Yoga TTC Manual

Introduction-philosophy general theory

- Different meaning of the word yoga
- Brief history of yoga (from Patanjali to today)
- Vedic and Tantric darshan : Tantra-Yoga-Vedanta- Samkhya
- Yoga and Baghavad gita:Bhakti,Karma,jnana etc
- Hatha yoga and Patanjali/Ashtanga Yoga
- From yoga System (Hatha/Ashtanga) to the yoga styles of today.
- General Anatomy and physiology.
Yogic anatomy :
- The five kosha
- Chakra and nadi
- Prana and granthi
- Kundalini
- Matrika and sound
The tools of Yoga: Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha, Meditation

Asana:
- Definition of Asana according to traditional yoga
- Classical asana and modern asana
- Classification of asana based on the function
- Difference between static and dynamic asana
- Effect of asana on the body/mind system (therapeutic aspect)
- General anatomy and biomechanics related to the asana
- Alignment and safety in the asana practice
- Asana preparation: preparatory movement , warm up etc
- Seated postures: sukhasana, siddhasana,
padmasana,vajrasana,swastikasana
- Standing posture: tree, triangle, warrior, etc etc
- Forward bend:.
- Back bend:..
- Twists:..
- Inversions:..
- Balance postures:..
- Form and function of the asana: adaptation and modifications
- Dinamic sequence: surya namaskar , vinyasa etc
- Different methods to arrange a sequence of asana

- Adjustment (do and dont)

- Asana Teaching methodology
Pranayama:
- Definition of Pranayama
- Concept of prana and sub-prana in yoga
- Anatomy of breathing
- Natural and forced breathing
- Thoracic, abdominal, clavicular breathing
- Yogic breathing
- Kumbhaka
- Classification of pranayama tecniques
- Ujjay
- Nadhi shodhan/anulom vilom
- Bastrika
- Kapalabhati
- Seetali
- Shitkali
- Effect of pranayama on body/mind system
- Contraindication and safety
- Teaching methodology

Mudra
- Definition and meaning of mudra
- Mudra in the tantric tradition
- Mudra in hatha yoga
- hand mudra and other mudra
- shambhavi mudra
- kechari mudra
- mahamudra
- teaching Mudra
Bandha
- definition
- moola banda
- jhalandhara bandha
- uddhiana bandha
- mahabandha
- Teaching Bandha
Meditation
- Yoga Sutra/Patanjali

- Pratyahara,Dharana,Dhyana and Samadi

- Meditation techniques (General view)
- Asana and meditation
- Pranayama and meditation
- Preparation for meditation
- Different objects of meditation
- Meditation from the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra
- Meditation in Tantra and Vedanta
- Buddhist meditation (Vipassana/metta)
- Sound meditation/Nada Yoga
- Yoga Nidra
- Effect of mediation and the body/mind
- Precaution and safety in teaching/guiding meditation/yoga nidra.
- Teaching meditation
Shatkarma
- Hatha yoga and shatkarma
- Neti
- Trataka
- Kapalabhaii
- Nauli
- Basti
- Shankaprakshalana
- Safety and contraindication
Yoga and lifestyle
- Yama and Niyama
- Bhagavad gita
- Yoga and food
Ayurveda
- Introduction
- Tridosha
- Agni and saptadhatu
- Prakruti e vrikruti
- Ayurveda and food
- Ayurveda and lifestyle
- Asana and ayurveda
- Pranayama and ayurveda
- Shatkarma and ayurveda
- Design a class according to the prakruti

Tantra
- General introduction
- Modern misunderstanding
- Kashmiri shivaism
- Goraknath and Hatha Yoga
- Sri Vidya
Vedanta
- Dwaita and advaita
- Shankaracharya and Dashnami sampradaya
- Ramana maharishi
- Neoadvaita
Yoga teacher
- About teaching
- Self practice
- Self study
- yoga teacher and job/career

Introduction-philosophy general
theory
-

Different meaning of the word yoga

The word Yoga is a Sanskrit term, coming from the root Yuk, that
mean To Join, to bind together.
In the Sanskrit literature Yoga can assume different meaning, in
mathematic for example the word yoga means to add, in vedic
astrology yoga refer to a particular combination of different
planets, but the basic idea is always the same: to join, to unite.
In Vedanta Philosophy yoga refer to the union between the
individual soul (Jivatma) with the universal Soul (Paramatma).
In the Yoga Philosophy (Patanjali) Yoga means Samadhi, and Yoga
refer to the Samadhi and the means to reach that stage.
So Yoga is the goal and the way to get that goal.
Most commonly the word yoga indicate the practice that allow the
individual to reach the Samadhi or in other word the realization of
the Self.

