5/30/2023 0 Comments Light on yoga written by![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() There are no sun salutations, no downward-facing dogs or warriors. Fifteen poses appear in the “Hatha Yoga Pradipika,” most of them seated or supine. Instructions for postures, or asanas, appeared much later, in medieval tantra-inflected texts, such as the “Hatha Yoga Pradipika.” Even in those works, however, you won’t find many of the positions taught today as yoga. Yoga, the sutras say, “is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.” The total of their guidance about posture is that it should be “steady and comfortable.” This requires an imaginative leap, because the yoga sutras say next to nothing about physical poses their overriding concern is the workings of the mind. In contemporary yoga classes, teachers often speak of Patanjali’s “Yoga Sutras,” a philosophical text compiled around two thousand years ago, as the wellspring of the practice. In Eka Pada Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (bridge pose), in Bangalore, 1989. ![]()
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