Discover Top Posts Tagged with #classicalyoga

The Body Is Not the Enemy: Classical Yoga vs. Śaiva Tantra

On Dualism, the Feminine, and the Sacredness of Being

The Body: Obstacle or Cosmos?

When we speak of “yoga,” we are often drawing from two very different streams of thought: Patañjali’s Classical Yoga (c. 4th century CE), rooted in the Sāṅkhya worldview, and the later flowering of Śaiva Tantra (c. 6th–12th centuries CE). Though both traditions seek liberation (mokṣa), they diverge profoundly in how they understand the body, the feminine, and the relationship between self and world.

In the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali defines yoga as:

yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ - Yoga Sūtra 1.2

This often-cited sūtra is typically rendered as:

Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.

But such a translation flattens the nuance and metaphysical terrain of the original. The word nirodhaḥ does not simply mean "cessation" or "suppression", it can also mean to enclose, to contain, to hold in place. Scholars like Christopher Wallis have drawn attention to this: that what is being cultivated is not the silencing of the mind through control, but a gentle absorption into the spacious field of awareness. A kind of deepening inward, where thoughts no longer disturb one’s identity with the Self.

Modern re-readings, from the nondual lens of Śaiva Tantra, suggest that nirodhaḥ arises not through force, but through orientation, intimacy, and continuous absorption. In each, the dissolution of mental activity comes not by suppression, but by presence. By leaning into presence so fully that distraction dissolves.

This seemingly small difference in translation opens onto a profound divergence. Where Patañjali’s Classical Yoga leans toward ascetic discipline and dualistic separation, Śaiva Tantra turns toward embodiment, integration, and the recognition that liberation is found not beyond the world but through it.

Dualism and Disembodiment in Classical Yoga

Pātañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, composed around the 4th–5th century CE, sits squarely within the Sāṅkhya philosophy, a dualistic worldview that sees Puruṣa (pure consciousness) and Prakṛti (nature, matter) as fundamentally separate.

Liberation here is achieved through withdrawal (pratyāhāra), concentration, and ultimately the isolation (kaivalya) of puruṣa (consciousness) from prakṛti (matter). The body and senses are viewed as temporary instruments, often impediments to true freedom. The body is not celebrated but disciplined, a vessel to be subdued so that consciousness can disentangle from material entrapment.

To illustrate the dualistic ethos of Patañjali's tradition, consider the example of pratyāhāra, the fifth limb in the eight-fold (Aṣṭāṅga) system of Classical Yoga. Practitioners are instructed to withdraw the senses from external stimuli, as though the world is a snare to be escaped.

Embodiment Divided: How Classical and Hatha Yoga Saw Women

Women, sensuality, and relational attachment were often implicitly aligned with those distractions, and thus positioned as obstacles to spiritual progress. This aligns with a broader ascetic ethos that values detachment from the world, and from embodied relationality. The world is something to transcend. Women, sensuality, and emotion are seen (particularly in commentarial traditions) as dangerous distractions to male yogis seeking stillness.

While Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras themselves do not explicitly name women as obstacles, this view is reflected in classical ascetic commentary and practice, where the feminine is coded as potent temptation, something to move away from rather than toward.

This ethos appears in the famous sutra:

“Brahmacarya-pratiṣṭhāyāṃ vīrya-lābhaḥ.” “Established in brahmacarya (continence), one gains vigor.” (Yoga Sūtra 2.38)

While the sutra itself is gender-neutral, commentators like Vyāsa and Vācaspati Miśra made its intent explicit: brahmacarya meant not only celibacy but also avoidance of women. Women, along with sensuality and relationship, became coded as distractions from the yogin’s goal.

By the medieval period this ascetic stance became even more direct. In Svātmārāma’s Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā (15th c.), the injunction is blunt:

“Fire, women, and long journeys should be avoided.” (HYP 1.61–64)

Here, women are listed alongside dangers like fire and arduous travel, not as partners in practice, but as obstacles. Similarly, the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā prescribes gendered asanas, instructing men in Siddhāsana while relegating women to a variant called Siddha-yoni-āsana. These textual traces reveal how Classical and Haṭha Yoga often inherited a view of the feminine as something to control, contain, or sidestep.

