As far as the relevance of Asanas for my yogic endeavors is concerned, I simply couldn't sit comfortably upright for half an hour if it wasn't for some sort of regularly practiced gymnastics. And Pranayama certainly is more pleasant when especially my upper body is stretched and relaxed. Especially - in the morning. I'm getting more and more stiff in the morning, so any kind of mediation and Pranayama practice has to be preceded by a physical warm up.
Adam mentioned the idea of inducing relevant mental sensations by physically flexing the spine. I found this quite interesting, also because it is pretty obvious considering that the spine is even anatomically and academically part of the brain. And controlled physical manipulation of nerves (and muscles) does cause a partial activation on the level of the ion channels. So, one might even go so far as to describe this as massaging the brain. This is of course true with anything we do with our body - enteric nervous system, nerve endings all over the place - but with the spine forming a super dense channel of these structures, it makes sense to assume a particularly powerful impact by stretching and flexing it. I actually never thought of it this way.
As for Asanas being authentically rooted in Yoga beyond stable seated positions I think it is fair to say that having the Hathapradipika introducing "advanced" Asanas five hundred years ago might already justify to say that Asanas are part of Yoga. At least to some extent. If it was just for the last two hundred years and influences from Skandinavian gymanstics then it would be a dire cause for sure.
Do you have any thoughts on the Vimanarcanakalpa? According to Wikipedia it introduced nine postures a thousand years ago among them being Mayurasana, which is so difficult (I doubt I'll ever be able to do it) that it maybe even can be assumed there must have been more postures just to get ready for it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts - I agree there are physical benefits to practising postures and they can help make to other things more feasible too. Re: the text you mention - it’s the source of the earliest description of a non-seated posture and it’s not enthusiastic - the peacock pose is “one of the lowest”, it says. We don’t know much more about it, but within a few centuries it is praised as healing all diseases… That seems to be the function of āsana at first - a cleansing preliminary for subtler methods.
As far as the relevance of Asanas for my yogic endeavors is concerned, I simply couldn't sit comfortably upright for half an hour if it wasn't for some sort of regularly practiced gymnastics. And Pranayama certainly is more pleasant when especially my upper body is stretched and relaxed. Especially - in the morning. I'm getting more and more stiff in the morning, so any kind of mediation and Pranayama practice has to be preceded by a physical warm up.
Adam mentioned the idea of inducing relevant mental sensations by physically flexing the spine. I found this quite interesting, also because it is pretty obvious considering that the spine is even anatomically and academically part of the brain. And controlled physical manipulation of nerves (and muscles) does cause a partial activation on the level of the ion channels. So, one might even go so far as to describe this as massaging the brain. This is of course true with anything we do with our body - enteric nervous system, nerve endings all over the place - but with the spine forming a super dense channel of these structures, it makes sense to assume a particularly powerful impact by stretching and flexing it. I actually never thought of it this way.
As for Asanas being authentically rooted in Yoga beyond stable seated positions I think it is fair to say that having the Hathapradipika introducing "advanced" Asanas five hundred years ago might already justify to say that Asanas are part of Yoga. At least to some extent. If it was just for the last two hundred years and influences from Skandinavian gymanstics then it would be a dire cause for sure.
Do you have any thoughts on the Vimanarcanakalpa? According to Wikipedia it introduced nine postures a thousand years ago among them being Mayurasana, which is so difficult (I doubt I'll ever be able to do it) that it maybe even can be assumed there must have been more postures just to get ready for it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts - I agree there are physical benefits to practising postures and they can help make to other things more feasible too. Re: the text you mention - it’s the source of the earliest description of a non-seated posture and it’s not enthusiastic - the peacock pose is “one of the lowest”, it says. We don’t know much more about it, but within a few centuries it is praised as healing all diseases… That seems to be the function of āsana at first - a cleansing preliminary for subtler methods.