Yoga, Volume II: The 32 Asanas

About the Book

Every yoga practitioner knows the word asana — posture. It appears on class schedules, in studio names, and on the lips of teachers from Brooklyn to Bali. Yet the word carries a depth that its modern usage often fails to convey. In the great classical manuals of Hatha Yoga, asana is not merely a physical shape or exercise. It is the deliberate preparation of the body as a vessel: a means of purifying, strengthening, and stabilizing the physical form so that prana — the vital life force — may move with greater freedom, and so that the deeper disciplines of breath control, sense withdrawal, concentration, and meditation may take root.

This book is a study of thirty-two such postures as they appear in one of the foundational texts of the Hatha Yoga tradition: the Gheranda Samhita, composed in eastern India, probably in the late seventeenth century, and traditionally presented as the teaching of the sage Gheranda to his disciple Chanda. Among the classical Hatha Yoga manuals, the Gheranda Samhita stands apart for the richness of its asana catalogue. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika describes fifteen asanas, while the Shiva Samhita gives special importance to four principal postures. By contrast, the Gheranda Samhita preserves a fuller and more systematic list of thirty-two.

These thirty-two postures form the second limb of Gheranda’s sevenfold discipline, known as Saptanga Yoga. First the body is purified through the shatkarmas, the six cleansing actions. It is then shaped, strengthened, and steadied through asana. From there, the practitioner is led inward through the subtler disciplines of mudra, pratyahara, pranayama, dhyana, and samadhi. In this vision, the asanas are not endpoints. They are foundations, thresholds, and doorways — physical forms through which the practitioner prepares for the deeper work of yoga.

The Gheranda Samhita catalogues more asanas than any other classical Hatha Yoga text. Its thirty-two postures — seated locks, prone backbends, forward folds, spinal rotations, arm balances, inversions, and the closing restorative pose — form the most comprehensive asana canon to survive from the Sanskrit tradition. The 32 Asanas of the Gheranda Samhita is the first modern volume to present that entire canon in a single, detailed, practitioner-oriented guide.

This is the second volume in the Anantika Editions Classical Hatha Yoga Series. Where Volume I selected fourteen postures from the Gheranda Samhita as a foundational core, this volume opens the lens to the full catalogue of thirty-two, following the textual sequence of Chapter II exactly as Gheranda set it down in late seventeenth-century Bengal. Every posture is presented twice: first in a concise classical rendering — technique, purpose, and benefits as the source text frames them — and then in an expanded practitioner's guide with step-by-step instructions, alignment cues, physiological detail, contraindications, and a suggested pairing with one of the eight canonical pranayamas of Gheranda Samhita Chapter V.

The pranayama pairings follow the internal logic of classical Hatha Yoga: seated and locked postures pair with retention-based breathing for concentration, strength and backbending postures with heating breaths, restorative postures with cooling or balancing breaths. A seven-day training program integrates all thirty-two asanas with their pranayama pairings across a structured weekly sadhana.

Beyond the postures, the volume opens with foundational chapters on the history and philosophy of yoga, the human body as understood by the tradition, and a dedicated chapter on karma, fate, and human effort drawn from the Yoga Vasishtha. Supplementary chapters address pranayama, mudras, the seven chakras and subtle anatomy, the shatkarmas, meditation, and the yogic approach to diet. A complete Sanskrit terminology list and bibliography close the book.

This book is for the practitioner who has outgrown abbreviated modern sequences and wants access to the full classical source. It is for the teacher seeking the complete Gheranda Samhita asana canon in a single, carefully annotated reference. It is for the student of Indian philosophy who understands that these thirty-two postures were never designed as exercises but as the second limb of a sevenfold discipline — the shaping of the vessel so that the subtler practices of mudra, breath, withdrawal, and meditation might take root. And it is for any serious reader who believes that the richest asana catalogue in the classical tradition deserves, at last, a thorough and faithful modern guide.