Curious about the origins and history of Haṭha Yoga? How old are the yoga postures, really? Union of the sun + moon? How has yoga evolved over the millennia?
Join world-renowned scholar, Dr. James Mallinson (SOAS, University of London), and a global cohort of students, for this unique opportunity to study and explore the fascinating and lesser-known history of Haṭha Yoga.
Haṭhayoga हठयोग
This online course will chart the history of physical yoga practice in India from the first-millennium BCE up to the 15th century CE, at which point it became classified under the catchall term "haṭha yoga." It will show how until about a thousand years ago the only physical methods associated with yoga were those of ascetic bodily mortification, in which the body was something to be controlled and suppressed. These methods are still practiced to this day, but they are complemented—and sometimes contradicted—by a system of practice that appears in the material and textual record around 1000 CE, in which the body is valorized and used to attain mystical states.
Drawing on the study of texts and art-historical material, together with insights from years spent living in India with traditional yoga practitioners, the course will present the very latest research findings on the history of physical yoga practice. It will explore what we can learn about yogic practice from textual teachings and from looking beyond the texts. It will also contextualize the history of yoga within the history of religion in India, in particular the development of the different religious traditions whose members were yoga practitioners.
Textual, Visual, and Ethnographic Approach
This course will be illustrated throughout by a unique archive of visual materials, artifacts, sites, and practitioners important for understanding yoga’s rich history.
Course Modules
Module 1 — Vernacular Haṭhayoga: Yoga and Asceticism
The name Haṭha Yoga is understood by scholars and practitioners outside of India to mean the physical yoga methods taught in texts such as the Haṭhapradīpikā. Ask someone in India about Haṭha Yoga, though, and they will think of extreme methods of bodily mortification, such as standing up or holding an arm in the air for years on end. The earliest evidence for such practices dates to the time of the Buddha, and they continue to be practiced in very similar forms to this day. This module will explore the history of these practices and look at explain how they can be understood as a technique of yoga.
Module 2 — Sanskrit Haṭhayoga: Early Textual Codification
This module will look at the first textual teachings on Haṭha Yoga. The term is first found in Buddhist texts from the first millennium CE, in which it denotes a method of sexual restraint used in tantric ritual. It is subsequently used to denote a system of practice taught in a c. 11th-century tantric Buddhist text called the Amṛtasiddhi, which teaches a tripartite method of controlling the breath by means of physical techniques in order to achieve liberation while living. This meaning is gradually expanded through a series of texts until, in the c. 1400 Haṭhapradīpikā, Haṭha Yoga’s most influential text, it is used to denote physical yoga as it is widely understood today: posture (āsana), breath control (kumbhaka) and techniques for manipulating the vital energies (mudrā).
Module 3 — The Practices of Haṭhayoga
This module will start by looking closely at the yoga method of the Amṛtasiddhi, the root text of Haṭha Yoga which Dr. Mallinson is editing together with Dr. Péter-Dániel Szántó. It will then look in detail at the other practices which came to be classified under the name Haṭha Yoga in the Haṭhapradīpikā: the āsanas, kumbhakas and mudrās.
Module 4 — The Practitioners of Haṭhayoga
This final module will look at who practiced Haṭha Yoga and why. It will identify the ascetic lineages from whom the Buddha learned methods of self-mortification. It will trace the origins of the Nāth Saṃpradāya among tantric Buddhist and Śaiva yogis in the late first and early second millennium and follow its development through to the second half of the second millennium CE. By looking at Haṭha Yoga’s use among the Daśanāmī Saṃnyāsīs, Rāmānandīs and Udāsins, the module will show how no single group can claim to be its originators, and how it may be practiced by anyone. Finally the module will gather together the relatively meagre evidence of the practice of Haṭha Yoga by women, and show what conclusions may be drawn from it.
