The Beginner’s Guide to… Yoga
Jim’s yoga guide
We asked Jim Mallinson to explain the concepts and history behind the yoga we are familiar with today.
What does the word ‘yoga’ mean?
The Sanskrit word ‘yoga’ is related to the English word ‘yoke’ and literally means ‘union’. It can also mean ‘method’ or ‘use’ and, in a religious context, usually means a method by which one can unite oneself with the ultimate reality, whatever you understand that to be.
Where and when did it originate?
Yoga originated in India. Its beginnings can be found in the Sanskrit works known as Upanishads, the earliest of which date from just after the beginning of the first millennium BC. We know that it was well established by the beginning of the first millennium AD because in India's two great epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, many sages are said to use the power of yoga. The first systematic treatise on yoga, Patanjali's Yogasutra, was composed at that time.
Yoga as commonly practised in the west today derives from hathayoga, a system of body-oriented spiritual practices which first appeared in India in about the 11th century AD. Hathayoga was a development of the yogic practices found in the Tantras, a huge body of texts that started to appear in about the 6th century AD.
Is it a religion, an exercise regime, a philosophy or what?
Yoga is not a religion; it is a method of achieving a religious goal. As such it can take many forms. Among the best known are:
- hatha-yoga, ‘the yoga of force’
- dhyana-yoga, ‘the yoga of meditation’
- karma-yoga, ‘the yoga of action’
- bhakti-yoga, ‘the yoga of devotion’
- nana-yoga, ‘the yoga of knowledge’.
But you can prefix the word yoga with anything. I once asked a chillum-smoking baba in the Himalayas why he had installed satellite TV in his cave and he told me, in all seriousness, that he was practising ‘television yoga’!
Yoga does not require philosophical understanding. Since it is a method, the only thing that matters is whether it works, not how it works. Philosophy can, however, be the method.
Before the 20th century, yoga in India had little to do with physical exercise, as we understand it, although hathayoga has always involved some fairly extreme physical techniques. It is thanks to a teacher called Krishnamacharya from Mysore, who taught a new system of exercise-based yoga which appealed to the west, that yoga is now widely thought to be little more than an exercise regime.
If you want to take yoga seriously, do you need to believe in spiritual ideas like reincarnation?
That depends on why you practise yoga. Traditionally, it has two aims: worldly pleasures or liberation. The former can be very worldly indeed – many texts describe practices which are said to get rid of wrinkles or make you attractive to the opposite sex – and no belief system is necessary to accomplish them. You just do the required practices. Liberation, however, means escaping the otherwise endless cycle of birth and death, so if you don't believe in reincarnation there's not much point in striving for it.
Do you have to be fit, supple and well co-ordinated to do yoga or can it be done by anyone, including children and old people?
Some of the more extreme practices of hathayoga require a fit and strong body, and are best learnt by starting in childhood. Other techniques, such as devotion or meditation, which many would say are the most important part of yoga, can be practised by anyone.
In The Beginner’s Guide to… Yoga, Jayne Middlemiss met four gurus who told her about four types of yoga that seemed completely different from each other. What are the similarities and differences?
The aim of the four yogis was essentially the same but their methods were different – each practised the method most suited to him. All of their methods, however, did include meditation and breath control.
Some of the people she saw practising yoga seemed to have gone bananas! Can it be a dangerous art to dabble in?
Yes, both physically and mentally, which is why a guru or teacher is said to be essential for learning yoga. The tantric path, in particular, is said to be very dangerous. It is the fast track to success, but the risks are great.
There are a lot of charlatans who pass themselves off as gurus. How can you distinguish between a person with real spiritual insight and a fake fakir?
That's a tough one! There are no hard rules and it's impossible to tell immediately. You have to spend some time with a teacher before submitting to him or her. Likewise, a good teacher will want to spend time with you before agreeing to become your teacher.
Obvious signs of spiritual advancement include a lack of ego and non-attachment to material possessions. The latter results in the curious paradox in India that the less yogis want, the more their adoring devotees give them.
What does yoga have to offer people whose lives may be a world away from the forests and mountains that Jayne visited in India?
To practise most types of yoga requires taking time out from your everyday life and its associated worries, which is beneficial in itself. Then, to practise it well, you need to cultivate focused concentration, which, if you achieve it, takes you still further from your troubles. The waters of the mind are stilled and can reflect the beauty of the true self found within everyone.
This may be more difficult in the hustle and bustle of modern life, but is equally beneficial. The calmness that you cultivate can then be carried over into the rest of your life. Yoga is not the preserve of cave-dwelling ascetics: many Sanskrit texts, for example the Shiva Samhita, teach yoga for those who live worldly lives.
How did you become interested in Indian beliefs and traditions and what impact has this had on your life?
I first visited India in 1988, between leaving school and going up to Oxford to read Sanskrit. On that first visit I fell in with some yogis on pilgrimage in Kashmir, and my fascination with Indian ascetics began. I have spent a lot of time in India since then, and have edited and translated early Sanskrit texts on hathayoga. One of them describes one of hathayoga's most important practices, khecarimudra, in which the yogi puts his tongue above his palate in order to drink the nectar of immortality dripping from the top of his skull. Khecarimudra is said to give the power of flight and, at the same time as I started work on my doctorate, I learnt to paraglide. In 2001 I was in the British paragliding team and last year I won the British paragliding open.
My wife, Claudia, has been my companion throughout all my travels in India, and we and our two-year-old daughter called Lily spend half the year in India and half in Wiltshire.
