged, aware, and being able to recognize and analyze reality, or perception thereof if we get into Buddhism.
What that really leads to, in an enlightment sense, is very unclear.
Note that I went off on a BUNCH of tangents, but all these systems really try to tie together into some whole, which seems to be similar to what I described, but it's not clearly stated anywhere.
I promise you I am not arguing to argue, but I have been looking for an answer here for a long time, and I find none. Again, unless it's that "it's religion", in which case "that's that". On that note, these convos are difficult because there is no coherent system, but people seem to view them based on the system they are coming from - Yoga, Buddhism, breath work, lucid dreaming, whatever. That's too isolationist imo.