Me too, I was just referring to the asana part of the teaching. What will give you the most physical comfort in your meditation asana, lots of different postures practiced moderately for short periods of time or just the one meditation posture practiced to the limits of one’s willpower?
In my experience its both. Do different postures for health and training, but then do the one for depth in meditation practice regularly.
Firstly, like yourself, I am not sure if this is the right place to post. So bear with me, or if the mods want to move or delete my post, so be it.
I came on here after searching for a yoga discussion forum that was above the humdrum or very basic. Many of the posts indicate famliarity with advanced practices. I did not realise until I had subscribed that it was ‘Advances Yoga Practices’ with capitals rather than just advanced yoga practices. I have no wish to tread on anyone’s toes!
But I rummaged around a bit to find a thread where I might contribute something and found this one. I have studied under the thelemic (Crowley) system for 33 years. I am saying this to indicate where I am coming from, not to claim any special authority.
The relevant works in thelema are Yoga and Magick (generally); Liber E (for the basic instructions on Asana, Pranayama and Dharana), and Liber RV (for more on pranayama). Various people including Wilson were influenced by Crowley but their works are not the same.
Hard core? Yes. For asana, the minimum practice is one hour a day, practiced for one year. Most people do not get anything remarkable in that time, but it is training.
A comparison might be an unknown cross-country obstacle course. You have two people: an army marine and an enthusiastic hobbyist. Which will do better?
Asana for health is a very different area to asana for spiritual work. A variety of postures might be good for the former, and many schools teach them. But it is the ability of the mind to be able to ignore the body during meditation that is key. If you have trained relentlessly, it is easy-peasy. If you have not, the mind tends to be distracted with the task of ‘achieving’ asana (much as in the preliminary one-hour training). (The daily routine without fail also trains the subconscious mind.)
Often during meditation nothing remarkable happens. But from my own experience, when something does happen, it has usually been past the 40 minute mark. This seems to be when the ‘barrier’ is passed.
AYP (from the little I understand) is interested in scientific method. In this much, it has everything in common with thelemic systems.
For a thelemic - but more mystical and easy going practice, see ‘The Training of the Mind’ (from the Equinox also, but you can find a version of most of these online if you cannot obtain originals).
Kindest regards
Yes I agree with you there. A lot of energy can be generated by this. Several schools seem aware of it, such as the yogi Bhajan school. Certainly it appplies in thelema (Crowley). By the way, Crowley trained in Buddhism and yoga under Ananda Metteyya, who brought Buddhism to the UK. His (Crowley’s) system eventually differed from Buddhism in certain important respects, largely rejecting Buddhism as outdated.