What is an Asan?
An asan is a posture. There are innumerable postures your body can take. Among these, certain postures have been identified as “yoga asans” or yogasans. “Yoga” means that which takes you on to a higher dimension or higher perception of life. So, that kind of posture which leads you to a higher possibility is called a “yogasan.”
You may have noticed that for different mental and emotional situations that you go through, your body naturally tends to take a certain posture. If you are happy, you sit one way. When you are unhappy you sit another way. When you are peaceful you sit one way, if you are angry you sit another way. Many times, you can tell what is happening with someone by just observing the way they are sitting, have you noticed?
Based on this, conversely is the science of asans – by consciously getting your body into a certain posture, you can also elevate your consciousness. You can change the very way you feel, think, understand, and experience life by sitting in a particular way.
The Science of Asan
The science of asans is known as hatha yoga. “Ha” means sun, “ta” means moon. The first process of yoga is to bring balance between the masculine and feminine in you. Otherwise there will be no scaling of consciousness. This is why Shiva is known as Ardhanarishvara – one half of him is a woman, another half of him is a man. He is a man and the very embodiment of manhood.
At the same time, he is also woman, because without bringing this balance, without cultivating these two dimensions within us, there is no reaching towards the peak, there is no question of a human being flowering to his fullest possibility. That is why the first dimension of yoga that you practice is hatha yoga. That means the yoga of the sun and the moon is bringing balance between the masculine and the feminine. That is the first step to take.
84 Asans to Attain
Among the Yogasans, there are 84 basic asans through which one can elevate his consciousness. When we say 84 asans, do not think of them as just 84 postures. These are 84 systems, 84 ways of attaining. Out of this, if you have mastery over even a single yogasan, everything that is worth knowing in the existence can be known.
Yogasans – Creating Health, Joy and Blissfulness
Right now, when you are trying to do hatha yoga, the biggest barrier is the limitations of your body. In fact, whatever human beings want to do, the biggest barrier is their body and mind. What should have been a stepping stone has turned into an obstacle, simply because they have not explored it considerably.
After a profound and thorough exploration of the human system, the yogic system identified 84 asans as yogasans, 84 postures through which you can transform your body and mind into a great possibility for your ultimate wellbeing. Most other spiritual processes talk about putting down the body because the body is an obstacle. If you want to sit and meditate, your legs tell you, “I need to stretch. I need to walk.” When we ask you in the morning to stretch your body, you say, “No, I want to rest.” If you do an asan and we ask you to stretch, you say, “No, I don’t want to stretch.” But if we ask you to sit unmoving, your body wants to stretch. Likewise, it has to eat, it has to sleep, it has to relieve itself – the body needs so many things.
This is what a yogasan means – you are taking charge of your life. You are transforming your body and mind into a possibility in your life.
