I am standing and clapping!!!!! HEAR HEAR!!! Good blog and LOVE LOVE the picture.

Paloma

You know, after attending a so-called "Hatha Yoga" class that looked and felt more like boot camp yoga-robics last night, I have to agree - its a badly misused term.

But then, pretty much everything about yoga is misunderstood in the west, isn't it?

My understanding has always been that Hatha yoga encompasses all forms of yoga. That other variations are still Hatha yoga but with a slightly different focus/philosophy.

But to say Hatha is the gentle form of yoga or (like the Wikipedia entry suggests) its a strong form of yoga is to slice and dice what yoga is all about.

I think generally, there's a lot of confusion about yoga styles and what differentiates them. Sometimes its not a lot.

But I'm also up in arms in general (after my experience last night) about the amazingly varied standards of teaching. This class was led by someone I was told was "great". Certainly his class was packed and therefore I assume he's popular.

However, he's asking for a potential lawsuit in my books. With his arrogance, his strict style of instrcution that lacks details of alignment, his 'stay there, don't come out' commands, and not to mention statements like 'Say yes to pain', and 'This is the asana you do to get a supermodel waist'. He also managed to diss other styles of yoga compared to whatever it is he thinks he is teaching - 'There are gentler forms of yoga but this is what gets results'. BS!!

I almost walked out of the class! AND, at the end I was really angry. Here's someone that's popular because he runs a pretty strong style class - calling it Hatha yoga but it resembles no other Hatha class I've ever attended - and commanding participants boot camp style.

It was the antithesis of everything I've ever learned about yoga in all my years of practice. If you went to his class for the first time without knowing much about yoga, there's a very distinct possibility you could hurt yourself.

Actually I'm a bit cranky about this whole 'boot camp' style anyway. I mean, my sat-guru is a very hard task master with his yoga classes, but its all delivered gently, sensitively and with respect for people's limitations. And it still gets results without having people kill themselves.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I just see the confusion about Hatha, Iyengar, Ashtanga etc as another symptom of what's wrong (in general) with yoga in the west!

Good blog, yogaspy!  I agree with your definition of "hatha" as it is currently used today in the West. 

Just to add a little bit of historical perspective: 

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika (literally "Light on Hatha Yoga") was written in the 15th century but it was based on much earlier works.  It has four parts:

1) Asana, 2)Purification and Pranayama, 3) Mudra and Bandha, and 4) Samadhi

Samadhi covers the same ground as the Yoga Sutra, but not nearly as effectively, in my opinion, mixed in with a lot of kundalini and chakra instruction. 

The Purification and Mudra sections contains a number of physical practices that I'm too squeamish to describe here.  If you are curious, you'll have to get a copy or google it. 

According to the version I read, hatha was founded on the premise that one must prepare the body for the higher spiritual pursuits of Yoga.  Hence the association of "hatha" with the physical side of Yoga.

The definition of Hatha has taken on a very different meaning in the West, but originally it was a very comprehensive system of Yoga that covered everything from asana and pranayama to meditation and Tantra.

I found the Hatha Yoga Pradipika to be a very difficult text, the commentary I happened to read even more so, and I don't recommend it in general.  It reminded me why I started writing Yoga Demystified!

Bob Weisenberg