May 29, 2013

YOGA: Physiology, Psychosomatics, Bioenergetics by Andrey G. Safronov





This book is available for download on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iBooks and on your computer with iTunes. Books must be read on an iOS device.
This book is based on 19 years of yoga practice and 14 years of teaching yoga and healing. It contains over 300 pictures of asanas — how to come into them and how to go out, energy flows and possible mistakes while practicing hatha. Structurally, the book is divided into several levels so that it can be useful to all readers with different experience in yoga — from beginners to experienced practitioners. In this book you will learn how to assemble your own yoga complex, depending on your health. You will learn about inward criteria of doing asanas right and how to get practical results from your meditation.

May 22, 2013

Sutra 3.1. Conceptual Mistakes in Understanding the Category of “Dharana” by Yogis of Today. A Psychologist’s Opinion


Instead of drawing an epigraph I shall cite an anecdote.

A man is walking along the city streets and sees a queer picture: two workmen with spades are walking one by one. One is digging a pit, the second one is filling the pit up. This makes our man astonished, and so he asks them: “why do you do it this way – one of you digs a pit and the second one fills it up?” And receives the answer from the second one: “I am not the second one, I am the third one. The second one has fallen ill. He was supposed to plant trees”.

In the would-be yogic environment of today the understanding of the category of “Dharana” (just like of many other basic categories as well) in many aspects resembles the situation described in this anecdote. If one small detail is missing, the entire activity becomes totally meaningless. I shall further expand my idea.

As I have already mentioned in one of the previous articles, Patanjali has given a fairly precise definition of Dharana category: