What is Hatha Yoga
Initial Thoughts
When I first began my foray into the vast world of Yoga, I thought of Hatha Yoga as a style of class that was offered at my local studio. All I really knew back then was that my life was falling apart after a bad breakup, and the slower pace of the Hatha classes matched my mood and the energy I could muster, way better than the fast Vinyasa classes also on offer, ever could. My mind was always racing at a rapid pace, and so when I was able to get into my body and actually be still, I began to heal.
I was lucky enough to have an inspiring teacher, Christie Kanta Haran, who encouraged and really held the space for me during one of the most challenging times of my life. After awhile, she gave me the nudges I needed to become a teacher myself, and she even came with me to Satchidananda Ashram where she volunteered as a staff member for my teacher training. It was Christie who lovingly laughed at me and said, “So what?!” when I told her I couldn’t possibly become a Yoga teacher because I couldn’t even do crow pose! Spoiler alert, I still can’t do crow pose, but now, I’m no longer care. She helped me to see that complicated poses weren’t exactly the point of the practice, but that it was the revealing and the healing that really mattered.
We live in a society where we are constantly bombarded with messages that we must do more, accomplish more, achieve more, consume more and be more. It’s so hard not to get sucked into the mindset that if we’re not moving at a fast pace, we’re somehow not doing enough, or worse, being lazy. Busyness is a badge of honor and slowing down seems unacceptable. If you’re like me, you’re tired of being tired. Constantly feeling like I need to achieve or produce something is exhausting, because no matter how much I accomplish, the conditioned thoughts that rattle around in my mind are always telling me that it’s not enough.
That’s why I love Hatha Yoga as a style of class, because it encourages me to slow down, and to move at a pace that supports and nourishes my body. It gives me time to be, rather than do. I get to come into a posture, and then I get to stay and listen to what my body has to say. Now of course, my mind tries to drag me off in multiple directions at once, but the stillness of a Hatha practice also affords me the opportunity to lovingly bring myself back from the places I’ve wandered off to. It gives me the chance to see that I am not my mind and I am not the thoughts that barrel through it, rather I am the one who notices and who quietly calls my mind back to each present moment.
My mind is often flinging me around from one thought to another, and so choosing a practice that requires me to fling my body around from one shape to another, has just never suited me. I respect that everyone is different, and therefore feels nourished by different things. But for me, it’s always been a steady Hatha practice the leads me back home to that quiet place that resides deep inside.
Hatha Yoga as a Style
Not everyone has been exposed to Hatha Yoga as a style of class, so let me give you a brief overview. In general, a Hatha class means that you’ll take your time in each posture, maybe even a full minute or more. It also means that you’ll explore each postures separately, meaning that if you take Virabhadrasana I (Warrior 1) on one side, you’ll then take it on the other side before moving on to another posture.
The goal of a Hatha practice is balance. We continuously balance the body with each posture, and we work to balance the nervous system by exploring periods of movement and periods of stillness. A more active part of a Hatha practice would be Surya Namaskar, or Sun Salutations, where we move the body through it’s full range of motion as a way to naturally warm the body and prepare it for longer pauses in poses. You might find that Sun Salutations increase both your heart and breathing rate, which means that your sympathetic nervous system, or the more active or stress response in your body as been activated. So rather than continue to barrel forward, we stop and we rest, gently coaxing the body back into the parasympathetic nervous systems, or our relaxation response.
We purposefully engage and then disengage on our mats as a way to train the body to do so with more ease, off of our mats. Think of how it feels when a tractor trailer cuts you off on the highway — you feel a jolt of adrenaline and cortisol, and it often takes time for that to dissipate and for you to feel comfortable again. In truth the body spends so much time locked and loaded in that sympathetic system, that it can become stuck and struggle to ease back into the parasympathetic system. So when we practice this transition in a “safe” environment, the body can begin to remember that natural rhythm and therefore make that transition more quickly in our daily lives.
The Meaning of Hatha Yoga
As a Sanskrit word, Hatha breaks down into two parts: Ha & Tha. Ha represents the Sun or active, solar energy, while Tha represents the Moon, or calming, lunar energy. As such, many people interpret Hatha as the balancing of the solar and lunar energy in the body. In fact, I designed our sun and moon logo to represent this balance.
Another interpretation is that Ha represents prana, while Tha represents the mind, and as such Hatha means the union of the pranic and mental forces.
There is also another, less widely known, interpretation of the word Hatha, which is force. Keep in mind that translating Sanskrit to English is like taking a celestial size concept, and attempting to explain it to a toddler. There is a reason Sanskrit is the language of Yoga; it’s subtle and nuanced and massive and all encompassing, as are the practices themselves. So when I say that Hatha means force, it doesn’t mean we are being forceful with our body, it means that we are harnessing the forces contained in our body.
Beyond the breakdown of the word itself, Hatha is the term used to corral all of the physical practices of Yoga, including asana, or the postures we explore. So if you are on your mat, moving through Yogic postures, you are doing Hatha Yoga, regardless of what style of class it is. Whether it’s Vinyasa, Flow, Gentle, Chair, Restorative, Yin or any other style, it’s all technically Hatha Yoga. The need to denote Hatha as a style of class came along with the advent of so many modern approaches to the physical practice. Traditionally what we refer to as the style of Hatha Yoga, was all there was. As Yoga moved into the west, the many Gurus and adepts bringing it here began to morph the practice to suit their new audience and gain followers.
