Hatha Yoga

About Hatha Yoga

Haṭha yoga is the tradition that decided the mind could not be settled by sitting alone. Emerging in India from around the eleventh century, it took the position that prāṇa — the vital energy carried by the breath — could be manipulated directly, and that doing so would produce results the classical meditative path reached only slowly, if at all. The name means force. Its methods are correspondingly physical: postures held for length, six cleansing procedures, breath retention measured in counts, and a repertoire of locks and seals designed to trap and redirect energy inside the body. The texts describe a specific mechanism — prāṇa and apāna joined at the navel, kuṇḍalinī roused from the base of the spine, the central channel opened — and they are unusually direct about the risks of getting it wrong. What they do not do is treat the physical work as the goal. The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā states in its opening verses that the whole apparatus exists for the sake of rāja yoga, and returns to the point in its final chapter.