Even outside explicitly yogic texts, the cultural climate reinforced this suspicion of women. The Mānusmṛti, an influential dharmaśāstra, is unambiguous:

“It is the nature of women to seduce men; the wise are never unguarded.” (Manu 2.213) “Women are capable of leading astray the ignorant as well as the learned.” (Manu 2.214)

Such statements make visible the gendered assumptions that shaped the worlds in which many yogic texts were written and practiced.

Tantra’s Radical Reversal

By contrast, Śaiva Tantra, particularly the nondual schools of Kashmir such as Trika or Krama, reimagines the body not as an obstacle but as a microcosm of the universe, vibrant with divinity. It is a gateway. The world is not an illusion to flee, but Śakti herself: the dynamic, creative pulse of reality. In Tantra, to reject the body would be to reject the goddess.

Here, the universe is not something to reject. It is Śakti, the ever-unfolding, self-revealing play (līlā) of consciousness. The world is real, not illusory. It is made of the same vibrating awareness as the divine.

The body is a sacred text. The senses are instruments of revelation. Each breath, each sound, each touch, doorways into the infinite.

Where Pātañjali tells us to retreat inward and restrain, the Tantrik sages invite us to lean in, to taste, to experience fully, not in hedonism, but in recognition. The goal is not to escape the body but to become so intimate with it that it dissolves into the All.

Everyday Practices of Tantric Oneness

Unlike Classical Yoga’s emphasis on meditative withdrawal, nondual Tantra democratises practice, offering countless portals to unity embedded in daily life. Consider these:

1. Eating as ritual: Every meal becomes an offering (naivedya). Chewing is an act of communion. The tongue is Śakti tasting her own creation.

2. Walking as worship: Feet become sacred as they touch the Earth. The land is not inert matter, it is alive. Every step is a conversation with divinity.

3. Breath as mantra: Without needing to sit in lotus pose, simply listening to the natural so-ham of the breath, I am That, becomes a gateway to truth.

These are not symbolic gestures. They are direct methods of awakening. The sacred is not found beyond the world, but through it.

The Feminine as Power, Not Temptation

Nowhere is the contrast more stark than in how each path regards the feminine.

As previously discussed, in many classical systems, women are spoken of as distractions, sensual, unstable, impure. They must be avoided, or controlled. This patriarchal gaze is woven into layers of commentary and custom that still haunt modern yoga culture.

But Tantra radically reclaims the feminine, not just as equal, but as primordial power. Śakti is not lesser than Śiva. She is Śiva, in motion. The feminine is not a deviation from the spiritual path. She is the path.

Women practitioners in Tantric traditions were not just included; they were often revered as teachers, holders of mantra, givers of initiation. The goddess was worshipped in all her forms, fierce, erotic, mothering, wild.

To honour the feminine, in Tantra, is to honour life itself.

The Body as Cosmos

Pātañjali’s system moves toward dis-identification: You are not your body. You are not your mind.

But Tantra says: You are not only your body… but your body is divine.

The human body is seen as a microcosm of the universe, containing all the elements, all the deities, all the channels (nāḍīs) and energies (tattvas) of the cosmos.

There is no need to "transcend" the body. Because the body already is sacred.

As the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra reminds us:

In every ordinary moment, the divine is waiting to be recognised.

Two Views, Two Paths

Both traditions offer profound tools. But they rest on different cosmic assumptions.

If Classical Yoga seeks to rise above the world, Tantra seeks to root deeper within it.

The One in All

To walk the Tantric path is to risk deeper entanglement with life, to meet the full spectrum of existence and see it not as illusion (māyā) to overcome, but as mystery (mahāmayī) to revere.

Both Classical Yoga and Tantra offer medicine. Sometimes we need the sharp blade of discernment, the discipline of detachment. Sometimes we need the warm embrace of embodiment, the courage to feel it all.

But we must be honest about their differences.

One speaks of escape from the storm. The other asks us to dance in the rain, until we remember we are the rain, the dancer, and the sky.

Final Reflection

What if the path to liberation was not a ladder out of life, but a spiral in?

What if your longing was not to flee the world, but to feel it more fully, until there was no more separation between self and star, between breath and being?

What if the body you inhabit, aching, breathing, remembering, was not a burden to transcend, but a temple already holy, already whole?

May your path be deep. May your practice be true. May your body be the altar where the cosmos remembers itself.

#classicalyoga

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#classicalyoga