Q: In traditional Yoga, one starts with the body — through Hatha Yoga methods. Why don’t you teach Hatha Yoga? 

It is good to start with the body. It is necessary but it is not sufficient. 

There are many problems with Hatha Yoga, particularly for those in the West, because the system of Hatha Yoga and its related techniques were all developed in a very different milieu — really, for very differently constituted bodies as well as for different minds. 

Not only is the mind different today than it was when these techniques were developed, but the body is also not the same. Everything has become artificial. The whole environment has been so changed by science that you do not have the same kind of body that people had before. Your body is different. Your mind would not be different unless your body had become different. 

When you start with a modern body, the same techniques will not do. Something else has to be added. Hatha Yoga can be used beneficially when the body exists in a very natural condition, a very natural, very innocent condition...childlike. Then these techniques are miraculous. But we do not have such innocent bodies now; we have very complex bodies. They are not natural. Changes in the environment have done much to change our bodies; medicine has done much. The whole chemical milieu in which we live is different; even the air is different. 

You have a very unnatural body. It is unnatural not only because it has been conditioned by the outside, but also because of too much mental suppression inside. There are very complex suppressions in your body and unless these body complexes are released, Hatha Yoga will not help...or, it can help only to a certain extent. 

Read the work of the German psychologist Wilhelm Reich. He was a disciple of Freud’s. He worked continuously for forty years with the suppressions in the body, not in the mind. For example, he said that if you have suppressed anger than your jaw will be different, it will not be natural. You will have a different jaw; your teeth will be different.

Violence is concentrated in the teeth and in the fingers. When an animal is angry and in a wild mood, his whole energy moves to his teeth and nails. They are his weapons. The same thing happens to man also. If you feel anger and do not express it, the energy does not leave the teeth and the nails. There is no mechanism for it to go back; it is a one-way process. When a dog becomes angry he expresses it, but when a man becomes angry he may not express it. The energy that has moved to the teeth and nails cannot go back where it came from; the chemicals released into the blood cannot go back. They remain where they have moved to and tension begins to be accumulated at these particular points in the body. So the first thing that has to be done is that this accumulation in the body has to be released.

Hatha Yoga does not take this into account because in former times a suppressed mind and suppressive attitude were not prevalent, particularly in India. In those days India was one of the least suppressive countries. Now that is not so. And in the West, Christianity has caused so much suppression that everybody is crippled inside. These suppressions in the body have to be released first. 

Otherwise you start out with a body that is not right, not natural, and many unnecessary problems may be created by it. That is why something totally unknown to Hatha Yoga has to be introduced now: the body must go through a catharsis first. To bring about this catharsis, a totally new science will be needed because this suppression is something new. 

For example, if you have suppressed sex a lot, then kundalini cannot move up. It is blocked. The whole structure from where the kundalini can move up is simply blocked, blocked by the suppressed sex energy. Or, if you have indulged too much in sex, then you have no energy left to move upward. These are the two problems: either you have a suppressed mind and the energy has become blocked or you have indulged too much so that no energy is left to move within you. You are not in a natural state, your energy is not balanced. It is not a natural flow that comes from either suppressing or indulging. With balanced energy, Hatha Yoga can be used very easily, but otherwise it creates problems.

Another thing is that all these Hatha Yoga techniques were developed for use in monasteries. They are monastic techniques intended for people who are totally involved in them for twenty-four hours a day, not doing anything else. Then too, you have to work with them for a very long period, for years. If Hatha Yoga is taught to a person who is not totally involved in it, who only comes to do Hatha yoga once or twice — or even for an hour a day, but who is involved for twenty-three hours a day in quite a different world, a work that is quite the contrary — it is not going to help much Whatsoever you have gained is lost every day. The very method is a monastic method. Now we have to develop the methods, nonmonastic methods that will not be undone by the rest of the activities of your life. 

This is a problem, this is one of the most significant problems for those whose who are interested in Yoga. In India, people just go on in their traditional way. They have tradition so they follow it without thinking of whether something has to be changed or something new has to be added The whole world has become so different now that Hatha Yoga techniques are irrelevant in many ways, but they go on being taught because they have become traditional. 

India invented many things. But after a certain period the discovering stopped. It happens so many times. Now the same thing is happening in the West, particularly in America. 

In America, technology has become so developed now that it can change everything. But because the changes are happening so fast, people are beginning to be against technology now. Whenever something comes to a peak it becomes threatening to many of the traditional values and a dialectical process develops in the same society. Many people begin to oppose continued progress. In America, the new generation is moving more and more against technology. If this opposition continues, as it is bound to, technological progress will stop and no further technological discoveries will be made. Then the mind will become static. 

The same thing happened in India with Yoga. India developed a very subtle technology for inner development. It was an inner science. Once the development came to a peak it became a danger to everything, because if the whole mind of a country becomes concentrated on Yoga, everything else is bound to suffer. 

India reached a peak of affluence. Then it became poor. This was a logical conclusion because if there is too much concern with the inner world, you are bound to become poor. You are not concerned with outward progress, the whole balance is lost. You become introverted. And once the whole society becomes introverted, outward conditions begin to deteriorate. Because of this inwardness, the whole progress of the country stopped. Finally, people began to oppose this over-concern with inwardness then. 

Since the time of Buddha, India has not discovered anything new in terms of inner growth. Nothing is new since then; it has just been a repetition. And when it comes to bringing these same things to the West, there is a big gap — a tremendous gap. 

Oso, The Eternal Quest