Dear Kelvin - It is nearly 50 years since I sat on a beach in North Devon and wrote the book Yoga and Relaxation. I was 33 years old at the time and I am now 82. Looking back across those years I can see that my most powerful experiences in regard to the essence of yoga were met after I wrote the book. Because of that I have wanted to revise it, or at least to add comments to what was originally said. Out of that desire these notes have arisen.
But I find that in today's yoga in the West, most practitioners only aim to perfect the many postures, but traditional hatha/physical yoga had other ideas. So all these many postures are considered by classical hatha yoga as non-essential. They are used to make the body strong enough to hold the essential postures for three hours. The reason for this is that they have to be done every day in this way for three months, after which powerful physical and psychological changes will be made. After that they will not be necessary to keep practising. There are only three essential postures, the head stand, the lotus and easy posture.
I got up to half an hour in the head stand - and hours in the lotus. Also I learnt to cut the membrane that restrictions the tongues movement to allow what was called ‘swallowing the tongue’. Also to learn to be able to swallow a long cloth in order to cleanse the stomach and to get past the gag reflex, and to cleanse the nose by taking salt water into my mouth and spurting I out through the nose – a wonderful method to make breathing easier and to cleanse dust.
Tony
