From Asana to Samadhi: Exploring the Hatha Yoga Pradipika

What? You mean you don’t have a room plastered with cow dung? You don’t reside in a hermitage where good alms are easily attained? Well, perhaps you do, and don’t realize it—or perhaps you can...

Just as lions, tigers, and elephants are gradually controlled, so prana is controlled through practice. Otherwise the practitioner is destroyed. How well-trained is your inner lion-tiger-elephant? This verse from the preeminent hatha yoga text, the...

Ashesha-tapataptanam samashraya-matho hathah Ashesha-yoga-yuktanam-adhara-kamatho hathah Hatha is a sheltering hermitage for those completely scorched by afflictions. Hatha is the tortoise that supports those completely engaged in yoga. It’s hard to think of a living being...

The mind, which is like a furious elephant roaming in the garden of the senses, is controlled by the sharp goad of nada. An elephant is a magnificent creature—nine feet tall at the shoulder (put...

Curiously, in the last dozen years, hatha yoga has somehow come to refer to a style of practicing asana instead of a wide range of practices, including pranayama, cleansing practices, bandhas, mudras, all asanas, and...

Matsyendra’s heart swelled with compassion. The childless woman standing before him was deeply unhappy and wanted nothing in the world except a child. “Take this,” he said, giving her a pinch of ash. Matsyendra, credited...