Acronyms that contain the term hatha 

hatha

Haṭha yoga is a branch of yoga which uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel the vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some haṭha yoga style techniques can be traced back at least to the 1st-century CE, in texts such as the Hindu Sanskrit epics and Buddhism's Pali canon. The oldest dated text so far found to describe haṭha yoga, the 11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, comes from a tantric Buddhist milieu. The oldest texts to use the terminology of hatha are also Vajrayana Buddhist. Hindu hatha yoga texts appear from the 11th century onwards. Some of the early haṭha yoga texts (11th-13th c.) describe methods to raise and conserve bindu (vital force, that is, semen, and in women rajas – menstrual fluid). This was seen as the physical essence of life that was constantly dripping down from the head and being lost. Two early Haṭha yoga techniques sought to either physically reverse this process of dripping using gravity to trap the bindhu by inverted postures like viparītakaraṇī, or force bindu upwards through the central channel by directing the breath flow into the centre channel using mudras (yogic seals, not to be confused with hand mudras, which are gestures).Almost all hathayogic texts belong to the Nath siddhas, and the important early ones (12th-13th c.) are credited to Matsyendranath's disciple, Gorakhnath or Gorakshanath (11th c.). Early Nāth works teach a yoga based on raising kuṇḍalinī through energy channels and chakras, called Layayoga ("the yoga of dissolution"). However, other early Nāth texts like the Vivekamārtaṇḍa can be seen as co-opting the hatha yoga mudrās. Later Nāth as well as Śākta texts adopt the practices of haṭha yoga mudras into a Saiva system, melding it with Layayoga methods, without mentioning bindu. These later texts promote a universalist yoga, available to all, "without the need for priestly intermediaries, ritual paraphernalia or sectarian initiations."In the 20th century, a development of haṭha yoga, focusing particularly on asanas (the physical postures), became popular throughout the world as a form of physical exercise. This modern form of yoga is now widely known simply as "yoga".

see more »