Yoga
One limb of eight in the Indian tradition; most of today’s sequences are of the last century.
Where does yoga come from, and how do I begin it safely?
What it is
Yoga in a studio means postures linked with the breath, a linking called vinyasa. In India the word is far wider. It comes from a root meaning to yoke, and names any discipline that harnesses the mind: the yoga of action, of devotion, of knowledge, of meditation. The posture work of the modern class descends from one stream of it, hatha yoga, and from much newer sources. An asana was first of all a seat, a way to sit still for a long time.
The teaching
As the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the modern class teaches it.
Yoga, the yoke
Yoga comes from a root meaning to yoke, to harness, to join. The Katha Upanishad pictures a person as a chariot: the self rides in it, the body is the chariot, the intellect the driver, the mind the reins and the senses the horses, and it calls yoga the firm holding of the senses. The Bhagavad Gita gives two more definitions: yoga is evenness of mind, the same in success and in failure, and yoga is skill in action. In each, yoga is a discipline that harnesses the mind, and the body is one of its instruments.
The paths of the Gita
The Gita teaches yoga in several forms, which later teachers gather into four paths. Karma yoga is the yoga of action: doing one's work fully while letting go of its fruits. Bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion: offering everything to God with love, even a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a little water. Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge: telling the self apart from all that is not the self. The yoga of meditation, which later teachers call raja yoga, the royal yoga, is set out in the Gita's sixth chapter as a clean and steady seat, a still body and a gathered mind.
The yoga of moderation
The Gita also gives the rule that every later school repeats. Yoga is not for one who eats too much, nor for one who eats nothing at all; not for one who sleeps too much, nor for one who stays awake too long. For one who is moderate in food and in recreation, measured in effort, in sleep and in waking, yoga becomes the ending of sorrow. From its first pages the practice is a middle way.
Hatha yoga, the stairway
Hatha yoga is the yoga of force, the force of the body's own disciplines. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika opens by calling it a stairway for those who would climb to raja yoga, the yoga of the stilled mind, and it gives the order of its practice: first the postures, then the breath practices, then the seals, then attention to the inner sound. Posture comes first, it says, because it brings a steady seat, health and lightness of body.
The body is made steady and light so that it can sit and be forgotten. Posture is the first step of hatha yoga, not its goal.
The seats
The Pradipika says that Shiva taught eighty-four postures, and that four of them are essential: the accomplished seat, siddhasana; the lotus, padmasana; the lion, simhasana; and the auspicious seat, bhadrasana. The accomplished seat it places first of all. Most of the postures it describes are seats, with a few that bend, twist and balance, and among them is the corpse posture, shavasana, lying flat on the back, which it says takes away fatigue and rests the mind.
The modern class keeps that rest at its end. The last minutes are spent lying on the back with the eyes closed, the body heavy and still, and teachers count it a posture in its own right, not a pause between postures.
The shape of a modern class
The class of today is younger than these texts and draws on them freely. A class for beginners usually opens with a few minutes of sitting and breathing, warms the body with simple movements and often with the salute to the sun, a flowing round of bows, lunges and stretches joined to the breath, and then holds standing postures for strength and balance. Seated forward bends and gentle twists follow, and it ends lying down in shavasana.
Schools differ in their emphasis. Some hold each posture for a long time and use blocks, straps and blankets so that the shape fits the body in front of them; others move from one posture to the next on each breath. Both are ways of doing the same work.
Steady and easy
The oldest rule is Patanjali's: a posture should be steady and easy, sthira and sukha. He also gives the way to it: by relaxing the effort, and letting the mind rest on what has no bounds. In practice a posture is held only as far as the breath stays smooth and unhurried through the nose. When the breath strains or stops, the posture has gone too far.
The attention rests on what is felt, the feet pressing into the floor, the spine lengthening, a stretch at its edge, and not on how the posture looks. The first restraint of the yoga texts, not harming, is the first rule of the mat as well, and it applies to one's own body.
Safety and the signs to stop
A beginner starts in a class, with a teacher who can see them, and starts short and gentle: a first session is mostly standing, simple sitting and a rest lying down. Pain is the signal to stop. Nothing is forced, least of all a deep stretch, a strong backbend or an inversion such as a headstand or shoulder stand, which are learned only under a teacher's eye. The Pradipika itself counts straining among the six things that ruin practice.
Anyone pregnant, recovering from an injury, or living with a heart, blood-pressure, eye, spine or joint condition asks a doctor first. A practice is not a treatment.
How it is practised
A beginner starts in a class, with a teacher who can see them, and starts short and gentle. The rule from the Sutras still holds: a posture should be steady and comfortable. Pain is the signal to stop, and nothing is forced, least of all a deep stretch or an inversion. A first class is mostly standing, simple sitting and a rest lying down, the posture called savasana. Anyone pregnant, recovering from an injury or living with a heart, blood-pressure, eye, spine or joint condition asks a doctor first.
Where it comes from
The Yoga Sutras, compiled in the early centuries of the common era, give posture three short lines. Hatha yoga texts appear from about the eleventh century, and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika of the fifteenth describes some fifteen postures, most of them seated, beside its breath practices and the locks called bandhas. The standing sequences of today, the Sun Salutation among them, are recent. Krishnamacharya taught them at Mysore in the 1930s, and Mark Singleton has argued that they owe as much to the gymnastics and physical culture of that time as to the old texts.
What is known, and what is not
The dates of the texts are well attested, though scholars argue over how much of modern posture practice is old. For health, a Cochrane review found that yoga gave small improvements in function for long-lasting low back pain, with no clear difference from other exercise. Injuries are also documented, most often from forcing. Prana and the channels are the tradition's own map and have no place in anatomy.
Its words
- Asana
- Sanskrit for seat. In the Yoga Sutras it is the steady, comfortable sitting posture for meditation; today it means any yoga posture.
- Hatha Yoga
- The yoga of posture, breath and seals set out in Indian texts from about the eleventh century, and the ancestor of the modern class.
- Sun Salutation
- Surya Namaskar: a chain of about twelve postures done one to a breath. As an exercise sequence it dates from the early twentieth century.
- Vinyasa
- The joining of each movement to a breath in yoga; also the flowing class built on that rule, and the short link between two postures.
- Bandha
- A lock: one of three muscular holds of hatha yoga, at the pelvic floor, the belly and the throat, described in the old texts with breath retention.
- Savasana
- The corpse pose: lying still on the back at the end of a class. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika gives it one verse, as a rest from fatigue.
Ask the Oracle further
How old are the yoga postures taught in a class today?What should a first yoga class look like for a stiff beginner like me?
Before you practise
Begin short and gentle, and learn postures from a teacher who can see you. Stop at pain and never force a stretch or an inversion. Ask your doctor first if you are pregnant, recovering from an injury, or have a heart, blood-pressure, eye, spine or joint condition. A practice is not a treatment.
Its other branches
The eight limbsQigongTai chiPrayer in motionThe whole artSearch the tree
