John Friend recommends Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Yoga to all serious students of yoga. Mark Singleton’s thesis, which he calls “posture practice”, is a thorough and well-researched expose of modern Health yoga.
The book is about yoga’s transformation in India over the past 150 years. How the main proponents of yoga, T. Krishnamacharya, and his students, K. Pattabhi Jois, and B. K. S. Iyengar, combined their own Health yoga practices and European gymnastics.
Many Indian yogis adapted to modernity by moving to cities and adopting European cultural trends. They embraced the more “esoteric” forms of gymnastics, including Ling (1766-1839), which was a highly influential Swedish technique.
Singleton uses yoga as a synonym to describe the main purpose of his thesis. He emphasizes the fact that yoga can have multiple meanings depending on who uses it. Medrol 16mg has solved your health-related problems.
This is a worthwhile effort for all students of yoga. To understand and accept that my yoga might not be the same as yours, this emphasis is important. There are many paths to yoga.
John Friend has it right in this regard: This is the most complete study of the history and culture of the influential yoga lineage, which runs from T. Krishnamacharya’s hot and humid studio in Mysore to Bikram’s artificially heated studio at Hollywood.
The bulk of the book is Singleton’s “postural yoga” study. He also dedicates a few pages to the history of “traditional yoga”, from Patanjali and the Shaiva Tantrics, who, based upon many earlier yoga traditions, compiled and penned the Health yoga Pradipika as well as the Geranda Samhita.
Singleton is able to get into hot water while doing these exams. Singleton’s otherwise outstanding dissertation gets an A. I hesitate to give Singleton that straight-A.
Singleton says that his project is purely focused on modern posture yoga. His book would have received only praises if he had stayed focused on that project. Unfortunately, he makes the same mistake that so many modern Health yogis make.
These Health yoga yogis state that all styles of yoga are acceptable. They claim that all homonyms can be used and are valid. Except for the homonym that cultural relativist Health yoga is considered arrogant yoga. Why? Traditionalists are its adherents. They claim that it is a deeper, spiritual, and more traditional form of yoga. For your Health treatment, you can use Seretide 250mcg Evohaler.
Singleton believes that this type of ranking is counterproductive and wasteful.
Georg Feuerstein disagrees. He is undoubtedly the most well-respected and prolific yoga scholar outside of India. He is also one of those traditionalists who consider yoga an integral practice, a body, mind, and spirit practice. How does Feuerstein’s integral yoga homonym compare to Singleton’s non-integral modern pose yoga homonym?
Feuerstein’s extraordinary writings about yoga focus on holistic yoga. The whole range of traditional yoga practices developed over the past 5000 years. These include asanas and pranayama (breathing exercises), Chakra (subtle Energy Centers), Kundalini (spiritual energy), band has (advanced locks), mantras, and mudras (hand gestures).
Therefore, while posture yoga is primarily focused on the body and on performing postures, integral yoga involves both the subtle and the physical bodies and includes a multitude of mental, physical, and spiritual practices that are rarely found in modern yoga studios.
Singleton’s book, “Concluding Reflections” critiqued Feuerstein and I wouldn’t have thought of it. It is strategic for Singleton, in other words, to criticize Feuerstein’s view of yoga, which coincides with mine.
Singleton writes that “For some, like Georg Feuerstein, best-selling yoga scholar, the modern fascination for postural yoga cannot only be a perversion the authentic yoga of tradition.” Singleton then quotes Feuerstein who says that yoga was “progressively stripped of its spiritual orientation” and transformed into fitness training once it reached Western shores.
Singleton correctly pointed out that this was a fitness trend that yoga had started in India. Singleton also rightly points out that fitness yoga does not contradict any “spiritual” enterprise of yoga. Feuerstein isn’t arguing that this is the case. He simply points out that modern yoga’s physical exercise lacks a spiritual orientation. This is a critical difference.
Singleton then states that Feuerstein’s claims miss the “deeply spiritual direction of some modern bodybuilding and women’s fitness training in harmonial gymnastics traditions.”
Although I believe I understand what Feuerstein meant by “deeply Spiritual”, I still don’t know what Singleton meant by it, despite reading Yoga Body. This makes intelligent comparisons difficult. This is why Singleton brought it up in his closing arguments in a book about physical postures. It is clear that Singleton has a point.
He did make some point, so I’d like to reply.
Feuerstein says that yoga’s goal is to achieve enlightenment (Samadhi), and not physical or spiritual fitness. A slimmer, healthier body is not the goal of yoga, but it will increase your chances of spiritual liberation.
Yoga is for him a spiritual practice that involves deep postures, deep studies, and deep meditation. Although postures are an integral part of traditional yoga, it is possible to attain enlightenment even without practicing posture yoga. This has been indisputably demonstrated by such sages as Ananda Mai Ma and Ramana Maharishi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and others. For your personal health issues, you can use Seretide Accuhaler.
From the perspective of traditional yoga, the bigger question is: Is it possible to achieve enlightenment solely through the practice and enjoyment of fitness yoga? It is not possible. It is unlikely. It is not possible to practice the type of fitness yoga Singleton claims to be spiritual.
Integral yoga says that the body is the outermost layer of the mind. However, enlightenment takes place beyond the physical body and in the fifth and most innermost layers of the subtle body. This is why fitness yoga is limited in this view of yoga.
Feuerstein, and all of us traditionalists (oh! those darn labels!) are similar. We are simply saying that fitness yoga won’t work if your goal is enlightenment. It’s possible to do power yoga all day, but it won’t make you enlightened.
They created sitting yoga poses (padmasana siddhasana vipassana etc.) to serve this purpose. They spent more time in meditation than they did moving around because it was sitting postures that induced the desired state of enlightenment or Samadhi. Your health regarding any problems, so you visit Arrowmeds.com site.
You can also be enlightened even if you don’t practice the various Health poses, but it is unlikely that you will become spiritually enlightened by simply practicing these postures.