Hatha Yoga: Tips, Recommendations, Insightful Knowledge etc.

[DocHoliday]

So I figured it could be beneficial to start doing some Hatha Yoga as I'm still searching for a proper solution to "cure" my scoliosis and to perhaps relieve my differnece in leg-length a bit - who knows. Before I'm getting started doing some random practices without really knowing anything about it, I thought some of you could perhaps tell me if there are:
- books in Leo's booklist which address Hatha Yoga and perhaps contain proper excercises with explanations and so on; if so, I'm going to buy it right away
- things you'd need to be aware of or other things that are important to look out for when doing Hatha Yoga (to do or not to do certain excercises etc...)
- perhaps some excercises or postures that work particulary well to train back-muscles or that specifically address the spine
- (anything else you might find to be important)

Any valuable responses will be very, very much appreciated!

[cirkussmile]

I accidentally became a teacher in Hatha yoga during my trip to India. It's hard to show anything via the forum but remember one thing: breathing is the whole game of yoga. Without deep inhalations and controlled exhalations, you can not expect any good results.  

Inhale maximum, hold the breath inside for 1-2 seconds and then slowly (as slow as possible) exhale completely. Exhalation is the natural relaxation which means you are stretching with your breath. 

Much love

[moon777light]

hatha yoga pradipika will help you

 

[DocHoliday]

@moon777light Thanks, I'll try it out!

[Prabhaker]

14 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

(anything else you might find to be important)

TRADITIONAL METHODS FOR CONTEMPORARY MAN?

Q: In traditional Yoga, one starts with the body – through Hatha Yoga methods. Why don’t you teach Hatha Yoga?

It is good to start with the body. It is necessary but it is not sufficient.

There are many problems with Hatha Yoga, particularly for those in the West, because the system of Hatha Yoga and its related techniques were all developed in a very different milieu – really, for very differently constituted bodies as well as for different minds.

Not only is the mind different today than it was when these techniques were developed, but the body is also not the same. Everything has become artificial. The whole environment has been so changed by science that you do not have the same kind of body that people had before. Your body is different. Your mind would not be different unless your body had become different.

When you start with a modern body, the same techniques will not do. Something else has to be added. Hatha Yoga can be used beneficially when the body exists in a very natural condition, a very natural, very innocent condition...childlike. Then these techniques are miraculous. But we do not have such innocent bodies now; we have very complex bodies. They are not natural. Changes in the environment have done much to change our bodies; medicine has done much. The whole chemical milieu in which we live is different; even the air is different.

You have a very unnatural body. It is unnatural not only because it has been conditioned by the outside, but also because of too much mental suppression inside. There are very complex suppressions in your body and unless these body complexes are released, Hatha Yoga will not help...or, it can help only to a certain extent. 
 

Read the work of the German psychologist Wilhelm Reich. He was a disciple of Freud’s. He worked continuously for forty years with the suppressions in the body, not in the mind. For example, he said that if you have suppressed anger than your jaw will be different, it will not be natural. You will have a different jaw; your teeth will be different.

Violence is concentrated in the teeth and in the fingers. When an animal is angry and in a wild mood, his whole energy moves to his teeth and nails. They are his weapons. The same thing happens to man also. If you feel anger and do not express it, the energy does not leave the teeth and the nails. There is no mechanism for it to go back; it is a one-way process. When a dog becomes angry he expresses it, but when a man becomes angry he may not express it. The energy that has moved to the teeth and nails cannot go back where it came from; the chemicals released into the blood cannot go back. They remain where they have moved to and tension begins to be accumulated at these particular points in the body. So the first thing that has to be done is that this accumulation in the body has to be released.

Hatha Yoga does not take this into account because in former times a suppressed mind and suppressive attitude were not prevalent, particularly in India. In those days India was one of the least suppressive countries. Now that is not so. And in the West, Christianity has caused so much suppression that everybody is crippled inside. These suppressions in the body have to be released first.

Otherwise you start out with a body that is not right, not natural, and many unnecessary problems may be created by it. That is why something totally unknown to Hatha Yoga has to be introduced now: the body must go through a catharsis first. To bring about this catharsis, a totally new science will be needed because this suppression is something new.

