One Word Many Yogas
From ancient paths of practice to the contemporary Yoga class
1. Beyond the timeline
Soul Fuel Vol. 7: An Inside Job traces some of the philosophical and historical streams that shaped Yoga, from the sacred sounds of the Vedas and the inner enquiry of the Upanishads to Patanjali’s Eight Limbs, Tantra and Hatha Yoga.
A small number of printed copies have been shared with my Yoga students. Subscribers can also [download the complete four-page edition of Soul Fuel Vol. 7 here].
But that history raises another question: how did these different ideas become the many ways of practising Yoga that we encounter today?
The single word Yoga can describe a path of devotion, a life of service, philosophical enquiry, meditation, mantra, practices involving breath and subtle energy, or a posture-based class at a local studio or gym. Some forms have developed over thousands of years. Others are distinctly modern. Many combine practices drawn from several traditions and periods of Yoga’s evolution.
This can make Yoga’s modern landscape difficult to understand. Karma Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Hatha Yoga and Vinyasa Yoga all carry the same word, but they do not describe the same kind of practice.
This post picks up where Soul Fuel Vol. 7 leaves off. It explores the different meanings carried by the word Yoga, how some of its major paths, systems and physical styles developed, and why practices that appear quite separate may meet within the same class, or within an ordinary day.
2. One word, many forms of Yoga
The many forms of Yoga make more sense when we recognise that they are not all trying to describe the same thing.
Some offer ways of understanding life and the mind.
Some are paths expressed through action, devotion or enquiry.
Others are systems of practice transmitted through particular traditions, while many familiar styles developed around the physical practice of Yoga.
These broad distinctions give us a useful place to begin.
Philosophical frameworks
Yoga’s philosophical frameworks explore questions about the mind, consciousness, suffering, action and liberation.
The Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the many traditions associated with Tantra do not present one single philosophy. They emerged during different periods, sometimes drawing upon shared ideas and sometimes offering distinctly different understandings of the self, the body and the purpose of practice.
Soul Fuel Vol. 7 offers a brief introduction to some of these historical streams. Patanjali’s Eight Limbs will be explored more fully in the next companion post, The Eight Limbs Lifestyle.
Paths, systems, lineages and styles
The word Yoga may describe a path centred on action, devotion, enquiry or meditation; a structured system of practices; a lineage transmitted from teacher to student; or a modern style shaped largely around posture.
A lineage is a stream of teachings and practices passed from teacher to student across generations. As teachings travel, each teacher may preserve, interpret or develop what they have received. The boundaries are not always neat: a modern class may draw from several historical streams, even when it is presented simply as “Yoga”.
Asana is the physical practice of posture. Within Patanjali’s Eight Limbs, it is one aspect of a much wider approach that also includes ethics, self-discipline, breath, concentration and meditation. In modern Yoga, asana has become the way many people first encounter the practice.
3. From Hatha Yoga to the modern Yoga class
The Yoga most commonly encountered in studios and gyms today places asana, or physical posture, near the centre of the practice.
The fifteenth-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika, attributed to Svatmarama, shows that physical practice was already part of a much wider system. Across its four chapters, it explores asana, pranayama, shatkarma or purification practices, mudra, bandha, kundalini, meditation and samadhi. Asana forms the starting point, but posture was never the whole practice. These methods were used together to work with the body, breath, mind and subtle energies in pursuit of a deeper state of Yoga.
This may feel like an ancient and continuous form of Yoga, but the familiar landscape of standing postures, flowing transitions, repeated sequences and strength-building movements developed more recently. It emerged through a complex meeting of older Hatha Yoga practices, Indian physical culture, wrestling, European gymnastics, modern medicine and the changing social and political life of India.
A meeting of different physical traditions
India already had rich physical traditions, including wrestling and vyayama, a broad term for exercise and physical training. During British colonial rule, European gymnastics and organised physical education were also introduced through schools and institutions.
Indian teachers experimented across these traditions, combining elements of Hatha Yoga with strength-building exercises, repeated movements and new ways of teaching the body. This exchange helped shape many features of modern asana practice, including standing postures, flowing sequences, sun salutations and a greater emphasis on strength, flexibility and endurance. It was not simply a case of Western gymnastics being added to a static Indian tradition; movement and repetition were already present within Indian practice. Research published in the Journal of Yoga Studies explores these exchanges in greater depth.
