The name Haṭha Yoga is understood by scholars and practitioners outside of India to mean the physical yoga methods taught in texts such as the Haṭhapradīpikā. Ask someone in India about Haṭha Yoga, though, and they will think of extreme methods of bodily mortification, such as standing up or holding an arm in the air for years on end. The earliest evidence for such practices dates to the time of the Buddha, and they continue to be practiced in very similar forms to this day. This first module will explore the history of these practices and look at explain how they can be understood as a technique of yoga.

This module will look at the first textual teachings on Haṭha Yoga. The term is first found in Buddhist texts from the first millennium CE, in which it denotes a method of sexual restraint used in tantric ritual. It is subsequently used to denote a system of practice taught in a c. 11th-century tantric Buddhist text called the Amṛtasiddhi, which teaches a tripartite method of controlling the breath by means of physical techniques in order to achieve liberation while living. This meaning is gradually expanded through a series of texts until, in the c. 1400 Haṭhapradīpikā, Haṭha Yoga’s most influential text, it is used to denote physical yoga as it is widely understood today: posture (āsana), breath control (kumbhaka) and techniques for manipulating the vital energies (mudrā).

This module will start by looking closely at the yoga method of the Amṛtasiddhi, the root text of Haṭha Yoga which Dr. Mallinson is editing together with Dr. Péter-Dániel Szántó. It will then look in detail at the other practices which came to be classified under the name Haṭha Yoga in the Haṭhapradīpikā: the āsanas, kumbhakas and mudrās.

This final module will look at who practiced Haṭha Yoga and why. It will identify the ascetic lineages from whom the Buddha learned methods of self-mortification. It will trace the origins of the Nāth Saṃpradāya among tantric Buddhist and Śaiva yogis in the late first and early second millennium and follow its development through to the second half of the second millennium CE. By looking at Haṭha Yoga’s use among the Daśanāmī Saṃnyāsīs, Rāmānandīs and Udāsins, the module will show how no single group can claim to be its originators, and how it may be practiced by anyone. Finally the module will gather together the relatively meagre evidence of the practice of Haṭha Yoga by women, and show what conclusions may be drawn from it.