History of Postural Practice: Premodern Yoga Systems

 

Official photographs of traditional yogis clothed and posed by British Colonial government

According to Jain, and others who study the ancient

history of yoga (Singleton, Mallinson, DeMichalis, Alter) antiquity is viewed as "touchstone of authenticity."

• Authenticity Stories of "modern gurus" and practitioners
• Pathabbi Jois (Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga) dates back to the Yoga Karunta (which was eaten by ants)
• BKS Iyengar (Iyengar Yoga)claims his lineage dates back to the great sage Ramakrishna (also his distant relative)
• Guramukh Kaur Khalasa (Kundalini Yoga) claims that yoga kundalini yoga is a 5000 old tradition evidenced in the Harrapan civilization (archeology of earliest cities)
• Historical Alignments and Evidence: Archaeology-scant and speculative, date Yoga to about 5000 years ago

Pashupati Seal from Mohenjo-daro civilization (top) the "god" Shiva (is known as the lord of the beasts and the lord of yoga). (Bottom) suggested Mulabhanda Asana on a seal from nearby in the Indus Valley.

PRESENTATION: "Seals from the Indus Valley Civilization dating to the 3rd millenium BCE depict what appear to be yogic poses. The Bhagavad Gita, Purunas, and Mahabharata are among the texts that describe yoga's teachings, which were codified at about 150 BCE in the Yoga Sutras written by Pantanjali." (PBS 2008)

• Creates a premodern backdrop for the modern popularization of yoga (re-establishing an ancient/lost tradition of wisdom).
• Truth: today's popularized yoga systems are new
• do not reflect an unbroken chain with pre-modern yoga
• premodern yoga was highly heterogenous and found in a number of forms in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist contexts
• instead only a few of the myriad of texts are used to describe the historical roots of yoga (having little to do with modern practice)
• Bhagavad Gita
• Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
• Hatha Yoga Pradipika
• modern postural yoga is RADICALLY distinct from ancient traditions
• early on, these reflect modern counter-cultural ideals
• later, popularized modern yoga becomes a reflection of globalized consumer culture

Yogis with his trident, begging bowl, and pranayama stick sits near the Ganges for disciples

Lord Shiva who is said to have brought "yoga" down from the Himalayas to man

Textual Materials are used as evidence, but were invariably distinct from practice traditions

• Texts do reveal the multi-various nature of pre-modern yoga traditions

Definitions of YOGA in the various texts (not exhaustive):

1. yoking of an animal  and the yoke itself

2. conjunction of planets or stars, and a constellation

3. the mix of substances, combination

4. device, recipe, method, strategy, a charm, incantation, fraud, trick, endeavor, arrangement

5. zeal, care, diligence, industriousness, discipline, use, application, contact, sum total

6. work of alchemists

7. union

• Origins: non-Vedic religious culture of the Shramana composed of Buddhist, Jain, and Ajivka renunciates.--they rejected the Brahmanical orthodoxy of Hindu society, and focused their philosophy on salvation from the ordinary world, which required ascetic practices. 

TAPAS : translated as "ritual heat"

• Transformed through incorporation into Brahmanical warrior culture as an "inner war" of the brachmacharin, or the celibate male renunciate (First celibate semi-aesthetic (Forest Yogis) who were married, but had fulfilled their roles in society, later applied to true renunciates who forgo caste, samnyasin).

• PHILOSOPHY

            SAMSARA: the cycle of rebirth

               DUALISM and NONDUALISM:  

• Philosophical categories which provide broadly understood ways of understanding the nature of reality. 

• Non-dualism is found in Hatha Yoga traditions we will study and practice a number of forms of  somatic yoga practice that aim to accomplish this. 

• The belief in non-dualism is that we are ALREADY DIVINE and connected to pure consciousness of divine energy. The practice is about moving from your gross to more and more subtle layers of energetic existence, until one connects with the universal divine energy.

          -OUTWARD enterprise in which the practitioner is able to connect with the absolute located at 

          once apart from themselves and in which they are contained (already divine).

• Dualism is illustrated below in the Samkhya philosophy of Kapila. Here there is a distinction between "pure consciousness" -Purusha -which is unchanging and un-manifested (potential). And It's evolutionary expression, Prakriti. Nothing can be manifested evolutionarily through prakriti that is not possible (found as energetic potential in purusha). The task of yoga in this philosophical system is to "involve" to merge with the pre-manifested (material) form. We will look at this when we explore the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

• The Yoga Sutras, using Samkhya dualism, claim that purusha is distinct from prakriti, and the goal of yoga is to achieve a meditative state that is different from our material state-connecting us to pure, divine/pure consciousness (distinct from the mind/body complex). INWARD (rather than outward) enterprise.

            -this is achieved through an 8 limbed progression/practice (sadhana), but the asana (postures) and              pranayama (breathing) have no resemblance to what is practiced in modern postural yoga today.

               SAMKHYA EVOLUTION: dualism

DHARMA and the Caste System of the Hindu Brahmins

• Based on belief in the inherent "nature" which is inherited a

• t birth (through rebirth), castes are hierarchical (bestow different status and role) and immutable (do not change) 
• The top three castes are known as "twice born" because they have earned their place through their karma in their previous life. Untouchables (dalit) are so low that they exist outside of caste (as their name suggests) 

• The caste of birth determines your dharma (purpose in life). Dharma is unchanging, and it is the driving force in a self-realized person's life. 

                -Aspects of Dharma: Sva-dharma (personal role in society), Sva-bhava (your  

                nature/temperament), Sva-deshi (Your constitution in the present social reality--Ghandi).

               -Part of SMRITI (truth acertained through human reasoning/authored by humans) This contrasts 

               to the earlier Vedic literature (the Vedas) which are characterized as SHRUTI (the divine word).

               -Higher caste (Brahmanic) life affirmed the duty to one's role in society (dharma), wealth 

               (artha), and erotic and aesthetic pleasures (kama).

• The later chapters of the Bhagavad Gita (in the Mahabharata) were composed by Brahmins to equate their devout householder life with the life of the yogi renunciate.

TANTRA: The BODY and its reality are the central components of tantric practice in many traditions. The notion of prana (the principle component of the subtle body) was a tantric innovation to earlier yoga philosophy.

          -Yoga served to increasingly refine consciousness, not as a means of salvation from embodied 

          experience, but as a means to achieving a state of divine consciousness while remaining in 

          embodied existence. This was to be done through the manipulation of the Subtle Body.

          -Both and exoteric (practices which include visualization, ritual sacrifice (tapas), devotion, and 

          mantra as a means to gradually achieving identification with the divine), and esoteric (through 

          these the practitioner could instantly and directly experience the divine-no intermediary, and by 

          transgressing normal purity and ethical standards.-consuming semen, menstrual blood, ritual sex,  

          meat eating, etc.).

          -Shakti (female) energy was available to male practitioner through (usually lower caste) women 

          known as yoginis, dakinis or duti.

    

          -Kundalini Yoga (brought to the US by Yogi Hari) is often described through this esoteric 

          symbolism. 

• the merging of Shiva (male) and Shakti (female) energy.
• The snake (kundalini) which shoots from the base of the spine up to the crown of the head during an awakening.
• The importance of the base chakras (energy centers) which control creative (sexual) energies and desires.    

Throughout its history in South Asia, yoga was culturally South Asian, but did not belong to any single religious tradition. Instead it provided a philosophical technique to achieve various ends depending demanded by the cultural context.

What we will see this semester is that modern yoga systems do share one thing with their pre-modern ancestors -- they are specific to their own social contexts.