Yoga, health and national strength
This development was also connected to the wider political life of India.
Under colonial rule, Indians were frequently characterised by British authorities as physically weak and in need of Western discipline. Indian physical-culture movements challenged this idea by presenting physical strength, self-discipline and health as expressions of cultural pride and national renewal.
Yoga could therefore be reframed as both an ancient Indian inheritance and a modern system for developing healthy, capable bodies. Physical practice became connected not only with individual wellbeing, but also with self-reliance, national strength and the movement towards Indian independence.
This did not mean that Yoga lost its philosophical or spiritual dimensions. Rather, its physical practices were being selected, reinterpreted and presented in ways that responded to the concerns of the time.
Bringing Yoga into the laboratory
Some Indian teachers also began using scientific research and medical language to explain Yoga.
Shri Yogendra (1897–1989) founded The Yoga Institute in Bombay in 1918. He helped present Yoga as a practical approach to health that could be used by householders, rather than something belonging only to renunciates and ashrams.
Swami Kuvalayananda (1883–1966) founded Kaivalyadhama in 1924 and established the research journal Yoga Mimamsa. He investigated the physiological effects of asana, pranayama, cleansing practices and other yogic techniques using the scientific equipment available at the time.
Their work helped move Yoga into laboratories, clinics and educational institutions. Breathing, circulation, heart activity, abdominal pressure and other physiological responses could now be measured and discussed through the emerging languages of anatomy, physiology and medical science.
This changed how Yoga was communicated. Practices once explained primarily through concepts such as prana, nadis and subtle energy could also be described through the nervous system, respiration, circulation and muscular function.
The meeting between yogic knowledge and medical science contributed to the development of modern Yoga therapy. Yoga had long included ideas about health and healing, but teachers and institutions increasingly began adapting practices to individual conditions and presenting them as therapeutic interventions. The field has continued to develop, although Yoga therapy should not be confused with medical treatment or used to make claims that extend beyond the available evidence.
T. Krishnamacharya and the Mysore years
T. Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) became one of the most influential teachers in the development of modern posture-based Yoga.
With the support of the Maharaja of Mysore, he taught at the Mysore Palace during the 1930s and 1940s. His work brought together his knowledge of Yoga texts and philosophy with Hatha Yoga, breath control, physical culture and a dynamic method of connecting posture, movement and breath.
Krishnamacharya did not teach one fixed system throughout his life. His methods changed according to the age, health, capacity and circumstances of his students. The physically demanding sequences taught to young boys in Mysore were not the same as the individualised and therapeutic approach that became increasingly central to his later work.
Several of his students carried different aspects of his teaching into the wider world.
B.K.S. Iyengar: precision, alignment and support
B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) developed an approach known for close attention to alignment, precision and sustained observation within each posture.
His teaching made extensive use of props, including blocks, belts, blankets, bolsters, ropes and chairs. These could make postures more accessible, help students remain in them for longer or allow particular actions to be explored more clearly.
His 1966 book Light on Yoga became one of the most influential guides to asana internationally. Iyengar’s work also contributed to the growing use of Yoga for particular physical needs and health conditions.
His daughter, Geeta Iyengar (1944–2018), became a leading teacher within the tradition and made an important contribution to the teaching and documentation of Yoga practice for women.
K. Pattabhi Jois: sequence, movement and breath
K. Pattabhi Jois (1915–2009) developed and popularised Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, a physically demanding system of set posture sequences linked through breath and transitional movements.
The method’s emphasis on repeated sequences, internal focus, heat and disciplined daily practice influenced many later forms of Vinyasa, Flow and Power Yoga.
The word Ashtanga can create some confusion. In Sanskrit, it means “eight limbs” and is used for Patanjali’s wider system of Yoga. Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is the name given to this particular twentieth-century posture-based method.
Jois’s influence on modern Yoga was substantial, but his legacy also includes documented accounts of harmful physical adjustments and sexual abuse. This history matters when considering how authority, consent and power have operated within modern Yoga lineages.
