The Relationship between Physical Yoga and Meditative Yoga
mark tanaka
Yoga, beyond being a wonderful health practice for the body and mind, originally was designed to help guide us into a very unique experience called Moksha or liberation. At first I found this to be extremely obscure. But after years of research, study and practice, I've come to understand that across many traditions of yoga, they were talking about something common. This "state" is not only achievable but extremely accessible in glimpses. We can begin to access this state with proper guidance and begin to reap the benefits of feeling freer and more liberated from our experiences of struggle. But before we go there we have to lay some context.
When we say yoga we’re actually talking about a very large topic that encompasses numerous disciplines. Typically what we practice in the west that we call yoga is a derivative of what was considered Hatha Yoga - the physical and subtle body based practices of breath, posture, mudra etc. These practices were most likely popularized and integrated during the Tantric era 500 Ce- 1200CE
When we study the Yoga Sutras, we’re studying another branch of yoga that traditionally was considered the meditative yoga or raja yoga. This is an older form of yoga and would very likely be considered the traditional yoga that is referenced in the Upanishads.
Hatha Yoga was most likely utilized as an adjunct practice to support Raja Yoga practice. Meaning Hatha Yoga was utilized to prepare one’s body, mind, nervous system and subtle body so that one can more easily succeed in the Raja Yoga (meditative yoga).
There are many references to how Hatha Yoga leads to the fruits of Raja Yoga in chapter 4 of the text. Including the following verse 78.
78. Those who are ignorant of the Raja-Yoga and practice only the Hatha-Yoga, will, in my opinion, waste their energy fruitlessly.
The practitioners and teachers from a thousand years ago had a particular function and goal in mind for Hatha Yoga. It’s not that Hatha Yoga has no health benefits or can’t improve our lives in multiple ways (which it obviously does.) But considering that the original practitioners of this art felt that liberation and realization were of primary importance they make statements such as this.
One of my teachers from years ago contextualized the various texts as specialized texts, written for various purposes and for people at various stages of practice. He placed the hatha yoga texts as a technical text for hatha yoga that should be seen as a preparation for Raja Yoga (yoga sutras). And he said that the Yoga Sutras was a specialized text for Raja Yoga (meditation instructions). It’s kind of like having a text on how to grow food and a text on how to cook food. They’re on 2 different subjects that are related and can support the other.
When we place this in a historical context of tantra it becomes an interesting topic. Although Yoga sutra like concepts were obviously assimilated into latter traditions of Tantra, it’s questionable if the Yoga Sutras were actually directly utilized as an authoritative text in those traditions.
But when you take a peak at vajrayana Buddhism you see a parallel treatment of these practices. Body based practices (Trulkor, Tsa Lung) which would be the Buddhist version of Hatha Yoga (with breathing exercises, postures, stretches, mudras and focus on subtle body) is utilized as an aid to accelerate the awakening and direct perception of one’s nature in meditation practice.
Coming full circle, when we can learn to identify and rest in this nature, we experience immense freedom from our usual troubles and inner struggles. This is the essence of Yoga. When we get clear about this possibility and we utilize the practices in a more systematic way, we can achieve this goal more expediently. It's not that using yoga for other means or purposes is wrong. Not at all. But it's also important for us to understand the original purpose of yoga so we can pursuit such goals expediently if it is important to us.
