Hatha Yoga: It Starts with the Body
I’m not stretchy enough to do Yoga
The one thing that I hear more than anything else about yoga is “I’m not stretchy enough to do Yoga”. It’s a little like cancelling your first driving lesson because you’ve never operated a car. It’s sort of the point. Likewise, you might hear people say they won’t meditate because they can’t concentrate. Some people don’t cook dinner because they are too hungry and then starve.
Hatha yoga starts with the body and aims to make it strong, supple, and capable. Traditionally the purpose of this is twofold, depending on your viewpoint. The first purpose is to make you capable of long bouts of meditation, required for deeper practice. Meditation is hard — exhausting even — and being healthy is a really good starting point. By stretching the muscles and exercising the lungs and heart, you can be in better shape for the main event. This was also the origin of the martial arts practiced by monks in the Shaolin temples, and similar.
Tantra. It doesn’t mean what you probably think it means.
The second purpose is tied to another yoga tradition called Tantra. It doesn’t mean what you probably think it means. It has nothing to do with the singer Sting, and nothing to do with making love for hours to the sounds of sitar. The word has all kinds of meanings including “loom”, and “weave”, but also “system” and “work”. It’s a ritual based practice that aims to achieve higher states of consciousness through behaviours, mantras (chants) and challenges to social norms. It’s what’s known as a somatic practice — it starts with the body because that is really all we have in the world and works up towards the consciousness realms. You can practice Tantra through sex or intoxicating substances, or you can practice by chanting, or by exercising the body, putting it into challenging and stressful situations, such as the famous bed of nails.
So, Hatha Yoga is either a preparation for higher practice, or itself a route to higher practice. Many people of course don’t consciously go this far — they’re quite happy with a good stretch, glowing skin and a community latte.
It means pushing your muscles to their limits so that new limits are created.
Some people who aim to soften or feminise yoga have tried to claim that Hatha (Ha Tha) means sun-moon. This is to evoke the joining of disparate things i.e. body and mind. Here’s the things:
A) The body and mind DON’T NEED JOINING, they are already joined
B) It simply doesn’t mean that.
Hatha means “force”. It means pushing your muscles to their limits so that new limits are created. It means challenging the body, exerting it, pushing it further and further until it can do feats that appear superhuman. It means really listening to the experience — the pull or scream of every muscle, the movement caused by every breath, the most nuanced experience of every sensory sensation as it happens, in the moment, only now existing. Hatha Yoga is designed to stress you and focus you at the same time.
It’s so common, so successful, because we in Europe and America have an obsession with bodies. We reduce the importance of the mind aspect and focus on outward appearance. Hatha yoga is an exercise, just like jogging or weight lifting and therefore has an impact on body composition (fat and muscle), cardiovascular health, proprioception (which is the body’s way of knowing where it is in space and therefore how to balance, not bump into things and be present) and many more things besides. It’s good for you.
“Can you lose weight with yoga?”.
Which is why it’s so bizarre to see articles in magazines, and even scientific journals asking questions like “Can you lose weight with yoga?”. If you exercise or move the body you are using energy. If this, in balance with your hormonal set up and nutritional intake (not fat, not sugar, not carbs, it’s different for everyone), then you can lose weight. You could have the same effects by meditating and going for a walk. It’s also strange to see people claim that certain poses can cure certain diseases. There’s no basis for this but what the hell is the harm in trying?
The Yoga of force can have an enormous impact on your life and no wonder it’s so popular. It is highly limited though. Don’t think for a moment that what you do on the mat is enough to reach higher spiritual truths by itself. We all know people who spend an hour in yoga class and then go and yell at the barista for getting their latte wrong. Don’t be that person, take your yoga off the mat.