Indra Devi: making Yoga accessible internationally
Indra Devi (1899–2002) was one of the first women taught by Krishnamacharya and became a major figure in bringing modern posture-based Yoga to an international audience.
She taught in China before opening a Yoga studio in Hollywood in 1948. Her students included actors and other public figures, but her broader influence came through her accessible teaching and popular books.
Devi emphasised breathing, relaxation, graceful movement, health and relief from stress. Her approach helped make Yoga more approachable to women and to people who might never have entered a traditional Indian teaching environment. She later spent many years teaching in Latin America, where she became known as the “First Lady of Yoga”.
Unlike Iyengar or Jois, she did not leave behind a tightly defined posture system bearing her name. Her contribution was in the way she translated and communicated Yoga, allowing it to enter new cultures and everyday lives.
T.K.V. Desikachar: adapting Yoga to the individual
T.K.V. Desikachar (1938–2016) studied for many years with his father, Krishnamacharya, particularly during the later period of Krishnamacharya’s teaching.
He continued an individualised approach in which the practice was adapted to the person, rather than expecting the person to fit a standard sequence. Posture, breath, chanting, meditation and philosophical study could be combined according to the student’s needs and stage of life.
This approach became widely associated with the term Viniyoga, although Desikachar later stepped away from using it as a fixed label. His work had a significant influence on individual Yoga teaching and the development of modern Yoga therapy.
These four students did not simply reproduce Krishnamacharya’s method. They carried different aspects of his teaching forward, creating approaches centred on precision, sequence, accessibility or individual adaptation.
The Ghosh lineage
Krishnamacharya’s teaching was not the only influential branch of modern posture-based Yoga.
Bishnu Charan Ghosh (1903–1970) was an Indian Yoga teacher and physical culturist, and the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Ghosh taught Yoga postures alongside bodybuilding, muscle control, therapeutic exercise and other forms of Indian physical culture. His approach was broader and more individually prescribed than the fixed sequence later associated with Bikram Yoga.
Bikram Choudhury (born 1944) trained within this wider teaching environment before assembling and popularising a standardised sequence of 26 postures and two breathing practices in a heated room. This became Bikram Yoga and later influenced Original Hot Yoga and numerous other heated class formats.
Ghosh Yoga should not be reduced to Bikram Yoga, and not every Hot Yoga class belongs to the Ghosh lineage. Looking beyond the Bikram name reveals a much wider history of Indian physical culture, therapeutic practice and individual prescription.
Choudhury’s commercial influence cannot be separated from the serious allegations and legal findings associated with him. His claims about his early training and national Yoga championship titles have also been challenged by historical research. Naming both Ghosh and Choudhury allows us to recognise how the later method developed without allowing its controversial founder to represent the entire tradition.
Sivananda Yoga
Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) taught an integrated approach to Yoga at the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh, bringing together service, devotion, philosophical enquiry, meditation and physical practice.
His teachings were carried internationally by many students. One of them, Swami Vishnudevananda (1927–1993), developed the system now commonly known as Sivananda Yoga. It organised practice around five principles: proper exercise, breathing, relaxation, diet, and positive thinking and meditation. A typical class includes pranayama, sun salutations, a sequence of twelve foundational postures and periods of relaxation.
Sivananda Yoga is both part of a wider spiritual lineage and a recognisable modern system. Its influence extends beyond posture, combining physical, ethical, devotional and meditative elements within everyday life.
Satyananda or Bihar Yoga
Swami Satyananda Saraswati (1923–2009) was a student of Swami Sivananda and founded the Bihar School of Yoga in 1963. The tradition that developed through his teaching is known as Satyananda Yoga or Bihar Yoga.
It draws together asana, pranayama, mudra, bandha, mantra, meditation, cleansing practices and teachings about the subtle body. It also gives particular attention to Yoga Nidra, a systematic practice of deep relaxation and awareness developed and taught by Satyananda from older Tantric practices.
The Bihar tradition also teaches kriya practices: structured combinations of movement, breath, mantra, concentration and visualisation intended to direct awareness inward. The word kriya has several meanings across Yoga traditions and does not refer to one universally shared system.
