Ask a Yogi Column 1

Ask a Yogi: Exploring Our Yoga Roots (1)

Have you ever wondered why we do Pranayama breathing at the beginning of every class?  Or what the Sanskrit names of yoga postures mean?  Or why we say Namaste?

The purpose of this column is to answer such questions about the language, rituals, and philosophy of yoga.  Let me be honest, I am not an expert on yoga philosophy!  But, after completing an intensive 200 hour teacher training in July 2010, it was clear I had lots of questions about yoga that go deeper than “can you show me how to get into that pose?”  Investigating these questions (and yours) will be the basis of this column. 

Typing of questions, here is one for you:  Did you know that the classical techniques of yoga go back more than 5,000 years?  However, the Hatha yoga we practice today was developed only 111 years ago, by Shri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) who developed an asana-based style of yoga because most of his students were teenage boys who required productive development of their strength and stamina.  Prior to the 1900’s, the practice of yoga was not posture-based nor was it common for everyone to do it; rather yoga was practiced by sages who were focused on cultivating deep states of meditation via chanting and breathing (pranayama) to quiet the mind and eliminate suffering.  The sages wrote down the wisdom that came to them during meditation; the first of these ancient scripts were called the Vedas.  For thousands of years yoga philosophy, rituals (meditation, singing of mantras) evolved and many sages contributed to the debates and practices that eventually formed six major ‘schools’ of Yoga. 

Current yoga instruction in the Western world has an almost totally exclusive focus on posture (asana) and contain very little of the past; many regular practitioners are unfamiliar with the rich philosophical traditions that inform yoga, and have never chanted a mantra or sat in meditation in a yoga class…… While some of us are probably thankful we don’t have to sing at HBHY, I know from conversations that many of you are curious about various aspects of yoga.  So, what about yoga do you want to know but were afraid to ask?