Yoga – Union in Sanskrit is the way to enlightenment, oneness, liberation.
A spiritual practice designed to take the aspirant to Samadhi and beyond.
However the physical yoga asanas (postures) and practice as we practice them today are part of the yoga system called Hatha Yoga, as far as I know, Hatha yoga was designed for different reasons, part of them is for cleaning the physical body and ready it for higher energies. another part is to purify the mind, and body and reach oneness through this physical practice
And some times I jest think its for letting yoga be available for people who find it hard to sit in a pose for a long time, or find the concept of meditation boring and hard. Through Hatha yoga – the person practicing it become more ready for the practice of meditation, and eventually start this practice too.
But what about the yoga practice itself as meditation?
I heard about different methods and played with them a bit.
- Do Vipassana during each pose ( means moving with your awareness through/around the body during the practice)
- Focus on your breath inside the asana
- Focus on your body sensation during the asana (kind of like Vipassana but not structured)
- Focus on the Ha and Ta of each pose – each yoga pose (asana) has got its own alchemy – for example – regular standing pose like this variety of mountain pose – I stand with the fit grounded and hands to the sky – there is here an alchemy that can be connected too – pushing the feet to the ground on one end and the hands to the sky – gives way to energy running from the feet up and energy coming from the sky down meeting in the middle of the body.
- Go into emptiness inside the pose ( more about emptiness will be discussed later on)
- Try just to feel the energy of the pose working – stay in the Yoga Asana and feel the energy flowing inside the body and outside of it.
All of these methods and more are ways to bring meditation into the yoga asanas (poses), without actually doing a sitting meditation. however, it’s open for debate, is it a real meditation? or is it just a way to make the pose work as they were designed to work? isn’t it just a way to make the spiritual aspirant be more aware inside the asana?
Please try and tell me.
I will try to implement and describe my experiences here in this blog.