All students enrolled in this course will receive:
- 4 pre-recorded video lectures (90 min)
- 4 pre-recorded Zoom Q&A sessions (90 min)
- 4 YS Credits
- 12 Hours of CE credit with YA
- Course Syllabus (PDF)
- Weekly Readings (PDF)
- 4 Multiple Choice Quizzes (for fun)
- 4 Weekly Handouts (PDF)
- Yogic Studies Certificate upon completion (PDF)
- Access to the private Yogic Studies Online Community Forum
Your Instructor
Dr. James Mallinson is considered by many to be the world's leading scholar in the field of Haṭha Yoga studies. His pioneering research has radically altered our knowledge of yoga's past.
Dr. Mallinson is Reader in Indology and Yoga Studies at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on the history and current traditional practice of yoga and his primary methods are philology, ethnography and art history. Dr. Mallinson is currently leading the Haṭha Yoga Project, a five-year six-person research project on the history of physical yoga funded by the European Research Council. The project’s core outputs will be ten critical editions of Sanskrit texts on physical yoga and four monographs on its history and current practice.
Dr. Mallinson’s publications include Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics, 2017, co-authored with Mark Singleton) and The Khecarīvidyā of Ādinātha, a Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of an Early Text on Haṭhayoga (Routledge, 2007). The latter is a revision of his doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Professor Alexis Sanderson at the University of Oxford, where Dr. Mallinson also read Sanskrit as an undergraduate. Dr. Mallinson has spent more than ten years living in India with traditional ascetics and practitioners of yoga, and at the 2013 Kumbh Mela was awarded the title of Mahant by the Rāmānandī Saṃpradāya.
Enrollment is OPEN for Self-Study
Sign up today and receive immediate access to all modules with one of the following tuition options:
Subscription
$75
PER MONTH
- Access to YS 108
- Access to all YS + BS courses—including live and future courses
- Access to SKT 100a + SKT 100b
This course is eligible for 12 hours of Continued Education (CE) credits with Yoga Alliance
"I was deeply enriched by the vast knowledge of James Mallinson. His journey as a scholar and as a mahant comes together in this course. The teachings are very deep- at the end of the course you just want to keep learning more and more. These types of teachers are the best teachers."
Regina Torres Thompson
Mexico City, Mexico
"Many worlds seem to collide with Dr. Mallinson. The scholar and the ascetic yogin clash in a creative sense, in the same way the churning of the ocean created the peaks of Sagar Math, to offer a unique and rare point of view built upon experience. This course offers light on a subject clouded in mystery. Access is important, and Jim has access unheard of for many, so access to his knowledge is priceless. Not to mention the awesome addition of Seth, turning the Q&A into a conversational gold mine! I highly recommend this course!"
Dustin Nicholas Holmes | Purna Yoga
Napa, California
"I would highly recommend this course for anyone who is just in the beginning of their learning journey, as well as for experienced scholars. The high standards and unique research are totally priceless nowadays. Looking forward for more courses with Dr Mallison and Yogic Studies. Thank you for such an amazing course."
Viktoryia Kalejs
New Jersey
"This course offered an incredibly generous foundation in Hatha yoga's textual origins and provided a cogent historical backdrop that every modern yoga practitioner and scholar should find valuable in understanding how these techniques have come to be situated in contemporary wellness practices. Dr. Mallinson is a great sadhaka/scholar and presented the material with erudition and humor."
Josh Potter | PhD student
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
"Not only was the course informative, comprehensive, and engaging, but it also afforded me a glimpse into a cutting-edge research; in particular about the many heterogeneous philosophical systems, beliefs, and practices that came together to comprise what is now known as Haṭha Yoga. At times, I felt like an undergraduate who was invited to a PhD-level seminar: it was fascinating and gratifying to witness how many hypotheses, received in certain circles as unquestionable truths, were rigorously tested against textual and material evidence and sometimes confirmed, other times discarded, and most of the times illuminated and explained in their complexity. It takes intellectual honesty and bravery to, in many cases, go against the grain, as well as to admit that there are lacunae in our understanding of the history of yoga."
