Singleton Notes

Notes: Yoga Body (Mark Singleton)

Introduction: Where did this all come from?

• Primacy of postural yoga (asana) is a new phenomenon which does not appear to have any antiquity including the medieval practice of Tantra. (Hatha Yoga Pradipika)
• Beginnings- Vivekenanda (1890s)
• Before this yoga practice was associated with the hatha yogis of the Nath lineage, but employed more loosely to ascetics, magicians & street performers & associated with backwardness and superstition
• Look here at WHY asana was intitally excluded from these practices and HOW it was eventually reclaimed (two great works to date DeMichelis & Alter fail to do this).
• Full swing with BKS Iyengar in the 1950s and onward.
• The influence of the international PHYSICAL CULTURE MOVEMENT (19^th century)
• Quasi-religious movements of PC went through Europe to India where they were infiltrated with popular new forms of Indian nationalist Hinduism
• Found their way from India to America
• Now a merging of these two movements
• Orientalism
• 19^th century European scholars who studied the texts & traditions of Asia
• Prevalent attitudes about yoga among Orientalists
• Part of nation-building (Said) or more (Smith)?

Yoga in the Indian Tradition (Chapter 1)

• Controversy about the antiquity of yoga practice.
• Indus Valley Seals show little evidence (above-oldest evidence?)
• Harrapan & Mohenjo-Daro archeoligical sites
• Interpretation of seals featuring seated postures 4000 years old????
• Textual evidence (later)
• Tapas practicing ascetics (muni, kesin or vratya) as early as the Vedic Brahmanas (oldest texts)
• Katha Upanishad (3^rd century BCE?) first occurrence of the word “yoga” where it is revealed by the god Yama as a way to overcome death (leave sorrow and joy behind) 2.12
• Svetasvatara Upanishad (3^rd cent BCE) outlines a system in which the body is in an upright position & brought under control by restraint of the breath (2.8-14)
• Maitri Upanishad (3rd c???) 6 fold yoga method
• Pranayama –breath control
• Pratyahara –sense withdrawal
• Dhyana –meditation
• Dharana –concentration on mind
• Tarka –philosophical inquiry
• Samadhi –absorbtion
• Bhagavad Gita (Mahabharata)
• three paths to yoga
• Karma yoga
• Jnana yoga
• Bhakti yoga
• and a range of practices undertaken by yogis of the day-these in
• internalization of vedic ritual (prana-apana)
• preparation in diet and lifestyle for yoga sadhana (practice)

• Yoga Sutra (Patanjali) (250 CE?) 195 brief aphorisms outlining diverse methods for attaining “yoga” where the goal id s Samadhi.
• Heavily influenced by the Samkhya philosophy, Buddhism & the sramana (renunciant ascetic traditions)
• Astanga yoga: eight limbs
• Yama
• Niyama
• Asana---ALMOST NOTHING! Stable seat!
• Pranayama
• Pratyahara
• Dharana
• Dhyana
• Samadhi
• Yoga Sutras Bhasya (Vyasa 500-600 CE) :earliest interpretation of Patanjalis sutra. Become popular among European Orientalists and later by Indian promoters of practical yoga like Vivekananda & HP Blavatsky (Theosophical Society)
• Saiva Tantras-detail techniques of yoga practice (Medieval)
• Vijnanabhairava (18^th cent CE)- union of aspirant with Shiva
• All require yogin to “traverse a path (adhvan) to a goal” (laksya)
• Still not much emphasis on physical practice
• Hatha Yoga (Forceful Yoga) 13^th -18^th Cent CE

• Forceful, but also union of sun (ha) and moon (tha) (Eliade) which symbolically indicates the goal of the system.
• Associated with the Nath Yogis (Gorakanath & Matsyendranath) although connected to other yogi lineages of the time.
• Naths recruited without reguard to caste or religion and took many muslims, sufi fakirs & dasnamyi into their fold.
• Texts:
• Goroka sataka
• Shiva Samita (15^th cent)
• Hatha Yoga Pradipika (15-16^th cent)
• Hatharatnavali (17^th cent)
• Gheranda Samita (18^th cent)
• Jogapradipika (18^th cent)
• Aroused much interest among the followers of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta (when translated, reflected this bias-leaving out kekchari mudra for instance)
• Features:
• Concerned with transmutation of the bodyinto a vessel immune form mortal decay (everlasting life)
• GhS- body is "an uncooked earthenware pot which must be baked in the fires of yoga to purify it."
• Shat karmas: Preliminary six purifications (HYP & GS)- miraculous prevention of illness & old age
• Dhauti-swallowing cloth to cleanse the stomach
• Basti-colon cleaning with water & uddiyana bhanda
• Neti-cleaning nasal passages
• Trataka-staring at a small mark or candle until eyes water
• Nauli-circular massage of the abdomen
• Kapalabhati-forcefully expel air from nose with abdominal muscles
• Asana
• Asana (first anga-accessory)-attainment of steadiness, freedom from disease & lightness of the body (HYP)-15 identified
• (GhS) : asana after purifications- 32
• (SS) 84, but describes only 4 seated postures
• Pranayama is the mainstay of hatha yoga practice –
• Cleanising & balancing the subtle channels of the body (nadis) in combination with certain “locks” or “seals” (bhandas & mudras) forces the prana into the shushumna (central channel)-brahmanadi. This raises the kundalini energy which is visualized as a serpent sleeping at the base of the spine.
• Koshas: "layers of the gross and subtle body on which a yogi can experience the movement of life force energy (prana vidya) to reach transmutation and supreme conciousness
• anamaya kosha
• pranamaya kosha
• manomaya kosha
• vijnanamaya kosha
• anandamaya kosha
• Nadis  are networks or subtle channels of the body. (SS) 300,000, (HYP) 72,000. Entire enterprise is to purify and balance the nadis
• Ida (l) moon, female, mental &pingala (r) sun, male, vital &Sushumna (central) spiritual neutral–principle nadis
• Chakras (wheels)/padmas (lotuses)- 6 or 7 which lie at intervals along the spine where the nadis (energy voticies) converge. They are intersected by ida & pingala nadis
• Kundalini (prana shakti) rises up the spine, pierces the cakras & causes prana to become absorbed into voidness and the practitioner to attain Samadhi (HYP) which in turn leads to moksha (liberation)
• Transnational Hatha Yoga
• Primacy of asana as a system of health, fitness & well-being, and the relegation or elimination of other parts like shatkarmas & mudras and even pranayama.
• Tantric Philosophy also plays a minor role in modern yoga
• Deeply concerned with the subtle body, but limited to three principal nadis, the cakras and the role these play in the kundalini experience.
• Yoga that we see today does not arise directly out of the unbroken lineage of hatha yoga, but is instead the result of radical experimentation, adaptation to new discourses on the body that resulted from India’s encounter with modernity. (And American/Western counter cultural movement