hatha
हठ haṭhaForce or effort: the name of the yoga that works on body and breath; symbolically read as ha (sun) and tha (moon), the union of the solar and lunar energies.
Where this term appears
- What is Hatha Yoga? Yoga
That idea is Hatha Yoga, and it is one of the boldest moves in the history of Indian spirituality.
- Is yoga Hindu? Is it a religion? Yoga
Posture-rich practice does have real Indian roots in the medieval hatha yoga traditions, which developed techniques of the body, breath, and subtle energy, and those are treated in What is hatha yoga?.
- Meditation and the Eight Limbs Yoga
It was popularised by Vivekananda's 1896 book of that name, and readers should not assume the term sits in the ancient text itself. Then there is hatha yoga , which is later again.
- Pranayama: Working with the Breath Yoga
The named triad of puraka , kumbhaka and rechaka belongs to the later commentarial and Hatha layer, to figures such as Vachaspati Mishra and to the Hatha manuals.
- Surya Namaskar: The Sun Salutation Yoga
The scholar Joseph Alter, who has studied the practice's history, puts it plainly: the Sun Salutation was not recorded in any hatha yoga text before the nineteenth century.
- The Subtle Body: Nadis, Chakras, and Kundalini Yoga
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika and other hatha works speak of seventy-two thousand nadis threading the body, each said to branch again.
- What Are the Yoga Sutras? Yoga
They are not the same thing as hatha yoga , the later body-centred tradition of postures, cleansings and locks, which has its own texts a thousand years younger.
- What is Yoga? Yoga
The yoga of the body: hatha and the subtle anatomy There is, finally, a yoga that is genuinely about the body.