THE MAIN PURPOSE OF HATHA YOGA

 

The main purpose of Hatha Yoga is much beyond to have a good, handsome body.

Practicing Yoga in the last century is not what it was when Hatha Yoga came into being. Today, people practice or often “do” yoga postures and think that they practice Yoga.

Practicing asana is a great preventative medicine, but it is certainly only a small part of what one would need to change in order to live honorable and emotional, mental, mental and physical healthy life. On all pages of this book – web site you can read about what you can change, but on this page we will briefly mention what is the main purpose of Hatha Yoga.

The main purpose of Hatha Yoga is the awakening of the inner power. It sounds theoretical but luckily it is not just pure theory and dogma.

There is the latent cosmic prana or vital energy and it is called the Kundalini Shakti. It is our powerful spiritual energy. It is a big potential and the most powerful force of a living being (and I would say a big barrier which has to be overcome as well) which is situated at the base of the spine.

Spine Structure

 

Spine is a curved column made of 24 movable bones interconnected with the rest 9 clumsy vertebrae all wrapped with more than 30 strong muscles. It has two openings of each side where the nerves are passing.

The spine is hollow and deep inside of the tunnel lives a mass called a spinal cord. It is the most important communication system between the brain and the rest part of the body because it carries nerves, and nerves carry informations. The spinal cord is surrounded by different layers of fibers and by the fluid which circulates and pulsates permanently since we are three weeks about young little embryos and it stops to circulate several hours after death of our physical body.

This is what the scalpel-tweezers science and its astonishing, super powerful man-made computers can tell us about the spine, viewed in three or four dimensions. But everything will be much easier if our body was just a pile of bones and flesh.

In ancient time a man did not have powerful precise machines and did not investigate the gross body but its subtle nature. Through his experience he gained knowledge about his subtle body only by his own, super human powers.

His knowledge about the multidimensional structure of existence he then put down in the books which still represent the highest human wisdom.

 

aim of hatha yoga

Prana and Nadis

 

The two holes on each side of the spine, the two physical nerve passages, carries two Prana channels or Nadis.

Prana is vital energy, or life force. Prana is also called Qi, Chi or Mana. The term „energy“ is here used in a lack for a better word.

The word nadi means river or channel. Nadis are not nerves, they are subtle channels which carry prana.
According to the ancient yogic texts there are 72 000 nadis. The Siva Samhita, another texts on Hatha Yoga talks about 350 000 nadis.

About fifty years ago this pranic channels and their vibrations were photographed by Killian photography and since than many researchers in the fields of psychology, parapsychology, religion, kinesiology and other sciences proved the existence and pulsation of prana.

The left channel is called Ida Nadi and the right Pingala Nadi. They correspond to two physical nerve passages.

The cavity of spine is a pranic channel called the Sushumna Nadi or the central space, and it corresponds to spinal cord (some parts of the cavity of the spine is in the language of medicine also called space) and it is made up of three levels, just like modern, super powerful computers are showing.

These are three more subtle channels.

The main purpose and the higher goal of Hatha Yoga is awakening Kundalini and unification between the individual self and the cosmic consciousness. This illuminated state is called Samadhi.

The awakening of Kundalini is possible when the flow of prana in Ida and Pingala energy channels or in physical level, the parasympathetic and sympathetic system, is balanced.

This is how practice of breathing techniques and asanas correspond to a higher state of being and why the purpose of Hatha Yoga is not to have a handsome body that is supposed to seduce (some of the) female or male heads.