Rather than centring Yoga on physical posture alone, the Bihar system presents these practices as parts of an integrated whole. This is the lineage through which I trained in Yoga Nidra and Restorative Yoga at Anahata Yoga Retreat, and it has strongly influenced the way I understand Yoga as a practice that works across the body, breath, mind and deeper layers of awareness.
From influential methods to modern styles
These teaching traditions helped shape the proliferation of posture-based Yoga we now see around the world.
Many newer styles have taken familiar postures and built around a particular element of the practice. Vinyasa and Flow Yoga emphasise continuous, breath-linked movement. Power and Forrest Yoga give greater attention to strength and intensity. Iyengar Yoga centres on precision and alignment. Ashtanga Vinyasa follows set sequences linked by breath and movement. Viniyoga adapts practice to the individual. Yin Yoga uses relatively long-held postures, while Restorative Yoga uses extensive support to reduce effort and encourage rest.
Jivamukti, Anusara, Dharma, Kripalu and Integral Yoga each combine physical practice with their own selection of philosophical, devotional or meditative teachings. Scaravelli-inspired Yoga explores the relationship between breath, gravity, freedom and the spine. Modern teachings associated with Himalayan Yoga traditions also bring posture, breath and meditation together, although the name covers more than one lineage and method.
Other names describe the conditions in which Yoga is practised or the people for whom it has been adapted. Hot, Aerial, Acro, Chair, Prenatal, Postnatal and Children’s Yoga may refer to temperature, equipment, partnership or intended group rather than a separate philosophical tradition or lineage.
Even Hatha Yoga has more than one meaning. Historically, it refers to a broad and varied tradition involving the body, breath, cleansing practices, mudra, bandha and subtle energies. On a modern studio timetable, “Hatha” often describes a slower, more steadily paced posture class.
No list can capture every modern variation. Some names identify a lineage, some a particular teaching method, and others simply describe a class format. The name alone cannot always tell us where a practice came from or what it is inviting us to explore.
A different perspective on familiar Yoga
For a fascinating exploration of this history, I recommend Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice.
Singleton examines how Indian physical culture, European gymnastics and the international exercise movement contributed to the development of the asana practice many of us recognise today.
This perspective does not suggest that modern posture-based Yoga is somehow false or “not really Yoga”. It shows that Yoga has continued to adapt, drawing from different sources while responding to the needs and values of each period.
That capacity to evolve is not separate from Yoga’s history. It is one of its most consistent features.
4. Yoga as a path through life
The word Yoga can describe both a practice and a path through life. Karma, Bhakti, Jnana and Raja Yoga are now commonly presented as four major paths, each approaching transformation through a different aspect of human experience: action, devotion, enquiry or meditation.
This four-part model is useful, but it is not a complete or universal classification of Yoga. The Bhagavad Gita brings together teachings on action, knowledge, devotion and meditation, often showing them as mutually supportive rather than entirely separate paths. The familiar modern grouping of four Yogas was later shaped and widely popularised by Swami Vivekananda in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The four paths do not describe four kinds of people who must choose one route and remain within it. They are better understood as different doorways into practice. One may feel more natural at a particular stage of life, while the others help bring balance.
Karma Yoga: the path of action
Karma means action. Karma Yoga is not simply about doing good deeds or keeping busy. It concerns the inner attitude brought to action: acting with care and integrity while loosening our attachment to recognition, control or a particular result.
The Bhagavad Gita places considerable emphasis on this principle. We cannot avoid action entirely, but we can become more aware of what motivates it. Are we acting only for praise, status or reward? Can we give ourselves fully to what needs to be done without making our sense of worth dependent on the outcome?
This does not mean that results are unimportant or that we should become passive. We can work towards change, make plans and care deeply about what happens. The practice lies in recognising that our responsibility is to the quality of our actions, while many parts of the outcome remain beyond our control.
Karma Yoga is often associated with selfless service, including volunteering, teaching, caring for others or contributing to a community. It can also be present in less visible moments: cleaning a shared space, preparing food, helping someone without needing credit or completing an ordinary task with full attention.
