Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

beauties of Hatha yoga is that it acknowledges the interrelationship of body, mind, and spirit and explores the interactions and relationships along the body-mind continuum. Hatha yoga is predicated on the perception of a relationship between body, mind, and spirit and the appreciation of the journey of constant learning from the intelligent forces dwelling within all things. The laws of the external universe are also the laws of the internal universe. Hatha yogis see the physical and spiritual as reflecting and affecting each other, and as one process and interplay along one spectrum of energy. What happens within the body affects the mind, heart, and spirit—and the reverse is equally true. The divinity we see outside ourselves is part of the same sacred energy of life that is the body. The deeper levels of Hatha aim to bring this perception to the practitioner.

The Origins of Hatha Yoga
    Many beliefs and theories claim to explain the origins of Hatha yoga. They range from the scientific, based on archeological, anthropological, and etymological studies, to the folkloric, religious, and mythological. Scientists and scholars study and give credence only to actual historical proof to support their positions. Historical evidence has shown that the twelfth-and thirteenth-century teacher, Gorakhnath, was the original synthesizer of Hatha yoga and that, according to traditional lore, Matsyendranath (assumed to be of the tenth century) was Gorakhnath’s guru, although there is no evidence for this belief.
    Traditionalists, gurus, and believers rely on oral transmission, personal meditations, and the beliefs of their lineages. Yoga origin beliefs abound in India. Many Indian yogis assert that God or divine incarnations revealed or handed yoga down—it is a gift from the gods. Others suggest that great sages discovered yoga through meditation and divine communication or that they developed it through self-study and observation of animals. The exact origins of yoga may remain unknown and lost in antiquity. What is known is that these teachings have been preserved, expanded upon, and handed down through the ages from teacher to student because of their cherished value and benefits, as well as for the power thus assured for the teacher.
    In Hindu mythology the domain of yoga, especially Hatha yoga, is often given to Siva, who is known as the destroyer in the Hindu trinity of gods that also includes Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver. The concept of Siva as destroyer actually points toward the process of transformation because energy changes form—it is transformed, but is not destroyed. So Siva’s destructive power can also be understood as a release of creative energy. In this role, then, Siva is the god of transformation, and because yoga is the art and science of transformation, Siva is also called the lord of yoga. Yoga seeks to transform the lower into the higher, ignorance to wisdom, and sickness to health.
    There is a great origin myth for Hatha yoga. In one variation of this myth, Siva was visiting Earth with his wife or consort, Shakti. By the banks of a lake he decided to give her a demonstration of yoga asanas. It is said there are 840,000 different yoga postures and since Siva, the creator of this yoga, would certainly know them all, this performance must have taken a good bit of time. Shakti became bored after awhile with his long display and fell asleep. When Siva noticed her inattention he was angry that his fabulous spectacle was being wasted on his wife. Then he noticed that a fish was near the lake’s surface intently watching everything. Siva thought, “This fish has better concentration and is more interested in yoga than my sleeping wife. I will make him a great yogi.” The fish was turned into a man, called Matsyendranath, which means lord or king of the fish, and Matsyendranath became the first yogi. There may have historically been a man named Matsyendranath who lived during the tenth century and who actually was one of the earliest originators of Hatha yoga.
    In much of modern belief and folklore, East and West, Hatha yoga is said to be thousands of years old. Scientific and academic research has found no validation for this claim. The broader philosophical and spiritual dimensions of yoga and other branches do go back millennia, but Hatha is probably much younger, originating around the first millennium CE (of the Common Era, or Christian Era). Modern folklore and many traditional