The 5 points of Hatha Yoga

When I became a yoga instructor I realised that it is so much more than physical exercise, which is often the biggest part extracted from the yoga philosophies to the west. Breathing is usually also acknowledged, but did you know that yoga is actually a form for meditation?

Swami Vishnudevananda created 5 points of yoga, which is the essence of the yoga teachings. I’m going to explain a bit about them so you can see that there’s more to this wonderful practice than you might originally know.

Proper exercise
This is the one we all know. The asanas. Asanas means steady pose, because each posture (asana) is made to be held for some time. Our physical body should move and exercise to keep it well and healthy. All the asanas we practice will help us sit comfortably in meditation pose so we can aim towards self realisation. This should be pleasant to the practitioner and not hurting in any way (like a lot of modern exercise can be). Yoga focuses on the health of the spine which houses the all-important nervous system. This increases circulation and nerves get enough oxygen and nutrients.

Proper breathing
Pranayama:
prana: breath/life force, yama: control.
This teaches us how to use our lung capacity to the fullest and how to control the breath. Most people only use a fraction of their capacity so the body end up with lacking oxygen. Proper breathing can remove neck pains, get rid of anxiety and improves mental clarity. There are three types of breathing: clavicular breathing, thoracic breathing and deep abdominal breathing. Full yogic breathing includes all three.

Proper relaxation
Relaxation is so important that even though there is a posture for relaxing (see savasana on the photo below) it is mentioned on its own. Yogis have practiced deep relaxation long before cars, planes, TVs, stock market and other stressful things got invented. The relaxation techniques used in a Hatha yoga class are heavily borrowed from this tradition. When the body and mind are constantly overworked, their efficiency diminishes. Like a car needs to cool down the engine after a long drive, we also need to cool down our body and mind, relax and reset.

Proper diet
Food physically builds our bodies but also affects our minds, a yogic diet is therefore traditionally a lacto-vegetarian diet. We want the food to have as much prana (life force) as possible. Earlier I mentioned prana as breathing, but a seed also has prana (life) in it, as it will begin to grow when putting it in the soil. Eating something dead won’t nourish your body the same way as something with prana. Another reason is the concept for ahimsa. Ahimsa is a sanskrit word that means not causing violence to a living creature. This is also a part of why a yogic diet doesn’t consist of animals. Modern dairy farming isn’t free of violence so a lot of yogis focus now on a vegan diet to cause as little harm as possible to the earth and our fellow creatures.

Positive thinking and meditation
We become what we think. So in a way is this the most important point of them all. You can do all the advanced postures that you like, but if your mind is a negative one, you won’t have a lot of benefit from it. Meditation cannot be explained, just like colours can’t be explained to a blind man (quoted by sivananda.org), it needs to be experienced. When the mind is fully concentrated, time passes unnoticed. When we are fully in the moment, we cannot be angry about the past, we cannot worry about the future, all we are is full of bliss and peace.

I have a friend who is also a yoga teacher who taught some children that positive thinking is a part of yoga. One of her adorable students then said: “Does that mean I can practice yoga whenever I want?”. Yes, yes it does.

We work towards self realisation, discovering that we are all one, we are all bliss, we are all love.