I came to understand this more directly while living and working at Anahata Yoga Retreat. Karma Yoga was woven through the practical work required to sustain daily life: cooking, cleaning, maintaining shared spaces and supporting the rhythm of the retreat. Much of it, however, had already been present in my life before I knew its name.
This is one of the useful things about learning these paths. Sometimes a teaching gives language to something we are already living.
Selfless action should not be confused with self-erasure. Service does not require us to ignore our limits, accept exploitation or continually place everyone else’s needs above our own. Awareness, discernment and appropriate boundaries remain part of the practice. The question is not only, “How can I help?” but also, “From what place am I acting?”
Bhakti Yoga: the path of devotion
Bhakti Yoga works through the human capacity for love, reverence and relationship.
Historically, Bhakti developed through devotional traditions in which love was directed towards a deity or a particular expression of the sacred. It found expression through prayer, ritual, poetry, storytelling, pilgrimage, mantra and communal singing. Rather than approaching liberation through analysis alone, Bhakti engages feeling and allows devotion itself to become the practice.
For some people, this remains explicitly religious. For others, devotion may be experienced more broadly as wholehearted commitment to truth, compassion, life, nature or a practice that connects them with something beyond their immediate concerns.
Bhakti asks where our deepest attention and love are directed. What do we remember when life becomes difficult? What do we return to? What are we willing to care for consistently?
Like all forms of devotion, Bhakti also requires discernment. It does not have to mean unquestioning loyalty to a teacher, institution or belief system. Devotion and enquiry can coexist. We can participate wholeheartedly while remaining awake to power, responsibility and our own inner knowing.
Mantra, chanting and kirtan are important expressions of Bhakti, but mantra also has histories and uses beyond devotional Yoga. We will explore that more closely in the next section.
Jnana Yoga: the path of knowledge and enquiry
Jnana Yoga is commonly described as the path of knowledge or wisdom. This does not refer simply to collecting information. Its purpose is to investigate the nature of the self and to distinguish between what is temporary and changing and what may be more fundamental.
A practitioner may begin with questions such as: Who am I beneath my roles, habits and personal history? What is aware of my thoughts? If the body, emotions and circumstances are continually changing, is there something within experience that remains?
Jnana Yoga has strong connections with the Upanishads and later Vedanta traditions. Its methods may include studying philosophical teachings, reflecting upon them, discussing them with a teacher and examining their truth through direct experience.
This combination matters. Study without personal enquiry can remain intellectual, while experience without a framework can be difficult to understand. Jnana Yoga brings the two together. A teaching is not accepted merely because it is ancient or authoritative. It becomes something to contemplate and test within lived experience.
In ordinary life, Jnana may appear whenever we question an assumption, notice that a familiar story about ourselves is not the whole truth, or learn to distinguish an immediate reaction from a clearer understanding of what is happening.
The path asks us to look carefully. It is not about finding a clever answer to “Who am I?” but about continuing to examine everything we usually mistake for a fixed and separate self.
Raja Yoga: the path of meditation
Raja Yoga places the mind and the cultivation of attention at the centre of practice. The term is often translated as the “royal path”, although it has been used in different ways across Yoga’s history.
In the modern four-path model, Raja Yoga became closely associated with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the Eight Limbs. Patanjali did not call his system Raja Yoga, but Vivekananda’s influential book Raja Yoga helped establish this connection for modern audiences.
This is the path most clearly concerned with how attention is trained. The body is steadied through asana, the breath is refined through pranayama and the senses become less easily pulled towards every external stimulus. Concentration develops into meditation, creating the conditions for deeper absorption and insight.
Raja Yoga is therefore not meditation separated from the rest of life. Patanjali’s system begins with the Yamas and Niyamas, which address our relationships, conduct and inner discipline. How we speak, act and respond affects the mind we meet when we sit down to meditate.
In daily life, Raja Yoga may begin very simply. We notice that attention has wandered and bring it back. We pause before reacting. We observe a thought without immediately believing or acting upon it. Over time, these small acts of awareness can reveal the patterns that usually direct our behaviour without our noticing.
Meditation is not about forcing the mind to become blank. It develops our capacity to remain present with experience, recognise distraction and return with greater steadiness.
Different paths, shared ground
These paths work with different dimensions of being human:
Karma Yoga transforms our relationship with action.
