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The body in early Hatha Yoga

by Ruth Westoby | 2024 | 112,229 words

This page relates ‘Shivasamhita and Vajroli� of study dealing with the body in Hatha Yoga Sanskrit texts.—This essay highlights how these texts describe physical practices for achieving liberation and bodily sovereignty with limited metaphysical understanding. Three bodily models are focused on: the ascetic model of ‘baking� in Yoga, conception and embryology, and Kundalini’s affective processes.

Śṃh and ղDZī

ղDZī is taught in the Śṃh as one of the ten ܻs, the first of which is yoniܻ. In chapter four the Śṃh teaches DZī (Śṃh 4.78-85) as drawing up the comingled bindu and rajas. The perspective is entirely androcentric, instructing only the male practitioner. Here I focus on the nature of rajas, which echoes the description of the ṛt. In chapter one the Śṃh teaches that ś is bindu and śپ is rajas and from the union of the two, illusory elements arise spontaneously though the power of maya (Śṃh 1.96). This is in the context of explaining the cause of the body and, thus, refers to saṃsāric conception. Saṃsāric conception and its halting is also reflected in Śṃh 4.88-91 where one is born and dies in the world through semen and, therefore, the yogi should preserve it (Śṃh 4.89), thus inverting the process of ṃs. The instructions for DZī clearly involve sex, reflecting the ś orientation of the source: the rajas that the yogi should draw upwards is ‘from the woman’s vagina� (Śṃh 4.81). Bindu is lunar and rajas solar and they are to be combined within one’s own body (Śṃh 4.86). Semen is ś (and the authorial voice in this text) and rajas is śپ; their combination makes the yogi’s body divine (Śṃh 4.87).

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