IT NEVER GETS ANY EASIER (IF YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT)
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masculine energies and Tha for the lunar, feminine forces) and reiterated throughout all hatha practice, but perhaps best appreciated by the Naths’ principal innovation: postures or bending the body into forms. Prior to the medieval rise of hatha yoga, standing contortive postures simply did not exist in yoga. The word asana was present, however it was used almost exclusively in the etymological sense, as “seat” or “throne.” The asana practices described in pre-hatha yogic literature were meditative postures: fi rm and stable positions, thrones from which to contemplate existence. In hatha, asanas serve an entirely different purpose. The body is used as a stage: held in stillness while internally exploding with exertion; limbs stretched while muscles are contracted; tension explored until its duality resolved. Vyasa the sage says that perfection of posture occurs “when effort disappears . . . when the mind is transformed into infi nity.” Mircea Eliade the ethnographer says, “refusal to move, to let one be carried along in the rushing stream of states of consciousness . . . is to abolish (or to transcend) the human condition by refusal to conform to the most elementary human inclination.”8 Holding an asana embodies the chaos of existence framed within the stability of the universal. If yoga is a science, then the hatha yogis of the jungle were its madmen, hair forever frizzled, face smeared with ritual ash, wide-eyed and forever ready to the throw the Frankensteinian switch. Their early texts alternate between being refreshing and frightening in their vulgar specificity: nasal passages are cleaned with water (neti!), water is sucked in through the anus in self-enema (basti!), the rectum and intestines are pushed out and washed by hand in water (bahiskrita dhauti!?). Coordinate with the Vedic belief that all perception is illusion, in hatha the natural world is present to be subverted. However, unlike the comforting liberation promised in the ancient texts, hatha techniques read like a string of cocky Faustian bargains. Each practice comes equipped with a long string of impossibly oversold
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8 Mary Jarvis, Esak’s coach and mentor, says, “Maintaining stillness in the struggle of a posture is a route into the present moment.”
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