Bhakti Yoga engages love and devotion.
Jnana Yoga develops enquiry and discernment.
Raja Yoga cultivates attention and meditation.
In practice, they continually overlap.
Service without reflection can become exhaustion or obligation. Knowledge without compassion can become detached or overly intellectual. Devotion without discernment can leave us vulnerable to unhealthy authority. Meditation without ethical awareness can become disconnected from how we live and treat others.
Together, the paths offer a more complete approach. A person may express Karma Yoga through service, Bhakti through chanting, Jnana through self-enquiry and Raja Yoga through meditation. These do not need to be separate identities or activities. They may all be present within the same day, the same class or even the same practice.
The value of the four paths is not that they place us into another category. They help us notice the many ways Yoga can be lived: through what we do, what we love, what we seek to understand and where we place our attention.
5. Bhakti and Mantra: when sound becomes practice
Bhakti Yoga is often described as the path of devotion. For some, that devotion is directed towards a deity or a particular expression of the sacred. It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, chanting, music, poetry or remembrance.
But devotion does not have to mean accepting a religious doctrine or surrendering your judgement to a teacher. It can also be understood as wholehearted participation: giving your attention, care and energy to a practice, a value, another person or a way of living that reaches beyond your immediate wants.
We may already know this feeling. It can be present when we care for someone without needing recognition, return to a practice even when motivation is low, sing with others or become completely absorbed in something meaningful. Bhakti gives this quality of the heart a place within Yoga.
Mantra as a practice
Mantra and Bhakti often meet through sacred sound, but mantra is not limited to devotional Yoga.
The word mantra is commonly translated as an instrument or tool of the mind. A mantra may be a syllable, word, phrase or verse repeated aloud, whispered or silently. Some mantras carry a clear meaning. Others are valued for their sound, rhythm and traditional use as much as for a literal translation.
Mantra has deep roots in the Vedic tradition. Long before Yoga became associated primarily with posture, sacred verses were carefully composed, memorised and recited. Sound was not treated casually. Pronunciation, rhythm and repetition mattered, and the spoken word formed part of the ritual relationship between human life, the natural world and the sacred.
As Yoga continued to evolve, mantra travelled through many traditions. It became part of devotional worship, Tantric ritual, meditation and subtle-body practices. Different schools used different mantras and understood their purpose in different ways. There has never been one single form of Mantra Yoga.
Mantra may be practised as:
Japa: the repeated recitation of a mantra, silently or aloud, sometimes counted on a mala
Chanting: the rhythmic repetition of sacred words, verses or sounds, alone or with others
Kirtan: a communal, often musical form of call-and-response chanting associated particularly with Bhakti traditions
Meditation: allowing a mantra to become the central point to which attention continually returns
These practices can overlap. A mantra may begin as spoken sound, become quieter and eventually continue internally. At other times, chanting remains deliberately expressive and communal. One practice draws awareness inward; another creates connection through shared rhythm and voice.
AUM: more than the sound at the end of class
AUM is one of the oldest and most widely recognised mantras in Indian traditions. It is sometimes described as the primordial sound or the sound of the universe, but its philosophical meanings are more layered than this familiar phrase suggests.
The Mandukya Upanishad is devoted to AUM and connects its sounds with different states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the silence beyond them. AUM becomes a way of contemplating both the whole of experience and the awareness within which experience appears. The text presents AUM as inseparable from an enquiry into consciousness and the Self.
AUM also appears in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. In Sutras 1.27–1.29, pranava, understood as AUM, is associated with Ishvara. Its repetition and contemplation are offered as a means of gathering the mind and moving through inner obstacles. It is not presented simply as a pleasant sound or a customary way to close a physical practice.
Today, AUM is chanted in many different settings. For some, it retains a specifically spiritual or devotional meaning. For others, it is a practice of breath, vibration, concentration or shared presence. Its use in a modern Yoga class may be simple, but the mantra itself carries a much longer philosophical history.
When repetition changes attention
The mind repeats things constantly. It revisits conversations, anticipates problems, rehearses old stories and moves rapidly between competing thoughts. Mantra uses repetition deliberately.
