In the Classical Sanskrit of the Puranas, the word yogi originally referred specifically to a male practitioner of yoga. In the same literature yoginī is the term used for female practitioners as well as for divine goddesses and enlightened mothers, all revered as aspects of the Divine Mother Devi without whom there would be no yogis. The two terms are still used with those meanings today, but the word yogi is also used generically to refer to both male and female practitioners of yoga and related meditative practices in Buddhism, Jainism.
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