Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

Hatha yoga. Today, we find images of yogis and yoginis in every type of attire, situation, and exotic pose in nearly every popular media around the globe. Still, just as comparatively little is generally known about the other branches of the yoga tradition, the term “Hatha yoga” is often lost in a confusion of various
brand names
such as Power yoga, Fire yoga, Water yoga, Flow yoga, Ashtanga, and myriad other types of yoga named for or by influential teachers. All of these approaches, however, have common roots in Hatha yoga, the yoga of sun and moon. Made up of the syllables
Ha
meaning sun and
Tha
meaning moon, the word
Hatha
(pronounced ha tuh) actually means “intense” or “vigorous” and refers to the physical practices of yoga.
    The reasons for the great popularity of this form are many. It has benefits that one can experience from the first practice and it may be the original system of holistic health dealing with all aspects of living. Hatha yoga is also endless—we can swim its seas as far or as deeply as our interest and energy carry us. The nuances and subtleties of discovery are boundless. There is no end to the potential of learning and no limit to the frontier, which is why it has been called a fount of perpetual wisdom. We will certainly pass through difficulties and pains, butthere is so much enjoyment and benefit to the practice that it carries us throughout life.
    While Hatha yoga refers to physical yoga, and it is certainly the branch with the most physical techniques and practices, it is not merely an exercise system. The very word Hatha implies a perspective of universal polarity and interplay of opposites. Remember, while the word Hatha actually means forceful, intense, or vigorous, Hatha creates awareness of subtle energies and the play of dynamic opposites. Hatha yoga is both a vast art and a science. It is a science because of its highly refined practices and techniques, and an art because the ever-changing nature of life cannot be limited merely to a definable system or mechanistic structure. Hatha yoga involves the physical practices of asana (yoga postures), pranayama (control of breath and energy), bandhas (muscular locks and contractions), mudras (seals and gestures), kriyas (internal cleansing techniques), philosophies, and meditations.
    The word yoga in the West is nearly synonymous with Hatha yoga, but this is not so in India, its birthplace. There, yoga refers to a large array of spiritual philosophies and disciplines of which Hatha is just one part. Thousands of yogis and yoga lineages in India have no Hatha or asana practice at all. They focus on meditation, devotional, or philosophical practices. Some lineages actually denigrate physical practices. They believe that attention to the physical body detracts one from spiritual life and creates inappropriate attachment to the body. Hatha yogis deny this separation.
    I once heard a story about an incident at a yoga congress in India. A Hatha yoga master just completed a demonstration and talk on the importance of caring for the body and the body’s effects on mental and spiritual life. The organizer of the conference, hoping for some fireworks, had mischievously followed this speaker on the program with a swami who was known to disagree with Hatha practice. He represented a philosophical system that emphasized purely mental and inner practices.
    The swami began his talk, in which he “humbly” pointed out that, as impressive as Hatha practices are, they actually create illusion and attachment to the body. He went on to assert that the body is just an aging sack of bones, blood, and hair that will die no matter what we do. (This description may sound grotesque, but it is not that uncommon to find the body referred to this way in ancient texts that promote renunciation and detachment from the physical.) The swami continued, getting heated up and raising his voice with authority declaring that when one attains spiritual insight he would pay no attention to the body whatsoever. At this moment the first speaker got up from his chair on the stage, slipped behind the swami, and removed the thick eyeglasses the swami was wearing! “Don’t pay any attention to your body whatsoever, Swami! Detach, detach!” he shouted. “Maybe you shouldn’t even eat or take medicine either. Where do you draw the line?” The debate went on, I’m told, until the nearly blind swami was forced to plead for the return of his glasses.
    One of the