Hatha Yoga Benefits Go Way Beyond Good Exercise & Weight Loss

Unfortunately, most of the people who practice yoga today believe that yoga is a process of tunring yourself into a pretzel or doing some gymnastics. But yoga isn’t really anything of the sort. The Sanskrit word yoga can be translated into English as union. What does that mean? Well, let me take the help of modern physics, which says today that the entire cosmos is actually a single energy, that has found various forms. If the energy is already one, why don’t we see it the way it is?

If you challenge the idea within yourself that you are different and complete the process of breaking the idea of “many”, it is yoga. Religions have always spoken of an omnipresent God – one who pervades everywhere. But frankly speaking, how is that different from saying everything is the same energy. Both these are saying the same thing in a different language. When he scientists say it through physics and maths, we consider it science. If you believe that God is everywhere, think so, we call it a religion. When you find a way or technique to experience this “one reality”, that technique is called a yoga practice, or generally as yoga.

If you turn the process of living into a means to cross you limitations, it becomes a process of yogic upliftment. In many ways, your entire life’s activity of breathing, eating, sitting, and everything else can become a process of yoga.

How Hatha Yoga Benefits Your Energies

To move to this “one experience” or union, to achieve this state of yoga and absence of boundaries, we control and direct the energy and mold the system through the physical process of Hatha Yoga. Understanding body’s systems, creating a particular situation within it and then using it to lead to a greater experience of life though physical movements is what hatha yoga is all about. Hatha Yoga is not a method to develop your muscles or whatever. An asana, or more correctly a yogasana means a specific position of the body, which leads to a change in your body chemistry and energy situation. Many positions of the body are possible. But only those postures or positions that lead you towards the experience of union or yoga are called asanas. Fundamentally, there are 84 such asanas or postures.

Hatha Yoga Benefits Spiritual Seekers

Hatha Yoga is a process of preparing for deeper and more profound mechanisms of yoga. The word “Ha” refers to the Sun within you. The fragment “ta” refers to the Moon. These are in effect, the masculine and feminine nature within each person respectively. These are also manifesting as the Ida and Pingala within the structure of the nadis or energy channels. Yoga can be learned in ways that can take a person beyond all limitations of physical nature. But it is still usually used as a means to setting the body up for higher systems of yoga.

Kriya yoga, for example, requires a body that has been through certain preparations, in order to sustain the energy that results from such practices. Without preparation of the body, it will not be able to sustain a major dimension of energy that will descend as a result of Kriya yoga practice. The body will be damaged. It is only if the system is set and prepared that you can infuse such energies into the human system. It is like pushing a pump with too much power. It will explode. Hatha Yoga can be understood, so to speak, as the creation of a system to handle these energies.

There are several dimensions to Hatha Yoga, it, but just keeping it straightforward, see how someone holds his or her body when they are going through various situations within themselves. You yourself would have seen, if you are angry, you will hold the body one way.When you are joyful, the body will be different. If you are morose, you feel that the body is different. There is a state that the body takes for every psychological and emotional state that a human being is in. This is a natural position taken by the body, driven by your instinct or karma. It is the science of Hatha Yoga, to deliberately make the body take different positions. Then your mental, chemical and energy state can develop as well.

As a practice, you see most places do not teach hatha yoga in its full potential.Today, generally it is taught as a mechanical process.

You need to infuse hatha yoga with something other than physical movements.Otherwise it is really a physical exercise and nothing more. So, in the traditional way, there is a lot of attention being put on the teacher to make it a complete and holistic process.

Hatha Yoga Benefits If Done Properly

After all these decades and millions of people practicing yoga in the United States, it is becoming popular, although it has been learned in a way that leaves many lacunae. What can be gained by practising Hatha Yoga is not in doubt, irrespective of where you live and what you do And now, the number of yoga practitioners is increasing in general. This may simply be because the medical scientists have gradually begun to recognize the capability and benefits of Hatha Yoga. But if the type of yoga that is done is non-classical and improper, in the next few years, a study will be done which will postulate that yoga is harmful for human beings.

It is therefore of great importance that hatha yoga is practiced in the way it is meant to be practiced. Not in all sorts of distortions. If hatha yoga is learned in a suitable environment the fulfillment that can be derived through the whole process is immeasurable.

There are many subtle tools in hatha yoga which are unfortunately not known widely in today’s world. Angamardhana, Upayoga etc. are processes that are available in a few places. Hopefully, as the world becomes more aware of what hatha yoga is, more people will come in contact with these phenomenal processes.