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The main object of hatha yoga is to create balance between the interacting activities and processes of the pranic and mental forces. Once this has been achieved, the impulses generated give a call of awakening to sushumna nadi, the central pathway in the spine, through which the kundalini shakti rises to sahasrara chakra, thereby illumining the higher centres of human consciousness.
Hatha yoga, therefore, not only strengthens the body and improves health but also activates and awakens the higher centres responsible for the evolution of human consciousness. (For a fuller discussion of chakras, nadis and kundalini, see the chapter Psychic Physiology of Yoga.)
Yogasanas and the body-mind connection The mind and body are not separate entities although there is a tendency to think and act as though they are. The gross form of the mind is the body and the subtle form of the body is the mind. The practice of asana integrates and harmonises the two. Both the body and the mind harbour tensions or knots. Every mental knot has a corresponding physical, muscular knot and vice versa.
The aim of asana is to release these knots. Asanas release mental tensions by dealing with them on the physical level, acting somato-psychically, through the body to the mind. For example, emotional tensions and suppression can tighten up and block the smooth functioning of the lungs, diaphragm and breathing process, contributing to a very debilitating illness in the form of asthma.
Muscular knots can occur anywhere in the body: tightness of the neck as cervical spondylitis, the face as neuralgia, etc. A well chosen set of asanas, combined with pranayama, shatkarmas, meditation and yoga nidra, is most effective in eliminating these knots, tackling them from both the mental and physical levels. The result is the release of dormant energy; the body becomes full of vitality and strength, the mind becomes light, creative, joyful and balanced.
Regular practice of asana maintains the physical body in an optimum condition and promotes health even in an unhealthy
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