Asana Yoga Postures and Meditation
Asana yoga postures are part of Patanjali Yoga and Hatha Yoga. But the postures are not yoga in full. In the Yoga Sutras, eight features of Yoga are listed. In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika six features are announced. In both systems, Asana postures are acknowledged.
The six processes given in the Pradipika have asana postures as the initial one, but the Yoga sutras list it as the third one, after yama and niyama. Yama and niyama are discouraged and encouraged behaviors. These have to do with social interaction. They are not listed in the Pradipika because that system is for isolated yogis who have very little, if any association. Those yogis have little social contact to monitor.
Nowadays the majority of people, who do asana postures, do so for bodily health and physical beauty. That is not yoga. It is not asana as it is defined and used in yoga. However, the fact remains that if one looks in a dictionary for the meaning of yoga, one will get a general sense that it means bodily postures.
For asana postures to be used in the progressive yoga process, either in the Patanjali suggested method, or in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the motive must be subtle body purification and elevation. If one uses the postures for physical benefits like weight loss, curing of disease, and health, those motivations will rob one of the progresses, which one would gain, if one used the subtle body as the target of the practice, rather than the physical one.
There is a question.
Where is the focus while doing an asana posture?
If I begin a posture by looking in the mirror and determining what part of my body needs to lose weight, the focus during the practice of that pose, will be the physical design of my body, and what should be done to alter the shape, either to remove the excess fat or flesh, or to shift and sculp it. But this thinking will not cause me to advanced to pranayama breath infusion, which is the next stage of yoga.
I may go on practicing asanas for many years, and never get to the higher stages, because I am not focus properly when doing the postures. Asana poses can cause one to become introspective. This happens if one internalizes, and is attentive to the nerve energy and feelings, which are stimulated, and which move in the psyche, during the assumption of a posture.
That internalization automatically causes one to be interested in the psychological energies in the subtle body, the form of feelings. Even though nerves and their electrical circuits are mere physical energy, still running side by side, there is subtle energy. When one focuses on the nerve energy in the physical body during a posture, one develops a familiarity with the psychological circuits. This causes the mind to be interested in the subtle body. That shifts one to higher yoga, where the interest and motivation for practice, becomes the psychic energy. Thus, the practice of pranayama breath infusion and pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal holds one’s interest. Then one loses the deep interest one had for using yoga postures for losing weight and gaining physical health.