Rather than trying to force the mind into silence, it offers the mind one sound, phrase or rhythm to return to. Each repetition becomes an act of attention. Distraction may still arise, but there is a steady point of return.
Sound also makes mantra a physical practice. To chant, we must breathe out. A sustained sound can naturally lengthen the exhalation, while its vibration can be felt through the chest, throat, face and head. When a group chants together, separate voices begin to share a rhythm. The effect may feel calming, energising, absorbing or deeply moving.
This does not mean that every mantra has the same effect on every person. Meaning, memory, belief, musical setting, breathing pattern and the feeling of being alone or among others can all shape the experience. Mantra is not a guaranteed switch for the nervous system. It is a practice through which sound, breath, attention and emotion may begin to organise themselves around a single focus.
Devotion with discernment
The language of devotion can be difficult for people who are wary of religious authority, spiritual hierarchy or the expectation that a teacher should be followed without question. Yoga’s modern history gives us good reason to retain our discernment.
Bhakti does not have to require obedience. Nor does devotion mean abandoning enquiry.
It may mean loving something enough to give it your full attention. It may be devotion to truth, compassion, freedom, service, the natural world or the quiet intelligence within life. A mantra can help us remember that orientation, especially when the mind is scattered or daily life pulls us away from what matters.
This is one reason mantra remains part of my own daily practice and why I often include AUM at the end of a class. After movement, breath and rest, the sound creates a different kind of closing. We are not merely finishing the postures. We pause, breathe and add our own voice to a practice that has travelled through thousands of years of human enquiry.
Some people chant with strong spiritual belief. Some begin with curiosity. Some feel the sound before they understand its history or meaning. There is room for all of these experiences.
Mantra is more than an addition to a Yoga class. It can be a method of concentration, a form of remembrance, an expression of devotion and a way of experiencing how breath, sound and awareness meet within the body.
Perhaps this is where Bhakti and mantra come together most clearly: not in unquestioning belief, but in the willingness to participate wholeheartedly while remaining awake, discerning and fully present.
6. Kundalini Yoga: an ancient idea and a modern system
The word kundalini has a much older history than the modern style commonly called Kundalini Yoga.
Teachings about kundalini, subtle energy, chakras and the movement of energy through the body developed within a wide range of Tantric and later Hatha Yoga traditions. Different texts and lineages understood these ideas in different ways, so there has never been one single, universally accepted Kundalini practice.
Kundalini practices may work with mantra, pranayama, mudra, bandha, meditation and visualisation. They also appear within the Satyananda/Bihar tradition. The modern system popularly known as Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan is more specific.
Yogi Bhajan (1929–2004), born Harbhajan Singh Puri, began teaching in North America in 1968 and established the Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization, known as 3HO, in 1969. His system combined physical postures, vigorous repeated movements, pranayama, meditation and relaxation with Sikh-derived mantra and chanting.
He presented these teachings as an ancient and previously secret lineage that he had been authorised to reveal. Historical research has challenged this account.
Scholar Philip Deslippe’s examination of early records and teaching materials suggests that the system was assembled largely from physical Yoga methods associated with Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari and Sikh mantra and devotional practices learned from Maharaj Virsa Singh. It should therefore be understood as a distinctive twentieth-century synthesis, not as an unchanged ancient form of Kundalini Yoga. Deslippe’s peer-reviewed research is available through the University of California.
Yogi Bhajan’s legacy also includes serious allegations of sexual abuse, coercion and misconduct. An independent investigation commissioned by organisations connected with his community concluded that many of the allegations were more likely than not to have occurred.
This does not mean that every practice taught within the system is without value, or that practitioners’ experiences should be dismissed. It does mean that its history, its claims of authority and the conduct of its founder should be represented honestly.
Keeping these histories distinct allows us to recognise the much older and more varied teachings surrounding kundalini while understanding that the familiar white-clad, mantra-based system taught through 3HO is one particular modern development.
7. Where the paths meet
To be developed after Sections 5 and 6 are complete.
8. What are you already practising?
To be developed as the final reflection.
The Soul Fuel download
Soul Fuel Vol. 7: An Inside Job will be available here as a downloadable four-page guide for paid subscribers.