Brief history of yoga (from Patanjali to

today)
Its difficult to trace the historical origin of yoga, all we can say is that
the term yoga appear first in the Upanishad where refer to the union
between jivatma and paramatma.
The earlier written text about Yoga as Discipline/Philosophy is the
Patanjali Yoga Sutra.
Patanjali was the one who systematize and exposed clearly the
practice of Yoga in the light of the dualistic Samkhya Philosophy.
The Patanjali system is also known as Ashtanga Yoga (not to be
confused with the modern Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga that is a system
derived from the Hatha Yoga).
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is a meditation manual, its an
explanation about understanding/mastering the mind field (Citta).
The Patanjali system (Ashtanga yoga) has been adopted later on
from tantric practitioner and consequently has been adopted and

developed from the Hatha yogi, without adopting the same

philosophical dualistic view, but using the same methodology.
The Hatha yogi were not following the dualistic samkhya view like
Patanjali, but they were following the Tantric Philosophy, where the
reality is considered to be the play of 2 principle named :Shiva and
Shakti..
Shiva is the Pure Consciousness and Shakti the Pure Energy.
Shiva is the transcendental principle like the Purusha in samkhya and
Shakti is the immanent principle like the Prakriti in Samkhya.
So while Patanjali was describing the Yoga path in terms of Chitta, the
Hatha yogi describe the same path in terms of Prana and Chitta:
Mastering the Prana is possible to master the Chitta.
Today there is the big misunderstanding that Hatha Yoga is a pure
physical practice, and thats not true at all ,you can have a look to
the Hatha yoga text and see by yourself that Hatha Yoga go far
behind the physical aspect including a lot of meditation techniques.
So Patanjali was the ancient codifier of the Yoga system , later on the
same system was adopted by the Tantrics (using the same
techniques but with a different philosophical approach ) and finally
with Goraknath we have the shift from the Tantric (Kashmiri Shaiva)
system to the Hatha Yoga.
According to some scholars Goraknath simplified and adapted the
complex tantric system of the Kashmiri Shaivism in a much more
simple system that is known as Hatha Yoga.
The Hatha Yoga system was initially propagated by the Nath
sampradaya (an ascetic group follower of Goraknath) and later on
the system influenced other ascetic group like the Naga Baba
(Related to the Dashnami sampradaya) and the Ramanandi
(Vaishnava sect).
Troughs the Dasnami and Ramanandi diffusion of hatha yoga we got
the two most influential yoga teacher of the recent time: Swami
Sivananda and Krishnamacharya.
From Sivananda we have Swami Vishudevavanda (Sivananda yoga),
Swami Satyananda (Satyananda Yoga) ,Swami Sacchidananda
(Integral Yoga)
From Krishnamacharya we have Iyengar (Iyengar Yoga) , Patthaby
joyce (Ashtanga Vinyasa), Desikachar (Vinyoga).

From those teacher then the yoga panorama start to assume a

different form and there is a shift from the Yoga system to the Yoga
Style.
The yoga practice propagated through the Sivananda lineage
(Sivananda yoga, satyananda yoga etc) resent the influence of the
Advaita Vedanta of shankaracharya, so they are more oriented
towards the integration f the different aspect of yoga (Karma, bhakti,
jnana etc)
Krishnamacharya teaching was more oriented towards the therapy
(Krishnamacharya was an ayurvedic practitioner), so the practice he
thought were more physical oriented, but there was still a reference
to the Patanjali system and philosophy .
Interesting to note that Patanjali view (based on samkhya) was not
considered during the tantric and Hatha yoga period, it was just at
the time of Vivekananda and Krishnamacharya that the Hatha yoga
practice were connected (almost forcefully) to the Patanjali
philosophy and the tantric philosophy (that are the core of Hatha
yoga) was completely discharged.
One of the aim of this TTC course is also to reconnect the student to
the original philosophy of the Hatha yoga and to give him a deeper
knowledge of the Kashmiri shaiva Philosophy .

