The unspoken secret of yoga revealed: the origins of asana

Warning: After reading this your idea about Yoga will never be the same. 

I´ve practised yoga for more than fifteen years. After ten years, I also started teaching it. Now, I´ve given up teaching yoga as we see it here in the Western world. The discoveries I made about the history of yoga and the origins of asana were a major turning point for my yoga. Follow me on this journey and I promise your idea about yoga will never be the same.

The truth about asana: Ancient practise or modern gymnastics? 

Yoga asanas are a pretty new invention. They were added to yoga to counter the European gymnastics movement. They are not an ancient heritage from the past masters, but a last century creation. - How many yoga practisioners or teachers know this?

 After a shocking encounter with Mark Singleton´s article The Roots of Yoga in Yoga journal, I was puzzled. What Singleton claimed, was that yoga asanas were not an ancient practise that had been passed down for generations in India from the guru´s and teacher, but that they were added to Indian culture in the early 20^th century. They were a response to the decline in Indian physical culture and a counterstrike towards the European gymnastic movement, which was going strong on the moment. The yoga was synthesized, taking heritage from the age old Indian tradition but being boosted with the European gymnastics movement to become more solid practise – This was the birth of modern yoga.

In the meantime, I dipped into some more on the study of the origins of Asana. Singleton holds a PhD from Cambridge University. He´s done an enormous amount of research for his book: Yoga body, the origins of modern posture practise. What I came up with really embraced my view of Yoga with totally radical ideas. Yoga isn´t a systematical tradition of methods that has been there for hundreds or thousands of years. Just breath in, and check out the pictures below:

The images are from two sources: "Anatomy of a contortionist," Scribner´s Magazine, 1889 and B.K.S Iyengar´s Light on Yoga, 1966.

So the almost identical postures were displayed earlier in European Gymnastics magazine, and adopted to the yogic practise after the colonial influence in India. I´m not saying that these pictures would prove anything, but it´s pretty convincing text that Singleton hammers down with his books and articles. Everything is documented in very detailed manner and the sources are academically listed.

The shocking truth is, that our romantic ideas about yoga as an authentic spiritual tradition, being passed forwards generations after generations in an unchanging form, are a belief without any historical evidence. On the contrary, the evidence points out that modern yoga was created to respond to the concern of wellbeing of Indian people. The funny thing is that it was then exported to western world, as an "original" Indian practise. - Nobody bothered to mention the effect of European gymnastics on it.

As a spiritual practise, do you know many people who´ve reached enlightenment via the practise of asanas? We could see the inclusion of asana to yoga practise as the evolution of yoga. For sure they give you benefits, physically and also open the road for consciousness to dwell in your body. But still, I wouldn´t worry too much, if I couldn´t perform this or that asana. After all, they´re just gymnastics. You can make anything benevolent into your spiritual practise. There are myriads of methods that you can use to combine your mind and body into a single action of existence in  this moment. - What else do we need?

Singleton´s article: http://www.yogajournal.com/article/philosophy/yoga-s-greater-truth/

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Restarting the Soul search

Time to restart my Soul search again

Sometimes it´s best to go back to basics, and even beyond them in return to the source of all things. Once in awhile you might need to even reinvent the wheel, if it´s not working. Here´s what I suggested myself to do…

Give yourself some time to readjust. There´s a way of being so attached to what´s happening in this moment, that it´s easy to lose the connection with yourself. It´s good to slow down, take some time off from everything. Even small moments of being with yourself can restore the balance to this moment, what you are, how you sense what´s happening and how you react to the impulses surrounding you.

I´ve always scorned spiritual seeking, thinking that I´m beyond it. To me, it has sounded like being unaware, seeking something, instead of being there, alive and conscious in this very moment. I remember being fond of a Salvador Dali quote: “I don´t search, I find.” That was the way I wanted to think. Instead of lacking something, I wanted to see the world as already being perfect, right the way it was. This moment includes everything that is needed. I thought that the problems are created by the mind, if there was a problem in this moment, then there´d have to be a solution.

This kind of thinking might induce a problem in itself. It might create an unrealistic, egoistic point of view, which would become an excuse for not committing, taking action, doing the hard work. It could also create disregard towards real issues that need to be confronted. It can lead you to closing your eyes and being in this pseudospiritual hype existence, where you drift and don´t really commit to anything. I mean freedom is cool but I´d vote for inner freedom, instead of escapism from outer circumstances and responsibilities.

So how about giving the seeker a chance? That means being open, giving up the prejudices and disposition towards staying in your top dog worldview.  Then you can start descending to this moment, your true self and towards everything, as it is. Our way of conceptualising is great, but we´re also clouded by our illusionary concepts, that we, sadly, see as truth. So how about getting to the start again? It takes a lot of courage to admit your mistakes. It takes a lot of humility, to be there, honest and open with all your failures and rough incompleteness. It means that you´re not trying to be any better and more advanced than others. It reconnects you with people, you can relate with what they´re going through. 

Now, back to the seeker and finder. To be able to be the finder, I have to be open to the seeker. Not to get lost in the search, never finding what I´m looking for, lost in the endless voyage. The voyage goes on, but I´m here. I have to give myself a moment of ease, relax into my Soul search and accept the uniqueness of this moment. Just being there, nothing added, nothing reduced, and open to this moment. The divine state of not knowing is actually very liberating, when we´re there, I think we´re able to reach out and touch others. Then we can formulate a perspective to the situation, hold it for a moment and then release it. And after awhile, start over again.