Hatha Yoga as a path
Yoga is expounded upon in countless texts throughout the ages, but one of the most commonly talked about tombs is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a saint who laid out his thoughts of the aims and practices of Yoga. It’s so important to note that while this one book gets most of the attention from American Yoga teachers, its popularity isn’t exactly due to Patanjali’s authority on the subject, but rather the fact that it was one of the first Yogic texts transcribed by British scholars during the British occupation of India. So it became more readily available outside of the country and therefore was the one most commonly studied.
Patanjali lays out his eight limbed approach to attaining the state of Yoga, or oneness, through the path of Raja Yoga, Raja meaning royal. Raja Yoga begins with the mind, starting out with the Yamas & Niyamas as the moral compass of how to live our lives, so to speak. There are five Yamas and five Niyamas that we must master before moving on to the third limb, of Asana, or the physical postures of Yoga. Upon attaining mastery of Asana, Pantanjali has us move on to Pranayama, harnessing life force energy via the breath, then progresses us on to Pratyahara, the skill of drawing one’s senses inward, followed by Dharana, or concentration, what most of us are attempting to do when we say we are meditating, then onto Dhyana, which is true meditation, and finally to Samadhi, the state of ultimate realization and bliss.
The Yoga Sutras were written in the 2nd century BCE, and were a guide to those on the path of Yoga during a very different time in history. They were also laid out for those on the path of renunciation, meaning they had given up everything in order to pursue this higher state of being. Patanjali wasn’t recording his thoughts for those that popped in and out of a Yoga class on a semi regular basis, but for those who were dedicating every waking moment of their lives to enlightenment. It stands to reason then, that perhaps, while Patanjali certainly knew his stuff, maybe his way of going about things isn’t exactly accessible to our more modern lives.
Jump forward in time to about the 6th century CE, and we find various texts popping up that begin to expound upon Hatha Yoga as its own individual path to enlightenment. Throughout the centuries we see that there are multiple paths, including both Raja and Hatha, Jnana Yoga which centers on self study, Bhakti Yoga which is the path of devotion to a higher power, and Karma Yoga which is the Yoga and path of action.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika authored by Yogi Swatmarama is the most widely known text about Hatha Yoga, though there is also the Gheranda Samhita, the Goraksha Samhita the Hatharatnavali, and others, all thought to be written between the 6th and 15th centuries CE.
In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika we start to see this shift away from the path of the renunciate, to the path of the householder, or those that are living their everyday lives out in the world, yet still hope to pursue the path of Yoga. I’m a householder and my guess is that if you are reading this post, you probably are too.
Yogi Swatmarama understood that as the world evolved, Yoga must too evolve. The path of Raja Yoga demanded that we clean up our moral code before we could move forward, and if one spent 90% of their time in meditation, it was easy to have a very clean and clear mind. If you’re not out there interacting with the world, you not going to get caught up in the trappings of it. However, if you are living your life as a householder, it’s infinitely more challenging to truly master morality. So while Raja Yoga requires us to begin with the mind, Hatha Yoga invites us to begin with the body.
The idea is that we purify the body through a multitude of disciplined practices, our Sadhana, before we turn out attention to the mind. I will spare you the details of these many practices (like bathing your eyes in urine!) so as not to scare you away, but just know that Hatha Yoga concerns itself with getting you out of your head and into your body as the way to start. Along with in depth cleansing practices, we have the deeper exploration of Asana. Patanjali was really only concerned with the seated postures of meditation, whereas Yogi Swatmarama starts to give us instructions on more complicated postures. He also focuses on Pranayama practices, Mudras (hand & body gestures) and Bandhas (energetic and muscular locks in the body).
Swatmarama and others understood that controlling the fluctuations of the mind is extremely challenging, so they encourage us to learn to control the pranic forces in our body first, and by bringing those into alignment, the mind will more easily follow. The overall goal of Hatha Yoga is still the same as Raja Yoga — to reach this state of eternal bliss, known as Samadhi. It’s just, for many, a more accessible way to begin. Once you’ve mastered the body through asana, pranayama, mudra & bandha, you then begin to turn your attention to the mind with a slightly different set of yamas & niyamas, then you progress through the stages of concentration, onto meditation and then eventually to Samadhi.
In the future we’ll dive a bit deeper into the path of Hatha Yoga as well as those many practices that I mentioned, but for now, I sincerely hope you have a broader understanding of what Hatha Yoga, in its many forms, is.
I want to add that I am forever a student and always learning, and it’s important to note that every time I learn something new, I am forced to reevaluate all that I have learned before. Things that I had spent years confidently teaching, have been shattered by one simple paragraph deep inside an esoteric Yogic text. There will always been conflicting opinions and different ways to view the practices. If what I have shared bumps up against what you’ve learned before, I hope you can allow space for new and opposing views.