Back to the heart of yoga
Although yoga seems to be plentiful, some essential principles have been lost in modern yoga. Until the 15th century, before patriarchal systems began to influence yoga, the practice was integrated into everyday life. Intimate with life.
Yoga anno now is hip. Today, there are many ways to practice yoga. At a yoga studio on the corner of the street, in the park or at your favorite gym. The many expressions or styles of yoga make it accessible to a wide audience where both men and women are welcome.
In the tantric tradition of India, Nepal and surrounding areas that lasted for about 1,000 years from the 5th to the 15th century, there were forms of ritual practice very similar to the sun salutation we know today. Christopher Tompkins, Indologist and Sanskrit scholar specializing in the tradition of tantric Shaivism, delved at length into “divinely revealed” writings from this tradition. What he found in all Tantra is a unique and innovative Yoga-Sādhana.
Influential yogis such as Krishnamacharya and Yogananda have always referred to these texts in their teachings: Shastras. However, they were not believed by later researchers that these texts existed. It is even claimed of Krishnamacharya, the father of modern yoga, that he was actually inspired by the Swedish gymnastics of P.H. Ling for his Vinyasa Krama teaching. He himself has always said that he learned this from his guru Ramamohana Brahmachari, with whom he stayed for seven and a half years in a cave at the foot of Mount Kailash.
The unique Yoga-Sādhana of this tantric period involved a daily ritual performed in a specific order and named as, “Vinyasa-Krama. This ritual integrated within family life was practiced by both men and women, as a direct participation in Life. Connected and intimate. With life, with each other.
“As simple as breathing into life itself.
What later became known as Surya Namaskar, the sun salutation, has its origins in this daily ritual practice, which varied from Tantra to Tantra, where a twelve-part posture series was practiced with mantra and breath work.
However, the emerging influence of patriarchal and religious movements increasingly suppressed this “life-affirming” tradition. Some aspects of the tradition were incorporated into the then male-only spiritual practice. And much of it was lost.
Krishnamacharya, (1888-1989), did his utmost to revive the heart of yoga within his own capabilities and cultural upbringing. Thus, he taught women at a time when yoga had become accessible only to men. And was his view that yoga education should be adapted to the age, ability and cultural background of the student. He made a strong case in India not to allow ancient yoga to be adulterated by mixing it with gymnastics and wrestling and expressed the hope that future generations would continue to use the source texts.
Some of his students have been of great importance to yoga development in the West. In the process, each student passed on his personal experience, and thus various styles of yoga were developed, all of which had a similar foundation. Krishnamacharya, for example, gave young energetic and dynamic students challenging exercises to help them maintain their focus. The very active styles of yoga, based mainly on strength, came from this because some of his later famous students had spent only a short period in their youth with him. His teaching of middle-aged women, however, looked completely different.
Krishnamacharya’s efforts to revive the heart of yoga have been partially successful. Yoga has been brought out of obscurity: today, 1.6 million people in the Netherlands practice yoga, both men and women. However, a number of principles have been largely lost in it due to both Western and Eastern influences.
Those lost teachings of authentic yoga are fortunately extremely simple and can be applied in any contemporary style of yoga. So that yoga goes beyond gymnastic postures, hierarchical systems, or ideals far to be achieved. Back to the heart of yoga: a life-affirming practice, intimate with life.
As simple as breathing in life itself.
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