Yoga

Yoga is a path of practice originating in India for the integrative training of body, soul and spirit – and expressly not a religion. The word means “the yoke” and is meant to express that someone freely takes on a discipline in order to train their personality and their capacity for insight. There is no single “yoga”, but many paths, each with its own emphasis. At the Kyborg Institute, yoga is where everything began: the name Kyborg stands for Kundalini Yoga based Organisation.

What does the word yoga mean?

The Sanskrit word yoga belongs to the root yuj, “to harness, to join” – related to the English “yoke”. It carries a double image: the joining of body, breath and spirit, and the yoke of a freely chosen self-discipline that one takes on consciously. In his work on resilience, Tobias Alke reads it freely as taking on responsibility: “to place oneself under the yoke”.

The classical definition comes from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, a foundational text usually dated to somewhere between about 200 BCE and 400 CE: yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind (sutra 1.2). D. Harald Alke puts it this way in his memoirs: “Yoga is not done – it happens.”

Is yoga a religion?

No. “True yoga is a method, a technique for exercise and for insight, not a religion.” It can lead to reflection and inner composure – “to religio, to a turning back” – but it demands no creed. Whoever practises keeps their own faith.

A scene from the memoirs shows how naturally this is meant. His neighbour, an old farmer, “sometimes heard me singing mantras, sometimes saw me doing yoga in white clothes, but we never talked about what it was all for. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to convert anyone. We brought in the harvests together, saw each other, helped each other.”

What paths of yoga are there?

The Indian tradition knows several paths that address different sides of the human being. We place them side by side as equals – none is “the true one”, each suits different people:

• Hatha Yoga – postures (asanas) and breath; the best-known path in the West.
• Raja Yoga – the “royal” path of concentration and meditation, described in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra as an eight-limbed path, from ethical principles to absorption.
• Bhakti Yoga – the path of devotion and love.
• Jnana Yoga – the path of knowledge and discernment.
• Karma Yoga – the path of action without attachment: “The human problem lies not in our doing but in our attachment. […] Whoever accomplishes their work without clinging to its fruits, […] is called a yogi.” (see Karma)
• Mantra Yoga – working with sacred syllables and sounds.
• Kundalini Yoga – an energy-oriented path combining breath, movement, mantra and meditation; the path from which the Kyborg Institute grew.

How does one practise yoga?

Not as a competitive sport, but with patience. From Energytraining: “Do not try to force anything. It would only have the opposite effect.” And soberly: “Reaching enlightenment quickly works on none of the known paths. Somehow, on every path, one has to show endurance and effort, each in the appropriate way.”

The choice of teacher matters too: “But with yoga, too, one has to pay attention to what the particular teacher can and wants to convey.” A good teacher accompanies; he does not bind.

And to anyone who thinks yoga means keeping the world at a distance, D. Harald Alke tells an old story: a yogi is meditating in his cave, a mouse rustles in the leaves, and he snaps at it – after all, he wants to unite in samadhi with the highest divine consciousness. The little mouse replies: “How do you expect to cope with the highest divine consciousness if you already have problems with a little mouse like me?” Another sentence points the same way: according to yogic teaching, the emotions keep us from perfect purity and insight – “That may well be. But that is what we came to Earth for!”

How is yoga connected with breath and energy?

At the centre of many paths of yoga stands the breath as the carrier of life energy, prana. Through conscious guidance of the breath – pranayama – the flow of energy is trained: the breath slows, attention gathers, body and mind come to rest. According to yogic teaching, the energy rises through the chakras. This is a teaching of experience from the tradition, not a medical finding.

How do yoga and Zen connect?

More closely than one might think. Indian meditation, dhyana, travelled to China and became Ch’an there, and Zen in Japan. D. Harald Alke combined the two: Kundalini Yoga and the Zen meditation he learned from Roshi Tetsuo Nagaya. Out of this came Energytraining – “from the synthesis of Indian yoga techniques, Japanese meditation practice and Western knowledge”, a method of its own that is taught at the Institute.

Related paths from other cultures stand beside it, not beneath it: Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong are independent Chinese methods – described in our own work as a “Chinese method of relaxation and concentration”, “(not a religion!)”. In the Institute’s seminars, exercises from Kundalini Yoga have been compared with exercises from Tai Chi and Qigong – as two paths with a similar aim, not as one that contains the other.

How did D. Harald Alke come to yoga?

Through a story. When he was fourteen, his religion teacher – a former Protestant missionary whose order had sent him to India – told the class about his encounter with a yogi in an Indian village: “And for the first time I heard the word yoga. A word, a method, that would later change my whole life.” In January 1976 he began practising Kundalini Yoga; the full story is told in the entry Kundalini.

Decades later he was once sitting cross-legged, and his little daughter crawled over and sat down in front of him in exactly the same way, palms pressed flat together: “There we sat, the old yogi and the little yogini […]. Perfect harmony between father and daughter.”

Yoga and nutrition

People who practise regularly often pay closer attention to their diet as well. D. Harald Alke keeps dogma at arm’s length here – his own included. Of his vegetarian years he writes that he lived that way “because the yogis said it was right and important for the path to enlightenment. However, not a single one of those I got to know who talked about it had ever reached enlightenment.” Practical everyday tips can be found in the article With yoga tips against sweets and frustration.

See also

• Kundalini
• Prana
• Pranayama
• Life energy
• Chakras
• Meditation
• Karma

Literature

The following selection comes from the section “Yoga and therapy” of D. Harald Alke’s Gesundheitslexikon der Esoterik. The complete list of sources is held in the frontmatter under quellen; titles are given in the original:

• Avalon, Arthur: Die Schlangekraft (Kundalini Yoga). Barth 1975
• Bhajan, Yogi: The Teaching of Yogi Bhajan. Arcline Publications 1986
• Iyengar, B. K. S.: Licht auf Yoga. O. W. Barth 1978
• Johari, Harish: Chakras. Sphinx 1992
• Sannella, Lee: Kundalini-Erfahrung und die neuen Wissenschaften. Synthesis 1989
• Singh, Satya: Das Kundalini-Yoga-Handbuch. Heyne 1990
• Weiss, Hartmut: Quellen des Yoga. O. W. Barth 1986
• Yoga Sutra. Papyrus 1987
• Yogananda, Paramahansa: Religion als Wissenschaft. O. W. Barth 1986

Note: This entry describes yoga as a path of practice and a worldview-based tradition. It is not medical advice and promises no healing effect; anyone with health complaints should check with a doctor before practising.

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By D. Harald Alke, Tobias O. R. Alke