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Yoga is known to build muscle strength and core strength with regular practice. Even as a person who doesnu2019t have any instances of chronic pain, I am still besieged by aches and pains on a regular basis. This happens mostly because our postures arenu2019t correct. However, practicing the right yoga poses on a regular basis has helped in reducing these aches and pains.<br>Read more: https://tinyurl.com/y699tmbf
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Yoga Body, Yoga Spirit: Can We Have Both(Yoga Burn Challenge) It's easy to understand why John Friend highly recommends the book Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Yoga "for all sincere students of yoga." Because, Mark Singleton's thesis is a well researched expose of how modern yoga, or "posture practice," as he terms it, has changed within and after the practice left India. This was how many Indian yogis coped with modernity: Rather than remaining in the caves of the Himalayas, they moved to the city and embraced the oncoming European cultural trends. They especially embraced its more "esoteric forms of gymnastics," including the influential Swedish techniques of Ling.
Singleton uses the word yoga as a homonym to explain the main goal of his thesis. That is, he emphasizes that the word yoga has multiple meanings, depending on who uses the term. This emphasis is in itself a worthy enterprise for students of everything yoga; to comprehend and accept that your yoga may not be the same kind of yoga as my yoga. Simply, that there are many paths of yoga. Singleton's study on "postural yoga" makes up the bulk of the book. But he also devotes some pages to outline the history of "traditional" yoga, from Patanjali to the Shaiva Tantrics who, based on much earlier yoga traditions, compiled the
hatha yoga tradition in the middle ages and penned the famous yoga textbooks the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Geranda Samhita. It is while doing these examinations that Singleton gets into water much hotter than a Bikram sweat. Thus I hesitate in giving Singleton a straight A for his otherwise excellent dissertation. Singleton claims his project is solely the study of modern posture yoga. If he had stuck to that project alone, his book would have been great and received only accolades. But unfortunately, he commits the same blunder so many modern hatha yogis do. All yoga styles are fine, these hatha yogis say. All homonyms are equally good and valid, they claim. Except that homonym, which the cultural relativist hatha yogis perceive as an arrogant version of yoga. Why? Because its adherents, the traditionalists, claim it is a deeper, more spiritual and traditional form of yoga.
Yoga Body thus misses a crucial point many of us have the right to claim, and without having to be criticized for being arrogant or mean-minded: that yoga is primarily a holistic practice, in which the physical body is seen as the first layer of a series of ascending and all-embracing layers of being-from body to mind to spirit. And that ultimately, even the body is the dwelling place of Spirit. In sum, the body is the sacred temple of Spirit. And where does this yoga perspective hail from? According to Feuerstein, "It underlies the entire Tantric tradition, notably the schools of hatha yoga, which are an offshoot of Tantrism." In Tantra it is clearly understood that the human being is a three-tiered being-physical, mental and spiritual. Hence, the Tantrics very skillfully and carefully developed practices for all three levels of being. From this ancient perspective, it is very gratifying to see how the more spiritual, all-embracing tantric and yogic practices such as hatha yoga, mantra meditation,
breathing exercises, ayurveda, kirtan, and scriptural study are increasingly becoming integral features of many modern yoga studios. So, to answer the question in the title of this article. Can we have both a limber physique and a sacred spirit while practicing yoga? Yes, of course we can. Yoga is not either/or. Yoga is yes/and. The more holistic our yoga practice becomes-that is, the more spiritual practice is added to our posture practice-the more these two seemingly opposite poles-the body and the spirit-will blend and unify. Unity was, after all, the goal of ancient Tantra. Perhaps soon someone will write a book about this new, ever-growing homonym of global yoga? Mark Singleton's Yoga Body is not such a book. But a book about this, shall we call it, neo-traditional, or holistic form of yoga would certainly be an interesting cultural exploration.
