Greetings all!
When I think of meditation and/or yoga I think of Eastern religions, but what I want to know is this: Were there forms of these practices elsewhere in the world many hundreds of years ago? Practices which arose independently?

Sorry if this isn't the correct section.

Yoga is a term from the vedas. Yoga (coming from the sanskrit root "to connect") is remarkably similar to the english word religion (coming from the latin meaning "to bond") - thus there are different types of yoga - karma yoga, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga (that all lay stress to a particular method of connection to the transcendental absolute) but I think what you are mostly referencing is raja yoga -

This type of Yoga was "reformed" (note - not established) by a person called patanjali (there are the patanjali sutras - a compilation of the aphorisms of yoga) - You can find heaps of translations on the net - I can't vouch for the accuracy of the english translations however
chapter 6 (http://bhagavadgitaasitis.com/6/en) of the bhagavad gita deals specifically with this yoga

Even the most conservative empiricial estimates date these works as 200BC (there is argument that such dates reflect a eurocentric ambition to place indian culture as chronologically dependent on greek culture) - but even if such a dat e is accepted, it is obvious by the nature of the texts that yoga was a commonly performed activity, so the origins of this yoga would seem to be placed even further back in history - The vedic statements declare that pantanjali is actually an avatar and his desent to this world is many thousands of years earlier.

Sometimes yoga is seen to run parrallel with disciplines like aikido, chi-quong or tai-chi, but this is mostly due to such things being taken up by over stressed white collar workers (in the pursuit of better health they have homogenized these practices)

Thank you for replying! I did mean Raja Yoga, my apologies for not specifying. Your post was very helpful!