For example, if you have suppressed sex a lot, then kundalini cannot move up. It is blocked. The whole structure from where the kundalini can move up is simply blocked, blocked by the suppressed sex energy. Or, if you have indulged too much in sex, then you have no energy left to move upward. These are the two problems: either you have a suppressed mind and the energy has become blocked or you have indulged too much so that no energy is left to move within you. You are not in a natural state, your energy is not balanced. It is not a natural flow that comes from either suppressing or indulging. With balanced energy, Hatha Yoga can be used very easily, but otherwise it creates problems. 

Another thing is that all these Hatha Yoga techniques were developed for use in monasteries. They are monastic techniques intended for people who are totally involved in them for twenty-four hours a day, not doing anything else. Then too, you have to work with them for a very long period, for years. If Hatha Yoga is taught to a person who is not totally involved in it, who only comes to do Hatha yoga once or twice  or even for an hour a day, but who is involved for twenty-three hours a day in quite a different world, a work that is quite the contrary – it is not going to help much Whatsoever you have gained is lost every day. The very method is a monastic method. Now we have to develop the methods, nonmonastic methods that will not be undone by the rest of the activities of your life.

This is a problem, this is one of the most significant problems for those whose who are interested in Yoga. In India, people just go on in their traditional way. They have tradition so they follow it without thinking of whether something has to be changed or something new has to be added The whole world has become so different now that Hatha Yoga techniques are irrelevant in many ways, but they go on being taught because they have become traditional.

Osho, The Eternal Quest Talk #4

[DocHoliday]

@Prabhaker Thanks, that was quite insightful and important. But does that mean now that I shouldn't even start at all because I don't fulfill the right requirements (as almost nobody does accoding to the excerpt)?

[DocHoliday]

@brovakhiin Interesting...would be awesome if it actually does something for you!

[Prabhaker]

14 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

But does that mean now that I shouldn't even start at all

In any case Yoga is good for body if done under proper guidance.It can make you live a really long, healthy life. But what are you going to do with a long life? If you are idiotic, instead of being idiotic for seventy years you will be idiotic for ninety years. It is not going to help anybody.

If you give Yoga to the modern man and he is repressed too much, Yoga can become a repressive system in him. Bodily he may feel good. Spiritually he will not grow. All repressions have to be released. A great and intense catharsis is needed before one enters on the path of Yoga. 

[DocHoliday]

@Prabhaker Okay I see what you mean. Seems like I’m good to go then?

[moon777light]

10 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

 A great and intense catharsis is needed before one enters on the path of Yoga. 

how do we go about this catharsis @Prabhaker?

[Prabhaker]

@moon777light

http://www.oshodynamic.com/catharsis.html

[moon777light]

woow i never thought about this before, and i will definitley try this. except i did hear some teachers talk about its unhealthy to suppress feelings towards people, because if you show feelings opposite to what you are truly feeling, you are expressing inauthenticity. obviously in a healthy way, not yelling/screaming in their face but just letting the person know you are angry/or you dont this like/or this makes me happy, etc. I see osho is against that and says to suppress it somewhere else, like the chaotic breathing

[Prabhaker]

2 minutes ago, moon777light said:

i will definitley try this

 

[moon777light]

i'll try...but only when the windows are closed and no one is in the house because i will look like a lunatic aha

[Regina Davies]

On 3/19/2018 at 5:09 PM, DocHoliday said:

So I figured it could be beneficial to start doing some Hatha Yoga as I'm still searching for a proper solution to "cure" my scoliosis and to perhaps relieve my differnece in leg-length a bit - who knows. Before I'm getting started doing some random practices without really knowing anything about it, I thought some of you could perhaps tell me if there are:
- books in Leo's booklist which address Hatha Yoga and perhaps contain proper excercises with explanations and so on; if so, I'm going to buy it right away
- things you'd need to be aware of or other things that are important to look out for when doing Hatha Yoga (to do or not to do certain excercises etc...)
- perhaps some excercises or postures that work particulary well to train back-muscles or that specifically address the spine
- (anything else you might find to be important)

Any valuable responses will be very, very much appreciated!

As for sleeping, on one hand I would say sleep in the position that is comfortable to you, but on the other hand this position is probably the one that contours your scoliosis.While you could try to reverse-engineer and mirror your current sleeping position, in general as your scoliosis lessens your sleeping positions will tend to change too. By then, the position you currently sleep in may no longer be comfortable for you.