Hatha Yoga Pradipika
even goes so far to say that Hatha Yoga practitioners who don't also engage
fully in meditation miss the point completely, and derive "no fruits for
their efforts". Remember, the fruit
we're talking about here isn't better health or fitness, but a mind that rests
in complete stillness!
Hatha yoga is and
always has been meant to be a system of spiritual development.
[Hatha yoga] employs
techniques of cleaning, conditioning, and strengthening the physical body, in
order to handle the higher energy levels that come as a result of
practice.
The word nadi is
Sanskrit for "tube or pipe".
Nadis are the pathways that carry prana throughout the body; they
perform the same function for the movement of prana as do veins and arteries
for the circulation of blood.
Kosha means
"sheath" in Sanskrit, but for ease of reference it usually gets
translated as "body". The five
koshas are the Yogic way of accounting for the different aspects of the human
experience -- from our physical bodies, to our emotional and mental states, all
the way to depth of pure Spirit…. Consider the different parts of a candle
flame -- it's easy to say that there is a blue part, a yellow part, a white
part, and so on, but all of them are parts of a whole, and it's difficult to
point out exactly where one layer ends, and another begins. The koshas are a bit like that.
According to Yoga,
to live a pure life is to be in line with those things that make it easiest to
grow harmoniously as a person.
