The Perfect Introduction to Self-Improvement
The word “hatha” itself translates as “forceful” or “wilful”– which tells you something about the enormous effects that hatha yoga can have on your body. By undertaking a sequence of postures, or “asanas”, you will be able to align your whole body to work in synch with itself, as well as opening up the main channels of your body to help energy flow more easily. Once you’ve begun your hatha yoga regime, you’ll quickly start to notice how much easier it is to move your body flexibly, and that you now feel far more energetic than you once did.
There is another theory about the name “hatha”- that it can be split into two parts, “ha” meaning sun and “tha” meaning moon, to refer to the unity within your body that hatha yoga can bring. Strength and balance are important in and of themselves, but they mean nothing without the other. Hatha Yoga allows you complete control over your body, so that you can begin the journey of self-transformation. While hatha is intended to prepare oneself physically for the higher Raja yoga ( royal path of yoga).
Hatha Yoga has long prepared practitioners for higher, spiritual aims.
As well as the asanas themselves, one of the most important aspects of hatha yoga is learning to control your breath. While this might seem relatively simple, it goes a long way to calming the mind and helping you really focus on the parts of your body that you want to improve. By achieving this inner focus, hatha yoga can also help with mental, as well as physical, improvement.
Hatha is the ideal way of introducing yourself to the world of yoga. Since each pose is performed by itself, without any flow from one pose to another, it can really help you get to grips with the basics of yoga, and some of the foundation poses which you can then implement into more complex sequences. If you’re interested in yoga, then hatha really could be the way to go- while it does offer both physical and mental.