Peter said:
Stormblood said:
I don't understand why people still get confused. Yoga is everything that is included in the eight-fold path. So, everything that is included in the JoS. Meditation, breathing exercises, physical poses, and so on. Too many people read 'yoga' and think only of the asana. That's a false notion. Kundalini yoga is our path, the Satanic path.
Clarified that, let's move to your question, which is specific to the physical poses. Poses from the hatha tradition are a must, and need to be included to ground and balance yourself, even if it's just 10 minutes a day.
Also, if you want to refine your body, this is not enough. You need to include something else to develop power, strength, endurance, agility, and so on. The most complete and versatile gains come from gymnastics (not to confuse with calisthenics) and will develop your body in the same way you see in Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Vedic statues. It will also magnify the awareness and control you learn from hatha asana, which other disciplines do not give you to a satisfactory degree.
Otherwise, choose a discipline that resonates deeply with you. Something that makes you feel passionate, feeding the spark within you, lighting you up like a trillion suns. If you don't have one training system that does that for you, you can find it by trial and error. I guarantee you will find it. Some people are convinced that because they are introverted/yin/lazy/tamasic/sedentary/prefer indoor hobbies/etc that there is nothing out there for them. This is a delusion created simply by enemy influence as they get accustomed to an unhealthy life. It may take hard work, but you can 100% break free from it if you apply yourself to it. Why? Because human beings are not created as sedentary creatures. We are created as a warrior species.
If you don't like weight-lifting, that is fine. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it can also lead to many imbalances and weaken your joints, whether you use the proper form or not. Why? Because your body isn't simply supposed to overload certain muscles in isolation, but to be used 'whole' with effort equally distributed across many muscle groups. It can also easily lead to a disproportionate (=oversized) physique which is not functional for advanced levels of asana practice (nor for martial arts and combat in general, as well as combat roles in the military). This is because excessive bulk reduces mobility and agility, which are of paramount importance for those positions. Bulk =/= from strength. You can have condensed strength through disciplines that create a more packed/dense muscle mass, such as gymnastics (and not only!).
As a final note, kundalini and hatha are NOT the same thing. Kundalini are specific manipulations of the spine, such as the basic spinal series. It is based on movement and the breath of fire, so active. Hatha is based on relaxation and stillness, maintaining each position for 3 to 5 minutes. Past the first 2 minutes it's when your muscles start relaxing properly and you can get more deeply into the pose. Hatha practice grounds you and balances you. It's in its name: ha (the sun) + tha (the moon). Yoga means union. It also opens all your nadih, increasing the flow of energy in your soul. It expands them, until they gradually merge into one single, titanic nadi.
Do not get confused with pink lotus. Just because we took the spinal series from them, it doesn't mean that everything on that website is correct. In fact, there are many things that should be completed ignored, and others who are severely diluted and sometimes even altered.
Of course, I don’t just do kundalini yoga.
Meditation, breathing exercises, mantras, etc.
Kundalini yoga: 35 minutes
Meditation: 60 minutes
Breathing exercises: 20 minutes
Mantra: 15 minutes
In addition, I do physical work and walk 3 kilometers a day to get to work.
I study 2 hours a day + I work 8 hours + 1 hour goes to work!
The physical work I do is hard, so if I do yoga or exercise, I almost die, my joints hurt so much!
Don’t get mad, but who the hell has time to do something else, every day, in the long run? And I don't even have a family! Once I have a family, I won’t even have that much time!
You forwent my initial point but whatever.
As to who has time to do all, it's a matter of tailoring your schedule to your goals and lifestyle. What are your spiritual goals? That's a question I cannot answer for you and you don't need to put an answer on the forum either, but try to be realistic with it. How fast do you want to advance? That's again up to you. You can do it as fast or as slow as you want, and this will be reflected in your schedule.
Answering your latest post too, both types of ASANA work on different things.
The flexibility you get with hatha makes sure all your energy channels open (first milestone of hatha). If you cannot do front splits, middle splits, thoracic brings, a proper pike shape, have bad posture and struggle with maintaining body alignment with basic things like a handstand, a front plank, reverse plank and side plank, etc. then your meridians aren't fully open, uncluttered and properly developed. The road to kundalini ascension will be much, much longer (and you'll still need to go into proper flexibility and body alignment). Are there other techniques to ground you that do not require using your body? Sure, but none as effective as hatha.
The spinal manipulations from kundalini are of paramount importance for creating a straight path for kundalini to rise. Can it rise without it? Yes, with great difficulty. Can you refine your body properly and achieve higher stages such as body immortality without it? No, impossible.
You don't enjoy hatha? Consistency and true dedication to it will make it enjoyable. It is about relaxation, not pain. If you feel pain, you're not doing it correctly. You are forcing yourself, which is more akin to stretching and has nothing to do with hatha. People who don't enjoy hatha are usually stiff in body and impatient in both body and mind.
Also, I am not even sure why mantra and meditation are separate in your schedule, when nearly all meditations we have on JoS have mantra. Not sure also why kundalini takes you 35 minutes. I remember reading from people more advanced than me that 111 reps can take you as little as 20 minutes. That's 15 minutes earned for you.
If you spend half an hour a day on yoga and exercise, better be realistic with your results. You most likely won't have a good body as a result. I see many complaining they don't have a 6-pack, then they eat rubbish or are into whatever fad diet or poisonous supplement and/or cannot be consistent with training either. I hear many inventing the most ridiculous stories about why athletes have great bodies and they don't, because one somehow must be a cheater in comparison to someone who barely trains a few hours a week. Olympians and other pros are training as a full time job. 30-32 hours a week. Most would fall apart from their rhythm, but somehow it's the athlete's fault because the layman doesn't understand progression and other things that build the body and keeps following broscience instead and ignorant instructors.
Why did I go to talk about that? Simply because grapes are not sour just because they're out of your reach. Learn patience and timing, instead of blaming SOME PARTS of yoga as ineffective spiritually. Do you think the likes of Lady Maxine, HP Hooded Cobra, Lydia and so on would be suggesting people to do asana and even helping them understand what to do, if they were of no use for advancement?
By your logic then, because kundalini yoga teachers get mostly nowhere in life, become vegan and have unnaturally slim bodies, then it doesn't result into spiritual development either. But then you're making the emotional argument that kundalini is okay because you enjoy it and hatha is not because you don't. Neither LHP nor RHP 'meditations' give you power and advancement. Some of them help you develop your mind and awareness, but that's all there is there, really.
Emotions don't exist to control your action, but for you to harness them for your benefit. Be careful of not doing hatha, as you will have no grounding and your mind may get into delusions and be lost, such as some of the members that are no longer with us.
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