Page 9 - All India Magazine Sep-2020

Hathayoga

Principle behind Hathayoga
Hathayoga aims at the conquest of the life and the body
whose combination in the food sheath and the vital vehicle con-
stitutes, as we have seen, the gross body and whose equilibrium
is the foundation of all Nature’s workings in the human being. The
equilibrium established by Nature is suffi cient for the normal ego-
istic life; it is insuffi cient for the purpose of the Hathayogin. For it
is calculated on the amount of vital or dynamic force necessary
to drive the physical engine during the normal span of human life
and to perform more or less adequately the various workings de-
manded of it by the individual life inhabiting this frame and the
world-environment by which it is conditioned. Hathayoga there-
fore seeks to rectify Nature and establish another equilibrium by
which the physical frame will be able to sustain the inrush of an
increasing vital or dynamic force of Prana indefi nite, almost infi -
nite in its quantity or intensity. In Nature the equilibrium is based
upon the individualisation of a limited quantity and force of the
Prana; more than that the individual is by personal and hereditary
habit unable to bear, use or control. In Hathayoga, the equilibrium
opens a door to the universalisation of the individual vitality by
admitting into the body, containing, using and controlling a much
less fi xed and limited action of the universal energy.
CWSA 23: 33-34

Object of Hathayoga
The pure Hathayoga is the means of the fulfi lment through
the body. Its processes are physical, strenuous, colossal, complex,
diffi cult. They centre in Asana, Pranayam and the purifi cation of
the body. The number of Asanas in the modern or mixed Hatha-
yoga is limited, but even then they are numerous and painful; in
the ancient or pure Hathayoga, they were innumerable and the

All India Magazine, September 2020