Let the Sadhus Talk

Abstract

Very rarely have scholars focussed their attention on the yoga practice of contemporary ascetics, which is surprising considering that yoga probably originated and developed in an ascetic context. Yoga, for ascetics who chose it as a religious path, has a specific 1 spiritual meaning and purpose ; it is a private discipline, and as such it should remain in the private sphere. Furthermore, being such an individual experience, sādhus claim it cannot be described by words, nor can be understood by someone who is not on the path. Yoga in effect, is a full-time commitment for the ascetics, while, as we will see, its physical aspect is just a temporary one. For this reason, the yoga practices that I am going to analyse in this paper are those that ascetics call "external", physical yoga, i.e. āsana s and prāṇāyāma s. Haṭha yoga is the usual term to describe this physical yoga. As Mallinson notes: 'The word hat ̣ ha (lit. force) denotes a system of physical techniques supplementary to yoga more broadly conceived ' (2011:770). The techniques peculiar to Haṭha Yoga are: ṣaṭ karma (purification), āsana (posture), prāṇāyāma (breath control), mudrā (physical techniques to "seal" the body), bandha (lock). They were slowly introduced in texts and then collected in the 15 th-century Haṭhapradīpikā. However, in interviews in India with ascetics belonging to 2 the main sampradāya s (religious orders) connected to yoga practice-namely Nāgā Daśanāmīs, Nāth Yogīs, Udāsīns, as well as Vairāgī s from the Rāmānandī and Rāmānujī 1 For what has been written on sādhus and their practices see the monographs

Yogi Sculptures: Complex Āsanas Across the Deccan

“…However, an important practical distinction can be made owing to the length In more contemporary schools of postural yoga, variations of this posture are often referred to as 15 ardhamatsyendrāsana ("half lord of the fish posture"), for example, Iyengar's Light on Yoga describes three (1994 [1966]: 259-62 and 270-73). Ethnographic research also reveals that today many ascetic practitioners often conflate tapas and 17 haṭhayoga (Bevilacqua 2018).…”

Early haT.hayoga 1

“…Powell 2018) and early travellers' accounts (such as Tavernier's 1925/ 1676 account of his travels in India), as well as ethnographies of 'traditional' contemporary practitioners of haṭhayoga (e.g. Bevilacqua 2017). What is more, manuscripts are not isolated events but rather intertexual complexes through which continuity, conflict and innovation in yoga traditions can be discerned -such as in the already mentioned borrowing of verses from earlier texts, the importation and assimilation of practices from one religious tradition into another, 6 and criticisms by one lineage of the practices and practitioners of another (see Mallinson and Singleton 2017: 39-45).…”

“…Not yet referred to as yoga (itself at this time much more closely associated with meditation practice, or dhyānayoga), these techniques (which include prāṇāyāma (breath control) methods and practices which foreshadow haṭhayoga techniques like khecarīmudrā) found their way into later haṭha practice as yoga, albeit often adapted and repurposed from the original contexts. Indeed, key practices of haṭha such as āsana and prāṇāyāma are often still referred to as tapas in much later yogic contexts (Mallinson and Singleton 2017: 92-94, 129-130), and even today in yoga-practising ascetic lineages in India, haṭha is explicitly considered to be a practice of tapas (Bevilacqua 2017). Raising and maintaining bindu remains an important rationale for haṭha practice, both in texts and in contemporary Indian asceticism.…”

“…In contemporary ascetic culture in India, the goals of yoga practice have largely remained those of the historical tradition: the attainment of liberation, and siddhis. Among ascetics, the term haṭhayoga is for the most part understood to connote the 'austerities' of tapas, or perhaps more precisely the strong intention and determination (dṛdh saṅkalpa) that leads to tapas (tapasyā in Hindi) rather than a separate system of yoga per se, and may not even involve any yoga practice at all (Bevilacqua 2017). 23 Thus haṭhayoga can include practices such as only eating fruit or drinking juice, staying in a particular position for long periods of time or strictly following the rules of the ascetic order.…”

Untitled

“…. ava, Nath ou Tantrika) nomment yoga, le chemin et l'effort pour atteindre un but (Bevilacqua, 2017;Mallinson, 2016). Ces pratiques qualifiées de tapas, ont pour finalité d'obtenir un discernement, une avancée spirituelle ou des pouvoirs surnaturels.…”