Anthroposophy and Yoga – are Yoga exercises useful even for anthroposophists?

by Heinz Grill

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, spoke decidedly against the practice of classical Yoga and justified his statement in several ways. ¹⁾ See, for example, this quote by Rudolf Steiner from an article about the path of yoga, Christian gnostic initiation and the esotericism of the Rosicrucians: “The path of yoga above all presents students with a basic challenge, and without fulfilment of the latter it is not at all possible to tread this path. It demands the strict authority of a teacher, a so-called guru. Whoever wants to travel this path must acquiesce with the orders of the guru, right into the very details of life…”
Today spiritual thoughts should be taken very carefully, as a basis for meditation and expansion of content. Personal dependency on one person, however, is contraindicated today.

One of his main arguments refers to the difference in the breathing process, which in earlier times was experienced completely differently than today. ²⁾ Rudolf Steiner, lecture given on 30th November 1919: Mission of Michael: Lecture VI: The Ancient Yoga Culture and the New Yoga Will. GA 194. See also the book “Harmony in Breathing” by Heinz Grill. About 3000 years before Christ, the story of the Bhagavad Gita emerged, an epic composed in verse form with a rhythmical character. In these almost wondrous tales about the development and value of yoga, as it was understood then, the rhythms of the cosmos still swing. The Sanskrit language, in which this poetry is handled, has a melodious effect and through its elegantly lifted character is reminiscent of the higher spiritual worlds.

Unfortunately many anthroposophists speak against yoga far too quickly and thoughtlessly. They adopt the view of Rudolf Steiner without delving more deeply into the different concepts, contents and values. How was the breathing process in former times, how is it today? What kind of practice do the enlightened modern citizens of the Western world need for their soul spiritual development?

Yoga exercises vs Eurythmy

The sweeping, succinct statement, that eurythmy, which has developed in the form of artistic gestures and movements, is the appropriate kind of physical exercise for the occidental citizen, and that yoga only leads back to old, past times, and therefore is unsuitable for the progress of the soul, is too simple a statement to achieve a real assessment of the deeper relationships.

Especially for anthroposophists, who tend to dwell in robust mental ideas, intensive forms of movement that place a challenge to the body, would be a very meaningful and healing element. Eurythmy presents very light, swinging movements, it demonstrates music in motion, letters in shapes, and colours in forms of experience. Very little is eurythmy concerned with one’s own body and the possibility to transform it through thoughts, feelings and contents. Now, it would, however, be very foolish, if one wanted to acclimatise a fish, that feels comfortable in the water, to the element of airy space, and in the same sense, it might seem a bit foolish to remove strongly thought-based anthroposophists from this discipline and to educate them in an old yoga style, which aspires to enter into a cosmic reality.

Yoga for harmonisation?

Experiences over many years of grappling with yoga in its classical sense, with possibilities for newly establishing it and leading it into a contemporary soul-spiritual dimension, and finally intensive studies of anthroposophy have shown, however, that human thinking activity today, even if it is connected with meditation, very easily adopts one-sided paths and the body hardly seems to fit into the whole. It becomes stiff, fragile, and the radiation of the whole personality tends also to a kind of rigor. The integral and connecting subtle-feeling-soul is to a certain extent missing.

Yoga, however, if it is not brought to a contemporary and spiritual level, carries the temptation that with all its exercises, breathing forms and meditations it can lead to a kind of binding-back to the body, to the organs and not least to the genetics. A style, which leads more into artistic dimensions, and even to the forming of knowledge and insight, would be very appropriate for a new feeling-culture of yoga. Not necessarily ascetic or emotionally coloured exercises, but beautiful forms of movement, such as the verticality of the headstand or a wide glide into an arch shape, could satisfy an aesthetic yearning with the body. Many people who practice Yoga, flee back into their own subjective feeling-space and participate less in the questions of world-evolution and the whole of society. Again others only see in yoga exercises a kind of “benessere“, a kind of wellness scene with a good utility value for relaxation and personal calmness ³⁾ This is characteristically expressed in the following website title: “In our modern, fast pace of life, we pay too little attention to our spiritual and emotional well-being, and this is where yoga begins”. The mental work, which yoga should demand, is not applied in most yoga approaches and therefore we can only speak of the very strange concept of spiritual-emotional well-being.. Yoga with its body exercises, the so-called asana, can and must even help with many possibilities to strengthen the joints, organs, the circulation and to lower blood pressure. The breathing exercises, which are named with the term pranayama, mostly set free hidden potential energies, which provide the practitioner with a greater concentration-power for everyday life. However, the health benefit of body and breathing exercises does not yet open up the real question of spirituality and soul-spiritual development.

The effects of a yoga exercise on the ether body.

Eurythmy comprises of a large number of very easy exercises in motion, while the physical exercises of yoga, like for example, an intensive forward bend in which the upper body glides far out to the knees and the head to the shins, clearly bring to mind in their end phase a static quality. Dynamic movement and rest can, however, be chosen variably. Independent of these contrasting movement elements of yoga and eurythmy, however, the question arises regarding the consciousness that can be developed in each of the respective exercises. Ultimately each kind of practice has a goal, and if we consider this very precisely, we can discover many possibilities for shaping the exercises creatively.