From System to Style

Once the yoga practices came to the west, the focus of the general
public was the external aspect of the practice, that was expressed
mostly trough the asana practice.
Asana start to become synonymous of yoga, and thanks to a lot of
teacher (mostly from the Krishnamacharya lineage) the Hatha yoga
system was reduced to the practice of asana and sometimes
pranayama.
The different way of teaching the asana become the different Styles
of yoga that we know today.
Yoga shift from a system that has the goal of mastering the
Prana/chitta to a Style of body movement/position, moving from the
internal aspect of the system to the external aspect of the Style.

A yoga teacher who is aware and master a particular methodology

like Hatha or Ashtanga (Patanjali) or Ayurveda, go behind any
external style. So its important to learn a system more then a style.
Once the system is fixed its possible to play with any style, and
connect that style to a system.

Vedic and Tantric darshan : Tantra-YogaVedanta- Samkhya

In the previous chapter, we saw of the Yoga shifted and was adopted
using different philosophical point of view.
In this Chapter we are going to understand a bit more the different
philosophy present in India.
The Indian culture is strongly influenced by a corpus of text called
Veda. Veda come fom the root Vid- that means to know. The veda are
inns and are considered the oldest literature in he world.
Th Veda strongly influenced the different type of philosophy if the
east.
The word that we will use to express the philosophical point of view is
:Darshan.
Darshan is a sanskrit word that come from the root Drish that means
to see.
Darshan is the way we see something, ,its the point of view.
From the veda came out 6 main Darshan, among those six, 3 are
important to know in the study of yoga:
Yoga- Samkhya- Vedanta.
Yoga as darshan is basically the vision and thought of Patanjali,
strongly influenced by the samkhya darshan.
Samkhya is considered to be the oldest vedic darshan.
The word Samkhya in Sanskrit means number, and basically
samkhya is a classification of experience that move from the
sensorial external experience, toward the internal and subtle aspect,
till a point where two main principle are considered:
Samkhya recognize 25 aspect, called Tattva, the two main aspect
are:
Purusha and Prakriti.
Purusha is the pure observer, and Prakriti is what is observed.

Samkhya is a science, the difference between modern science and

Samkhya is that modern science consider and observe external
phenomena, Samkhya consider and observe internal phenomena.
So purusha is the pure witness and Prakriti is the field that is
experienced by the witness.
From prarkiti all the other tattva emerge one by one.
So Samkhya deal with manifestation of the reality.
Samkhya philosophy is Dualistic in the sense that the reality is seen
as a play of this two principle: Purusha and Prakriti.
From his darshan both Patanjali yoga and the Buddhism emerged.
The Yoga darshan is the vision of Patanjali, strongly influenced by the
Samkhya, Patanjali wrote the yoga sutra. The Yoga sutra are a
manual that explain how to experience the Tattva of the and move
the experience from the external to the internal, throught a system
calle Ashtanga Yoga, till te reach of the Highest goal :Samadhi,
described as Yoga chitta vritti nirodha, the end of the movement of
the mind field.
Samadhi in Patanjali view happen when we are able to separate
Purusha from Prakriti. The chitta vritti are effect of prakriti and once
they dissolve (nirodaha) , purusha stands alone.
So according to Patanjali Yoga= Samadhi and the method is called
Ashtanga Yoga that we will study later.

Vedanta
.
Vedanta is one of the most famous and popular vedic darshan.
Vedanta means end of the Veda, and the Vedanta is based on the
teaching of the Upanishad.
According to the Vedantic Darshan there is only one Principle
called : Brahman.
The phenomenal reality we perceive is an illusion (Maya) created by
the fact that we live in the ignorance (avidya).
The Brahman is reflected the core of each individual in the form of
Atma.
The individual Atma (Jivatma) is one with universal soul (paramatma)
and the goal of yoga is to realize this unity.
The samkhya model of the tattva has been adopted in the Vedanta
system and developed and Prakriti become Maya.

The path used by the vedantin is mainly Jnana yoga , Jnana means
knowledge and it refer to the higher knowledge, the knowledge that
Brahman is the only reality.
To do this is necessary to develop some quality that are necessary to
move from the impermanence duality of maya to the eternal reality
of Brahman.
Adi Shankaracharya was the most important Vedanta Teacher,
shankaracharya
Brahman , accordin to Vedanta is the only reality, and the Atman is
Brahman.
B