What is Hatha Yoga?

Series Summary

The word "yoga" comes from the Sanskrit root "yuj" meaning "to bind, or join." Yoga is centrally the practice of union, whether you are joining the mind to the body, the human to the divine, or the individual to the infinite. The various styles of yoga that have made it to the West all share a common core: positioning the body into a particular posture while focusing mind and breath leads to physical and spiritual well-being. These arts of positioning the body have been passed on for thousands of years, and encompass one of the oldest cultural traditions known to exist. To practice yoga, then, is also to join with the ancient sages, drawing human history up into yourself and connecting with the past.

In this free video series, longtime yoga practitioner Howard Davis teaches you basic postures of hatha yoga. Howard gives you full demonstrations of poses like downward dog, bridge pose, child and corpse poses, and more, but he also offers insight into how your body will respond to these poses. He lets you know what might be uncomfortable and how to deal with it. Howard also gives variations on poses and offers the insights of other forms of yoga alongside the hatha postures.

Video Transcript

"Hello I'm Howard and welcome to this introduction to Hatha Yoga. What is Hatha Yoga and how is it different from the other kinds of Yoga you may have heard of or practiced before? Hatha Yoga is perhaps the most common kind of Yoga that's taught in the west currently, but there are many other kinds. You may have heard of Ashtanga Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga which a flowing movement based Yoga, Kundalini Yoga which involves a lot of specific breathing practices and mantras and mudras and hand positions, Bikram Yoga which is done in a heated room 26 poses repeated in sequence a few times. Hatha Yoga however is slightly different; it was first developed by BKS lyengar and involves holding poses for a slightly longer periods of time. Building up endurance, stamina as well as flexibility and strength. In the following segments, we'll be exploring some very basic Hatha Yoga positions suitable for anyone to begin practicing with. Remembering that the secret to all yoga is a daily practice. You could practice once a week and that's great, twice a week is twice as good, but if you could do something everyday you'll find that your progress increases dramatically and the results, again, exponentially increase. So let's have some fun and do some Hatha Yoga."