Hatha Yoga Pradipika

HYP 1.2 — The Purpose

Svātmārāma sets out the science of haṭha solely for those who, lost in the darkness of conflicting doctrines, cannot reach rāja yoga. It is a lamp for that path, and nothing more.

HYP 1.15 — The Six Causes of Failure

Yoga is destroyed by these six: over-eating, over-exertion, too much talking, rigid observance of rules, keeping restless company, and unsteadiness.

HYP 1.16 — The Six Causes of Success

Yoga succeeds through these six: enthusiasm, courage, steadfastness, true knowledge, firm resolve, and stepping away from the company of crowds.

HYP 1.58 — Measured Food

Fill half the stomach with pleasant and nourishing food, a quarter with water, and leave a quarter free for the movement of air. This is what is meant by moderate eating.

HYP 2.2 — Breath and Mind

When the breath moves, the mind moves. When the breath is still, the mind becomes still and the yogi attains steadiness. Therefore let the breath be restrained.

HYP 2.16 — Gradual Progress

As lions, elephants and tigers are tamed slowly and by degrees, so the breath is brought under control step by step — otherwise it destroys the practitioner.

HYP 3.2 — The Sleeping Power

As a serpent supports the earth with all its mountains and forests, so kuṇḍalinī is the support of all yogic practice.

HYP 4.3 — What Samādhi Is Called

Rāja yoga, samādhi, unmanī, manonmanī, immortality, absorption, emptiness and non-emptiness, the supreme state — these are names for one and the same condition.

What is the Hatha Yoga Pradipika?

It is the best-known classical manual of haṭha yoga, compiled in Sanskrit by Svātmārāma in around the fifteenth century. It runs to roughly 389 verses in four chapters, covering posture, cleansing and breath retention, seals and locks, and finally meditative absorption. It is the principal source text behind modern physical yoga, and it presents itself explicitly as preparation for rāja yoga rather than as an end in itself.

Who was Svatmarama?

Almost nothing is known about him beyond the text. He identifies himself as a compiler rather than an originator, naming Ādinātha, Matsyendranāth, Gorakṣanāth and a long list of earlier siddhas as his sources. He is usually placed in the fifteenth century. The Pradīpikā is his only known work, and much of what he drew on has not survived independently.

How many asanas are in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika?

Fifteen are described, and four are named as principal: siddhāsana, padmāsana, siṁhāsana and bhadrāsana. Svātmārāma calls siddhāsana the best of them. Most of the fifteen are seated or reclining. There are no standing postures, no sequences and no sun salutations — those are all later developments, several of them twentieth century.

What are the six causes of failure in yoga?

Verse 1.15 lists them: over-eating, over-exertion, too much talking, rigid adherence to rules for their own sake, keeping restless company, and unsteadiness. The list is notable for what it is not — nothing about talent, flexibility or insufficient devotion. The failure modes it identifies are ordinary, behavioural and correctable.

What are the six causes of success?

Verse 1.16: enthusiasm, courage, steadfastness, knowledge of the truth, firm resolve, and stepping back from the company of crowds. All six are dispositional. None is physical. Read together with the causes of failure, they describe a practitioner who is consistent and moderate rather than gifted or intense.

What does the text say about how much to eat?

Verse 1.58 gives the classical formula for mitāhāra, moderate eating: fill half the stomach with pleasant, nourishing food, a quarter with water, and leave a quarter empty for the movement of air. The instruction sits in the first chapter, before any breath practice, because retention on a full stomach is both ineffective and unsafe.

Why is the third chapter the longest?

Because the mudrās and bandhas — the seals and locks — are where the text locates its real power. Svātmārāma calls them the means to the great attainments and instructs that they be kept guarded. This is the clearest signal of the book's actual priorities: a curriculum weighted toward energetic sealing rather than toward physical shapes.

What is nada anusandhana?

Listening to the inner sound — the practice the fourth chapter ends on. The practitioner sits in a quiet place, closes the ears, and attends to whatever internal sound is present, following it as it refines from gross to subtle. The text describes attention eventually dissolving into the sound. It requires no equipment, no posture skill and no belief, which makes it the most accessible practice in the book.

Does the Hatha Yoga Pradipika describe sun salutations?

No. There is no sūrya namaskār in the text, no vinyasa, no linked sequence of postures and no standing series. Those elements were assembled much later, most influentially in Krishnamacharya's Mysore school in the 1930s. Teachers who present the sun salutation as a fifteenth-century practice are repeating a claim the text does not support.

Is it safe to practise from this book?

Partly. The postures and the gentler breath practices are reasonable to work with, and the text itself insists on gradual progression — verse 2.16 warns that the breath forced too fast destroys the practitioner. But several ṣaṭkarma involve swallowing cloth, water enemas and nasal irrigation, and some mudrās are extreme. These require a qualified teacher. Retention practices are contraindicated in pregnancy, uncontrolled hypertension, cardiac conditions, epilepsy and glaucoma.

How does it compare to the Gheranda Samhita and Shiva Samhita?

The Gheraṇḍa Saṁhitā, from around the seventeenth or eighteenth century, sets out a seven-limbed system and gives far more detail on the cleansing practices, describing thirty-two āsanas. The Śiva Saṁhitā is more philosophical, with extended treatment of the subtle body and a notably positive view of the householder practitioner. The Pradīpikā sits between them: more practical than the Śiva Saṁhitā, more concise than the Gheraṇḍa Saṁhitā.

Which translation should I read?

Brian Dana Akers' translation is the clearest modern English version and prints the Sanskrit alongside. Pancham Sinh's 1915 translation is free online and complete, though its register is dated. The Bihar School edition by Swami Muktibodhananda carries extensive practical commentary and is the most useful if you intend to practise from it. For historical context rather than practice, read it alongside Mallinson and Singleton's Roots of Yoga.

What does the text say haṭha yoga is for?

Rāja yoga, and it says so in its second verse. Svātmārāma presents the whole system as a lamp for people who cannot reach meditative absorption directly because they are lost among conflicting doctrines. The fourth chapter then treats samādhi as the destination. A reading of the Pradīpikā as a fitness manual is not merely incomplete — it inverts the text's own stated purpose.