hatha yoga

Ever since yoga traveled to the west some 30 or 40 years ago, Hatha Yoga has gained in popularity as it provides great power and balance to the practitioner for overall physical and mental health. Tracing its origins back to 15th century India, hatha can be broken down to the Sanskrit words, ha for sun and tha for moon. But combined together as one word, it means something forcibly done or ‘with force’.

Balancing solar and lunar energy

Sun is considered the basis of everything masculine and powerful in ancient Indian folklore. Mind and balance is associated with the moon. Yoga, traced back to ancient India several thousand centuries ago, means to join. If you take the spiritual explanation, then yoga is joining of the individual souls with the universal soul or God, according to the Vedic texts. But moving outside the spiritual domain, yoga has also been practiced for centuries to maintain optimum mental and physical health.

As balance is known to come from mental discipline, the moon comes into play. And the balance of the solar and lunar energy creates a healthy body and mind and they are inter-linked. You cannot achieve mental health without possessing a healthy body. Similarly, physical health is associated with mental health. People in the west found Hatha Yoga appealing as it met their concerns head-on. It is the force that one sees in the yogic postures and the breathing techniques that work in tandem result in changing the overall personality and physique of the individual.

The mind and the physique are not seen as two different aspects in yoga. They are correlated and one cannot exist in its true form without the other. Training of the mind and body leads to a state where you can not only lead a healthy life fighting off diseases, but you can also attain a greater degree of mental discipline. Depression and melancholy are common among many people the world over and they are unable to get on with their lives.

Hatha yoga

Joining the opposing forces

Suicide rates are rising as the mind becomes weak and health becomes a slave to over the counter drugs and medications that come loaded with side effects. Understood through the Chinese philosophy of ying and yang or opposing forces, the negative and the positive, Hatha Yoga aims to balance both extremes. A tear-away mind and a failing physique can wreck havoc to the individual if he doesn’t know the art of forcibly balancing the two. Hatha Yoga balances the diverse energies through a process of postures for purification and breadth controls to calm the restless mind and shape up the physique.

Postures are also for maintaining balance and strength of the body to fight off old age symptoms, obesity and bad health. Purification of the mind leads to mental discipline that is the bedrock of other forms of yoga. It aims at spiritual progress through meditation and advanced control of our breathing process. Awareness for alternative harmless techniques and remedies to achieve optimum mental and physical health has made the popularity of Hatha Yoga soar.

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