TRAINING IN HATHA YOGA

Hatha Yoga is slowly gaining popularity in Western World mainly as a form of some kind of spiritual training involving human body. To appreciate the full value of such training in Hatha Yoga it is necessary to appreciate the historical perspective of Hatha Yoga. This tradition of training in Hatha Yoga is ancient and various people put it around 5 to 10,000 years. We can imagine the life style of that age which must have involved a lot of body work. Our body is around 60% of muscle in an average person. However in present life style with great emphasis on mechanization of all our activities this 60% of our body is fast becoming the least utilized part of the human body. As if this is not enough we tend to overuse our brain much more and produce interpretive stresses through our excessive mental activity. A sedentary body with hyperactive mind leads to a feeling of spiritual emptiness. People try to escape that feeling through various means available to them and Hatha Yoga is touted as one of these means.

Many Hatha yoga teachers are unaware of the anatomy and physiology of human body and thus do not understand body mechanisms and their response to any stimulus given in the form of exercise. Many a times the Yoga classes tend to take a form of sadistic teacher teaching their masochistic disciples. This principally happens because of ignorance of signals emanating from the human body. Human body always puts forth pain and pleasure as two basic signals upon which a conscious organism has to act. However the illusion or maya is such that exactly opposite is the behavior of human beings who take great pleasure in boasting about doing some extremely painful things including hatha yoga. In fact it is socially accepted that unless you go through some extremely painful situations or tapa you will not learn anything. No pain no gain is the slogan of many teachers and I know of at least one teacher in hatha yoga who announces in his class, “Welcome to the torture chamber!!!”

Many people going to Hatha Yoga classes continue to have some pain in their body for years thinking this is the price they have to pay for some kind of spiritual upliftment. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many yoga teachers in fact deliberately give more and more painful poses thinking this will relieve pain. This will never happen. Students in their firm belief that they have to unquestioningly surrender to their teachers commands if they have to understand eastern philosophy go through this torture for years and in the bargain end with a decrepit body which is as far as ever from enlightenment. The introduction of props to help attain a pose has deteriorated into machines in torture chambers which twist, stretch, hang, press and compress human body to turn it into a contortionist nightmare.

Yoga is for healing, body, mind and spirit of the organism. Therefore let us consider various aspects of Hatha Yoga which must be addressed to before any training is initiated in Hatha Yoga.

TYPES OF ASANA:

There are basic four types of asanas depending on the motor characterisitics stressed in those poses. 1. Static flexibility: The example is Padmasana. 2. Static strength : The example is Mayurasana. 3. Balance : Sheershasana 4. A combination of these three : For example Utthitapadmasana.

PRNCIPLES OF TRAINING:

The training needs to be individualized. In a group activity this may sound an unwise advice but this is the demand of each organism. Every Individual as the word itself suggests, is different. His body needs a very specific stimulus to become better. A sequence of asana which is truly tailor made for her or his individual needs. This must take some trial and error and of course more of trial and less of error if the teacher pays due respect to the pain sensation in her or his body and then the students body. Once the sequence is well set the person must practice it either alone or in a group depending on his temperament. The proportion of asanas mentioned in the types of asanas must be carefully determined and modified according to the changing needs of the student depending on aging, biorhythms, emotional status.

The exercise duration and intensity must be economized. There is no rule that a class must last for an hour. Depending on the individual needs and depending on the time taken for recovery the teacher must either shorten or prolong the duration of total time taken for the session or the time taken for each pose. Many times a wrong concept of asanjaya seems prevalent which mentions that if you stay in one pose for some forty minutes then you have conquered that pose. This is a classic example of subtle ego thinking in terms of conquest over material or immaterial things. If one wants to understand this concept one should not take it as a conquest but as an ability to attain that pose anytime of day and night.

Thus Hatha Yoga training must be as flexible as the poses taught to improve flexibility and must not drop into a mindless painful training day after day. The principle adopted especially for the poses emphasizing static stretches is as follows : The stretch should be comfortably prolonged, chronic, cyclic, complimentary and always submaximal. The words comfortably prolonged mean the duration of that stretch should give a pleasurable sensation and should be prolonged till that sensation lasts. The word chronic means this stretch should be repeated for many days, months and years. The word cyclic means the stretch should be repeated in a circular fashion interspersed with periods of relaxation. The word complimentary means the stretch should be balanced by an opposite stretch of similar magnitude. The word submaximal means the stretch should not evoke a painful response from the body either in intensity or extent.

PRINCIPLE OF AWARENESS :

The student must be aware of what is happening in her or his body and what is
she or he doing to it. Thus he must continuously, simultaneously, nonjudgementally and totally perceive her or his internal and external environment.
A training in any aspect of human life looses its value if awareness is not there,
Hatha Yoga is no exception.