Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience is a 1943 book by Theos Casimir Bernard describing what he learnt of hatha yoga, ostensibly in India. It is one of the first books in English to describe and illustrate a substantial number of yoga poses (asanas); it describes the yoga purifications (shatkarmas), yoga breathing (pranayama), yogic seals (mudras), and meditative union (samadhi) at a comparable level of detail.
The book has been called an important forerunner of the major guides to modern yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar and others. Scholars including Norman Sjoman and Mark Singleton have considered the book a rare example of a complete yoga system actually being followed, and being evaluated at each stage by a practitioner-scholar. However, Bernard's biographer Douglas Veenhof states that Bernard invented the Indian guru whom he had refused to name, as he had instead apparently been taught by his father.
The 37 high-quality monochrome studio photographs of Bernard executing the poses are among the first published images of an American doing yoga.
Context
After visiting India and Tibet, Bernard completed his Ph.D. in a single year at Columbia University under the supervision of Herbert Schneider. In 1943 he published it as a book. It was one of the earliest references in the West, possibly the first in English, on the asanas and other practices of hatha yoga (preceded by Sport és Jóga in Spanish in 1941).
Summary
Despite its title, Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience was less personal and more technical than Bernard's fictionalised 1939 account of hatha yoga, Heaven Lies Within Us. An introduction explains the principles of hatha yoga.
Overview
The main part of the book recounts Bernard's own experience, starting with a chapter on asanas and the reason he was "prescribed" them by his teacher. There follow chapters on purifications (shatkarmas), yoga breathing (pranayama), yogic seals (mudras), and meditative union (samadhi). Asanas are seen to be just one component of hatha yoga. There is a short biography of the author and an academic bibliography with primary sources - the Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Siva Samhita, and the Gheranda Samhita - and the secondary sources available to him, including Kuvalayananda's 1931 Asanas and Sir John Woodroffe's 1918 Shakti and Shakta.
He describes his experiences with asanas "calculated to bring a rich supply of blood to the brain and .. the spinal cord", namely sarvangasana (shoulderstand), halasana (plough), pascimottanasana (forward bend), and mayurasana (peacock); and "reconditioning asanas" to "stretch, bend, and twist the spinal cord", namely salabhasana (locust), bhujangasana (cobra), and dhanurasana (bow). These mastered, he took on the meditation asanas, the most important being the cross-legged siddhasana and padmasana, though he also learnt other meditation seats, muktasana, guptasana, bhadrasana, gorakshasana, and svastikasana, and the kneeling meditation poses vajrasana and simhasana. He then worked in detail on sirsasana (headstand) and its variations.
Bernard learnt all six purifications, dhauti (cleaning the digestive tract), basti (colonic irrigation), neti (nasal wash), trataka (fixed gazing), nauli (abdominal massage by the abdominal muscles), and kapalabhati (skull-polishing breath).
In pranayama, he learnt surya bhedana (the so-called sun-piercing breath), sitting in siddhasana and employing the abdominal lock uddiyana bandha to help move the air. He then learnt ujjayi breathing (meaning "victorious"), sitkari (hissing sound) and sitali (cooling breath), followed by the cleansing bhastrika and the soothing bhramari (buzzing like a bee). The goal of pranayama, he states, is kevala, the suspension of breath; he became able to hold his breath for four minutes at a time, but found doing this repeatedly "almost impossible". He was taught to accompany this with khechari mudra, the folding back of the tongue, enabling his kevala to extend to five minutes.
The mudras that Bernard practised were maha bandha (all three body locks at once), khechari mudra as just described, uddiyana, the supplementary technique of asvini mudra, jalandhara bandha (throat lock), pasini mudra, vajroli mudra (other locks), and "yogasana" (by which was meant yogamudrasana, the legs in lotus position, the body folded forward).