A physical exercise can be performed, for example, as a kind of technical, sporty activity, or if it is guided more consciously it can start from a concrete idea. Practitioners imagine the spine, for example, gliding out lengthways from the middle. They create an image of a centre in the spine and an associated periphery, which they experience in the limbs. Because the movement begins with an exact mental picture, the precisely corresponding force is transferred to the so-called ether-body, or in more general terms, to the flow of the life-energies.⁴⁾ The word ether is derived from the Greek word aither (meaning sky-blue, blue sky, firmament). The etheric body is the lowermost super-sensory limb of the human being. Aristotle called the etheric body Threptikon which means nourishment-soul or vegetative soul. The medieval alchemist Paracelsus used the term Archeus, seeing it as the “grey area” in which spiritual energies begin to transmute into matter, or the glue which binds the heavens to the material. Everything in the Archeus has its parallel in physical manifestation. According to Rudolf Steiner, the life body, or etheric body encompasses all those principles which hold dead matter in a living context. It can be said that the etheric body is the subtle carrier of all energies. This etheric body orientates itself on the created mental pictures developed by the consciousness. It directly imitates the created forms of thought. Just as the thinking conceives a movement, sketching it, consciously creating it in its proportions, like a form of geometry, so the movement continues inwards by means of the etheric body. The activity of thought, especially if created logically, and appropriately to the desired course of movement, causes an activation inside, which at first remains unconscious. The thinking, which begins in the free head with its senses, is transferred into the inner or bodily plane.

From this picturing activity, there very quickly follows a subtle soul-feeling, which shows as an animating and strengthening quality. Practitioners who steer the movements starting from the consciousness, permeate their body, transform it with new aesthetic elements, and in a completely natural way they boost their health. The soul-feeling gives them a balance between the earthly and the spiritual world. The thinking takes a path from above to below or from outside to inside, and in the body the desired expression of the intended movement takes place.

The threefold structuring the yoga positions

This kind of practice would be very interesting, particularly for those with a leaning towards anthroposophy, and it would naturally complement philosophical and abstract thinking. To a particular extent, however, the yoga exercises pose a challenge to the willpower, because practitioners develop the stretches and forms of the movements, as a rule, not only to their first, comfortable limits, but they overcome the physical resistances again and again, and learn specific, dynamic, ever expanding ways of aesthetically modulating the various potential forms.

The so-called threefold structuring, which in general has become a major theme in the social organism by Rudolf Steiner, can within the process of forming the consciousness and in the artistic shaping out of a physical exercise now find their solid practical application. The practitioner leaves the head, shoulder and neck region as relaxed as possible, opens the eyes to an overview and maintains the perception over the whole body. The tension takes place in specific sections and carries itself in the dynamics mostly from the inside out to the periphery. At the same time, the practitioner does not connect the movements in this kind of yoga activity with the breath, but pays attention to a careful structuring of the areas of rest, quiet movement elements, dynamic tension and completely free sense-activity. Precisely through the yoga exercise, the anthroposophical training framework can be better understood and put into practice. The threefold structuring in the practical application can really reach liveliness. The so-called threefold structure, which has become a major theme in the social organism referred to by Rudolf Steiner⁵⁾ See Rudolf Steiner, The Threefold Social Order, GA 23, can now find a solid practical application within the process of building awareness and artistically shaping a physical exercise. The practitioner leaves the head, shoulder and neck region as relaxed as possible, opens the eyes for an overview and maintains the perception over the whole body. The tension takes place in specific sections and is carried by a momentum mostly from the inside out to the periphery. At the same time, the practitioner does not connect the movements in this kind of yoga activity with the breath, but takes care to separate out the resting areas, the elements of calm movement, the dynamic tension and the completely free sense-activity. Precisely through the yoga exercise, the framework for anthroposophical training can be better understood and put into practice. The threefold structure can really come alive in its practical application.The so-called threefold structuring, which in general has become a major theme in the social organism by Rudolf Steiner, can within the process of forming the consciousness and in the artistic shaping out of a physical exercise now find their solid practical application. The practitioner leaves the head, shoulder and neck region as relaxed as possible, opens the eyes to an overview and maintains the perception over the whole body. The tension takes place in specific sections and carries itself in the dynamics mostly from the inside out to the periphery. At the same time, the practitioner does not connect the movements in this kind of yoga activity with the breath, but pays attention to a careful structuring of the areas of rest, quiet movement elements, dynamic tension and completely free sense-activity. Precisely through the yoga exercise, the anthroposophical training framework can be better understood and put into practice. The threefold structuring in the practical application can really reach liveliness.

For yoga practitioners, who are very often one-sidedly concerned with the body and its energies, in contrast, giving some attention to the anthroposophical path of training would be very valuable. The activity of thinking and mentally picturing is treated like a step-child at most yoga events and, therefore, an encounter with different approaches, along with appropriate developmental steps, would be very valuable.