28/11/2020
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The Purposes of Āsana
"Until the composition of the earliest haṭhayoga texts in the first few centuries of the second millennium CE, there were two primary reasons for ascetics and yogis to practise physical postures: as a stable base for breath-control, mantra-repetition and meditation or as a means of stopping karma.
With the advent of the haṭha corpus therapeutic benefits were added.
Sequences of physical postures were included in teachings on yoga in Tibet from at least the fifteenth century onwards.
By the eighteenth century Indian yoga texts taught repeated physical movements.
The ninth chapter of Sundaradeva’s Haṭhatattvakaumudī (‘Moonlight of the Principles of Yoga’) includes various repeated movements among purifications to be performed prior to the practice of prāṇāyāma (breath-control).
In the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati & Sritattvanidhi, firmness of the body becomes the sole purpose of āsana, as a prerequisite for the practice of the ṣaṭkarmas, the six cleansing practices.
The physical benefits of āsana practice are occasionally mentioned, in passing, in early works on haṭhayoga and several say that āsana practice in general gets rid of disease.
The Haṭhapradīpikā adds that it brings about firmness and nimbleness of the body, and includes specific physical benefits in its descriptions of individual āsanas.
Some authors on yoga did warn against excessive exercise: in his early nineteenth-century commentary on the Haṭhapradīpikā Brahmānanda explains that text’s admonition against practices that harm the body as referring to ‘multiple repetitions of practices such as the sun salutation or the lifting of weights’.
Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati’s gajāsana (elephant posture) involves repetitions of what is today known as the adhomukhaśvanāsana (downward dog), a constituent of the modern sun salutation.
𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐞-𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐠𝐚"
REFERENCES:
1. Mallinson, James Singleton, Mark (2017). Roots of Yoga. Penguin Books
2. Kings With Straw Mats (1986).Documentary
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