DRISTI
THE VEDAS FORMED OUR YOGA
Roots of Asana & Non-Asana Practice BY ERIC SHAW
The four Vedas (Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda, c. 1200 BCE) are the oldest books of the Indian traditions. Though these compositions do not talk about yoga directly (that would come about 700 years later) they include many ideas and practices which yoga makes use of. Here are four ways Vedic content was used or transformed for the philosophy and practice of yoga after 500 BCE. 1. AGNI AND SACRIFICE The primary religious practice of Vedic times (c. 1200 BCE) was the group practice of the agni hotra—the fire ritual. A belief in the power of sacrifice was behind the belief in its effectiveness. When people doing the ceremony surrendered attachment to lesser things—money, comfort, pride—it was understood this enticed the Gods to grant more profound boons—a spouse, healing from a disease, rain for crops, etc. With the rise of yoga, this Vedic framework was transferred to the body. The heat of unmet desire one feels when physical or psychological comforts are removed, or the heat of digestion, or the friction created when air passed over the flesh of the throat in yogic breath practices, or the physical heat felt during the body’s muscular exertion, or in the actual physical heat of sitting beneath the sun or near fires all these were identified as tapas - as a sacrificial heat that refined the awareness of the practitioner—or morally purified them. A vast range of penances and mortifications, such as standing on one leg, holding an arm in the air, or dressing oneself in heavy chains for hours or years on end, were denials of physical comfort that - like the Vedic formula for sacrifice and discomfort exhibited in the agni hotra - acted as a petition to the gods for boons, or simply granted profound powers to the person performing that particular tapasic (internal heat-building) penance. This person would be called a tapasvin. 30
NAMASKAR
In one of the more subtle formulas of tapas, the in-breaths and out-breaths were conceptualized as moment-to-moment sacrifices to this fire. In another formula, concerning how the koshas (subtle bodies) function, it is said each of these successively subtler bodies (annamayakosha, pranamayakosha, manomayakosha, vijnanamayakosha, and ananandamayakosha) burns its own “food,” with its own specific fire (jatharagni, pranagni, manisikagni, bauddikagni and anandagni) and each sheath’s “food” (comestibles, breath, thought, effort, attention) can be fasted from (sacrificed) to stimulate and refine tapas. The tapas then eliminates impurities in the flesh, the lifeforce, the mind, the will, and the spirit. We thereby gain strength, energy, mental power, focus and awareness, and one’s operating system is optimized. 2. SPECIFIC TAPASIC PRACTICES The tapasic practices performed by the Aryan culture and described in the literature of the Vedas (c. 1200 – 800) included: 1. Fasting 2. Abstaining from sleep 3. Wearing ceremonially dark clothes 4. Isolating oneself 5. Sleeping on the ground 6. Forcing the breath into specific patterns (pranayama) 7. Mantra recitation 8. Vows of silence, and 9. Sitting near fires These diverse activities were integrated into yogic methods for relieving attachment and opening up the doors of perception to attain the enlightened state or—in the later Hatha Yoga and Tantric traditions (c. 800 – 1600 CE) - these practices were employed to awaken kundalini. 3. THE GODS The Vedic Gods evolved into different or greater Gods as the Indian traditions evolved, or they evolved into philosophical concepts as the Vedic Age gave way to the Yogic Age.
