Hatha yoga is the most well-known form of yoga in the West. Hatha yoga is a somewhat slower form of yoga in which the yoga postures (asanas) are held for a number of breaths. By staying in a posture for longer, you have more time to deepen the posture and also to work with the breath. This makes it a great form of yoga for beginners because the posture is carefully built up from the base and you have time to get to know the postures. But hatha yoga is also a great form for advanced students because you are given time to deepen the postures. Hatha yoga can therefore vary enormously in terms of difficulty, depending on which postures are done during a class. In general, the classes at Bridge of Life studio take beginners into account and for more advanced students, extra options are given to go a step further.

Hatha classes often use a combination of postures (asanas), breathing techniques and a bit of meditation. That said, hatha yoga can definitely be a great challenge because you remain still in a pose. Most yoga forms that you see today have emerged from hatha yoga. Iyengar, yin and ashtanga are also forms of hatha yoga in a sense.

The word hatha can be interpreted in two ways. As one word, "hatha" can be translated as "effort", "power" or "willpower". By looking at the translation, you can deduce that hatha yoga is a form of yoga where physical exercises are the starting point. From those physical exercises, depth can be sought on a spiritual level. In addition, willpower is needed to practice hatha yoga if you want to progress and delve deeper into the underlying yoga path with samadhi as the final goal.

In Sanskrit, "ha" stands for sun and "tha" for moon. You can see this as the opposites in life such as light and dark, yin and yang, hard and soft. Hatha yoga is about finding balance between all of these things. So both the more powerful and challenging postures and the softer and more relaxing postures are done in one class. While the breath is used to find the balance between work and relaxation in each pose.

If you want to read more about the specific yoga poses, take a look at the asana book.