Hatha Yoga
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Now let us turn out attention to hatha yoga. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika was written in Sanskrit by Swami Swatamarama, who was a student of Swami Graknath. English translations can be purchased. This is said to be the oldest text on hatha yoga in existence. It was written in approximately the 15th century AD. Here too, Swatamarama, like Patanjali, is considered a compiler of existing information that was passed down from generation to generation through the teacher student relationship, rather than the author of these concepts.
This book outlines yogic practices, asanas, pranayama, chakras, kundalini, bandhas, kriyas, shakti, nadis, and mudras in detail. This work is too large to include here in this course. However, I encourage you to check this book out if you can and derive what gems you can from it.
Now we will look at some of the poses and how to perform them. There are thousands of poses, maybe even millions, but here is a small sampling of a few that you might be familiar with or would like to try. It is necessary and useful to buy books on the poses so you can see how they are performed if you plan on practicing at home. However, you can find just about any pose you would like to see for free at www.yogajournal.com, a wonderful resource for the budding yogi. Almost anything and everything you ever wanted to know about the practice of yoga and its asanas can be found there. It is a goldmine of information for the beginner, as are many sites on the internet.