The classic Hatha yoga manual for a strong, vital, beautiful body and a balanced, harmonious, happy mind ā¢ Includes instructions for many advanced Hatha yoga exercises to build strength, stamina, and good posture, the necessary basis for spiritual development ā¢ Provides detailed exercise plans to help you develop your personal weekly practice ā¢ Explains traditional yogic methods of fasting and internal cleansing, practices to strengthen the endocrine system, methods for advanced sexual control, breath control practices, and concentration exercises to improve mind power Based upon ancient Sanskrit works on yoga as well as thousands of years of oral teachings, this Hatha yoga classic moves beyond the introductory level of yoga and provides illustrated instructions for many advanced asanas and other yogic techniques to build strength, stamina, and good posture--a necessary prerequisite for spiritual development. Offering detailed exercise plans to help you develop your personal weekly yoga practice as well as techniques to target specific areas of the body, such as the abdominal muscles, this book also contains detailed instructions on many forms of prĆ¢nĆ¢yĆ¢ma (breath control), including alternate nostril breathing, kapĆ¢labhĆ¢ti, and sahita, as well as meditative methods for developing your powers of concentration and mental discipline. With instructions on diet, fasting, internal cleansing, advanced sexual control, and strengthening the endocrine system, Sri S. S. Goswami's classic text presents the complete picture of an advanced Hatha yoga lifestyle for a strong, vital, beautiful body and a balanced, harmonious, happy mind.
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Yes, you can access Advanced Hatha Yoga by Shyam Sundar Goswami in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Sport & Exercise Science. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Muscle, in motion as well as in repose, has played a most important role in human developmentāa focus of forces operating through an organism, whose structural and functional complexity is the most perplexing in natureāin a gradual unfoldment through which the marvelous possibilities and probabilities lying within have begun to be actual. But muscle had a very long history before it reached the human level. Its functioning, which is expressed as movement at all levels and in all ages, is associated with the gross manifestation of the dynamic aspect of the life principle.
Education through muscle movement has been an intrinsic part of life of those organisms endowed with it. This education is intimately associated with survival and progressive development. The earliest pattern of human physical education, shaped in the Paleolithic Age, was the outcome of natural habit. Humans naturally attained a vigorous form of physical life, which proved suitable for the gradual unfoldment of mental life.
The tables below present three groupings of the principal human physical education activities, as developed in different parts of the world. Stage 1 represents those activities thought to have been acquired first; stage 2, those acquired later. The third grouping is of advanced activities, acquired when human nervous and mental life had appreciably progressed.
Yoga as a Means for Attaining Spiritual Goals
At a certain stage of the growth of the mental life of human beings a new demand was created, and, in meeting it, muscle had to take a different role. This was the purposeful motionless attitude of the body, requiring the static transformation of the dynamic muscle. The specialty and superiority of human beings lies less in external growth than in mental life. They survived, not because of physical strength, but because of their high order of mental life. Even at a very early stage humans began to use their brains. A transformation of human life in which mental growth is arrested is a biological degradation of the human organism and has less survival value. A condition of existence in which the mental life shrinks is more dangerous than that which brings about physical degeneracy. In fact, physical development alone cannot prevent human decay if the mental side is neglected.
He who tries to concentrate on something makes his body or certain parts of his body stationary. When a cat is about to jump on its prey, it first makes its body very still. When you want to look at some finer things or hear some sound from a greater distance, you keep your body stationary for the moment. Motion is antagonistic to concentration. In a crude way, this has been demonstrated in animals, but it has been fully developed in human beings. Our specialty does not lie in our constant movements, though adequate movements are necessary for life. With the gradual unfoldment of our mental life we experienced that the nonmotion state of the body was absolutely necessary for developing concentration. According to Yoga, our motions, executed by our muscles, are important insofar as they maintain our body in a state most suitable for the manifestation of our mental lifeāa mental life in which concentration predominates. This is the starting point of Yoga.
At a lower plane the mind is dark and dull. At this plane, ignorance, miscomprehension, inattention, and delusion predominate. It is degraded to almost an animal level. An active mental life is the seat of desires and drives, longing and greed, restlessness and uncontrolled actions. In a high order of mental life brilliant thinking and constructive imagination blend with the increased power of concentration and control, and the whole mental life is illuminated with spiritual light. Our smallness or greatness, darkness or brightness, selfishness or self-sacrifice, narrowness or broadnessāall depend on the order of our mental life. Our body is merely an instrument through which our mental lifeāour greed and sensuality or our sacrifice and loveāis expressed. This does not mean that the body is of no importance. We should not forget that we are also animals, with animal hungers. But in a higher order of mental life these hungers do not go beyond the normal human limit but remain under our control. In a dark and unrestrained mental life they appear in vicious forms and give an ugly picture of the person. However, Yoga makes it possible for us to attain a high order of mental life, backed by a body that is healthy, strong, symmetrical, and obedient to our mind, in which concentration reaches its peak.
Each human being is a grand center of manifestation of the power arising from and lying within the eternal and unknown reality in an inseparable form, something like waves that are inseparable from the ocean. Our eternal principleāour absolute form, which is in reality one with the nonmanifested: immovable, immutable, eternal, inconceivable, and unspecifiableāis masked, so we appear to be moving, changeable, limited, perishable, conceivable, and specifiable. Yoga, as it is revealed to those who have attained illuminative life, is the realization of absorption into and identification with the eternal reality. And the means to its attainment is also Yoga. Yoga is not merely a system, a method, or a group of processes. It is a spiritual state, christened as Yoga, in which the eternal principle of humanity is revealed. Spiritually this is the highest aim and grandest human achievement, in which supreme knowledge is immersed in eternal bliss.
Two ideas, one conveying the sense of union and the other concentration, are component parts of the word Yoga. These ideas in connection with Yoga originated in the early Vedic period (early Chalcolithic Age) in India. It was revealed to the sages that through the spiritual processes of union and concentration a person can reach the Unknown. The rishi (seer) says in the į¹igveda: āThe limited human consciousness becomes illuminated in the Supreme Consciousness which is the greatest of all and all-knowing after their union.ā The word union is used here in the spiritual sense to mean āthe expansion of the restricted consciousness into the stage of Supreme Consciousness,ā that is, the transformation of the limited into the unlimited. The first phase of union is effected through the mind in concentration. It is clearly expressed in the į¹igveda. Yajurveda also says: āWe unite our mind with the Supreme Consciousness, having infinite power by our own concentration for liberation.ā
Thus, a clear idea of the Supreme Consciousness was formed and the importance of concentrating the mind on appropriate objects was realized in the early Vedic period. Seers of that early age knew that the body was perishable, mind oscillating, and passion strong. They also knew that the invisible reality pervades all created things and also extends far beyond the material world; the face of the real is hidden by a golden vase; and the Supreme Consciousness is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, with no body, no disease, no birth, and no beginning. They realized that concentration was necessary for liberation and for knowing the Unknown, and that it could be developed by systematic efforts in that direction.
The conception and practice of concentration exercises are possible only for those who are endowed with a high order of mental life, glowing with intellectual eminence and backed by spiritual strength. In the Vedas, the fundamentals of Yoga were expressed in a language that we may call spiritual language, difficult to understand by those who are not specially taught by the masters. In the post-Vedic period attempts were made to remove the mask...
