Sadhguru, can you tell us about the science behind yogasanas?
Sadhguru: The word asana literally means “posture.” Every posture the body can assume is an asana. Out of these innumerable postures, we identified 84 asanas as yogasanas. These 84 postures are possibilities for your body to be a channel, not a hurdle, for your ultimate potential. In these postures, the body will not be a barrier but a stepping stone for your growth and development.
Right now, when you try to practice Hatha Yoga, the biggest barrier is your body’s limitations. In fact, whatever human beings want to do, the biggest barriers are their body and their mind. What should have been a stepping stone has turned into an obstacle, simply because they have not explored it sufficiently.
After a profound and thorough exploration of the human system, we arrived at these 84 postures through which you can transform your body and mind into a great possibility for your ultimate well-being. Most other spiritual processes talk about putting down the body because the body is an obstacle. If you want to sit and meditate, your legs tell you, “I need to stretch. I need to walk.” If I ask you in the morning to stretch your body, you say, “No, I want to rest.” If you do an asana and we ask you to stretch, you say, “No, I don’t want to stretch.” But if we ask you to sit unmoving, your body wants to stretch. Likewise, it has to eat, sleep, relieve itself – the body needs so many things.
The body is a constant manifestation of various levels of compulsiveness, depending upon the type of information that has gone into the system. The information that is imprinted upon your physiological system is what we refer to as the karmic body. This information determines how much compulsiveness you suffer from and how much freedom you naturally enjoy within yourself. In Hatha Yoga, we are not concerned about who our fathers and forefathers were, what kind of genetics and karmic substance we received from them, and what we have imbibed in the process of living. It does not matter what has happened until this moment – we have decided to take charge of our lives.
In the Indian tradition, if you are a serious practitioner of Yoga, no astrologer will want to make a prediction for you, because even they understand that you have taken charge of your life. This is what a yogasana means – you are taking charge of your life. You are transforming your body and mind into a possibility in your life. It is becoming a passage, not a block.
Every posture that you assume for a period of time induces distinct physiological, psychological, emotional, energy, and chemical changes in your body. Conversely, for every emotional and psychological experience, and for different states of consciousness that you experience, your body naturally tends to take a certain posture. If you are angry, you sit one way. If you are peaceful, you sit another way. If you are in turmoil, you sit one way. If you are tranquil, you sit another way. Similarly, for different states of consciousness that you experience, your body tends to take certain postures.
The science of asanas is based on this. By consciously getting your body into a certain posture, you can elevate your consciousness. The very way you think, feel, perceive, and understand life can be altered by the way you sit. Yogasanas are a way to transform the body from a compulsive mode to a conscious mode. When your body is in a compulsive mode, you will not like to be in a certain position. Only when it is in a conscious mode can you remain in the position and benefit from it.
The process of transforming the body, changing the texture of the body, changing the fundamental information in the body, which makes it go in certain compulsive patterns, needs a certain determination, forcefulness, and adamancy. You are not willing to give in to the cycles of compulsiveness. You go the way you want to go.
Ha and tha describe the sun and the moon. Hatha is about bringing a balance between the two. If these two dimensions are balanced within you, naturally, the body becomes a conducive place to live in for your being. If you mess up the place around you, you can move elsewhere. But if you mess up the body from within, you cannot go elsewhere until you die. As long as you live in this life, the body is the abode of your existence.
It is important that an atmosphere is conducive rather than being compulsive. If your home is a very compulsive place, you will feel suffocated. Every situation, every atmosphere is set up for a certain purpose. Your home may be set up for one kind of purpose. An industry or a business may be set up for a different kind of purpose. Every atmosphere should serve the purpose that we have set it up for.
You must decide what purpose your body should serve. We can do the appropriate Yoga for that. If your idea of a good life is being one step ahead of others, there is one type of Yoga. If you do not compare yourself to others, but you want to find your ultimate potential in terms of activity, there is another kind of Yoga. If all you want to do is dissolve into the ultimate nature of existence, there is yet another kind of Yoga. We can practice Yoga in different ways.
These 84 fundamental yogasanas are 84 ways to make the body into a passage. It is actually not necessary for everyone to do 84 asanas – one can be enough. Those who take Hatha Yoga as their path to liberation usually practice only one asana. It is difficult for a thinking mind to understand why someone would spend their whole life trying to sit in a particular way. But if you learn to sit right, if you learn to hold your body right, you can internally know everything that you need to know in this universe. This is known as asana siddhi. If you can stay in one posture stably and comfortably for 2.5 hours, we say you have attained asana siddhi.
How is it possible to know everything that you can know by staying in one posture? It is like having a television at home. The television is just a box with some electronics in it, but it can become a world by itself, simply because there is a receiver. If you adjust the receiver properly, the whole world streams into this box that we call television. If the receiver is not set right, the same instrument cannot do anything. This applies to human beings as well.
An individual human being becomes who they are only because of what they perceive. You are who you are right now only because of what you have perceived in your life until now, and you will be who you will be only because of what you will perceive in the future. The whole system of Yoga is about enhancing perception.
If you hold the posture right, if your alignment is right, it matches the cosmic alignment in some way. Yogasanas are a powerful means to connect. Do not forget Yoga means union. Union means two have become one. There are only two in existence – you and the rest of existence. In the rest of existence, you may identify individual entities, but essentially, there are only two – you and the rest of existence – because there are only two dimensions of experience within you. You do not know what is up and down in this cosmos. You do not know what is forward and backward in this cosmos. These are all things that we have made up for convenience. Essentially, there are only two dimensions of experience – inner experiences and outer experiences.
Yoga is about creating a union between these two dimensions – inner and outer, you and the rest, you and the other. When there is no “you” and “the other,” when there is just “you” and “you,” that is Yoga. Asanas are a physical form of approaching this ultimate union, because the physical body is the easiest thing to work with. If you try to come to this union with your mind, it will play too many tricks. With the body, at least you know whether it is doing it right or not, whether it is cooperating or not. If you push the mind too hard, it will make you believe all kinds of things and dump you the next day. The body is a more reliable factor. If you work with it sensibly, the yogasanas can definitely lead to ultimate union.
In the meantime, before this alignment with the ultimate happens, by getting into the postures, inner alignment happens, which will naturally create a chemistry of healthfulness, joyfulness, and blissfulness , and above all, balance. Balance is something that modern societies have ignored, and they are paying a huge price for it. Whatever your intelligence, competence, education, and qualifications, if you do not have the necessary balance, you will not succeed. You will not go very far in your life.
The most important thing for people who are seeking to be successful – whether in the corporate sector, politics, military, or any other field – is balance. Only if you have a balance that is not disturbed by external situations are you capable of making use of the competence and intelligence within you. Otherwise, even the most wonderful qualities that one may have will go to waste, simply because of a lack of balance. Hatha Yoga brings this balance.
By Sadhguru, Isha Foundation
