What is Yoga and what's the point of it?

  A hefty sized room filled with strange poses that often resemble monkeyish creatures where bodies twisted like pretzels into every shape and form under the sun was an experience at the Bethel Park High School Gym.  Yoga seems sometimes like some ancient mysterious magical practice from some long ago far away land.  How often though does one come across and actually demystify it for us?  

  A long time ago in ancient India, there lived a prince who was born into a group called the Shakyas.  One perspective on the word shakyas derives from the Sanskrit word that means "Practicable."  Although most Yoga Poses may seem far from something an ordinary person may be able to actually practice by bending into really, after all most asanas (poses) demand considerable flexibility. 

  Anyway this Prince was born with a special mythologically significant announcement similar to the first joyful mystery in the Catholic rosary called the Annunciation.  In a nutshell, he grew older as a skilled blessed prince and his father sheltered him from the outside world.  His name was Prince Siddhartha.  His mother died giving him life.  He had every material luxury one could imagine for that time period.  He had a palace for practically every season.  He had ornate dancing woman for entertainment.  He had as much scrumptious food he could ever possibly eat.  He was the son of a king.  Still, something seemed missing in his life, there was a dis satisfaction (dukkha) with all the comforts that could have been provided.  To sum things up, he had several experiences where he snuck outside of the palace and was traumatically confronted by sickness, aging, and death.  This stirred up his dis satisfaction with his position and his place thinking... "If my treasured retinue (people) are afflicted with these things and I will one day befall these things then this is a problem,"  therefore, he saw deeply into the problem of human suffering on planet earth.  And it is this context that it is right to view Yoga.  The Prince in the Land of Yoga (India) resolved to leave the palace against his fathers wishes (who wanted him to be king not a sage) to put an end to suffering for all time.  Later his journey of dabbling in extremes would come to an end and he would finally find a middle ground called the middle way which is right thought speech action livelihood mindfulness resolve view intention motivation and concentration.  He became enlightened to this middle way around 35 years old (he was around 29 when he left on his journey).  He would continue to teach this for many years until his eighties when he would eat some bad pork or whatever and died