Hatha yoga history

Various yoga  asanas photos taken in Montpellier, France in 1982 while doing research on my PHD thesis on Anquetil-Duperron, his role and his place in the Oriental Renaissance(1986).
My personal autobiography , thanks to yoga, can be downloaded on Academia.com    ON the road to Heaven's Door: An Encounter with the Ultimate Reality .

This article seeks to present the history and influences of the first characters of yoga in Latin America. There is a research gap on Latin American yoga between the years 1900 and 1950, when no Indian yogi had yet arrived on the continent. This insulation, rather than delaying the advent of Yogic religiosity, brought about problems and unique solutions that five key figures sought to answer, offering a certain uniqueness to the establishment of Latin American yoga. I have chosen

This essay is written with a dual agenda, the first aspect of which is to demonstrate the influence that martial traditions particular to India have or may have had on the formation of what DeMichelis refers to as Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) and its antecedents. But the second goal in writing this piece is to challenge a number of assumptions made by select scholars of modern yoga, and frequently repeated by others, about the level to which modern yoga's incorporation of standing poses, the concepts of physical strength, the nervous system, and even energetic healing are derived from Western sources in response to British colonial rule....In doing so we may allow a deeper reconsideration of the role of a warrior tradition on yoga that dates back at least to the Mughal conflicts if not all the way back to the great epics of ancient India and that tradition's influence on the formation of modern postural yoga practices.

In general, we can say that yoga refers to physical and mental techniques used to achieve certain goals.  For the sake of pointing out the original characteristics of haṭha yoga that appear over and over again in later Indian yoga and Tibetan Buddhist tantric traditions, I will briefly review the history of yoga. 
The current study is a general overview; I have gone into absolutely no detail into the practices.  While that promises to be an interesting project, it is far greater in extent than this paper.  This paper serves as an introduction to the history of physical yoga practices in India and Tibet.

Questo articolo si propone di analizzare alcune concezioni del “corpo sottile” diffuse nell’ambito delle tradizioni yogiche fiorite in India e in occidente negli ultimi due secoli. Tali concezioni, sebbene attingano a un
patrimonio millenario di idee e pratiche di origine sudasiatica, sono parimenti influenzate da idee provenienti da ambiti assai disparati, quali l’esoterismo occidentale, la New Age, la psicanalisi, la scienza biomedica e le forme di cultura fisica diffuse in Europa e in America a partire dal XIX secolo.

Both Indic and non-Indic systems of knowledge have given authenticity a primal place. However authenticity can be described and justified differently depending on the theory and/or praxis of a system of knowledge. Indic knowledge systems, especially Yoga, stress the importance of experience and the means to the experience as an indispensable bedrock of authenticity, without neglecting scholarship. However, scholars and practitioners look at authenticity very differently like the way tourists and residents experience a city. Often Yoga studies suffer the defect of the lack of practice and experience. And conversely the practitioners’ perspectives suffer from the defect of downplaying scholarship, especially that Yoga gives primacy to experience. The author will present the problems of authenticity encountered in his Yoga research.

Why does Józef Świtkowski depreciate hatha yoga? Image of hatha yoga and its sources in the views of Polish yogi-esoteric.
Józef Świtkowski (1876-1942), the Polish parapsychologist, esoteric and yogi is the author of a yoga textbook popular in Poland in the interwar period (Wstęp w światy nadzmysłowe. Radża-Joga nowoczesna, 1923 [How to enter the higher worlds. Modern Raja-Yoga]). In his work inspired by theosophy and anthroposophy, Świtkowski repeatedly mentions hatha yoga depicting it, however, always it in a negative light. Therefore, it is worth examining the reason for treating the hatha path with so much reticence and why, while considering it as a mediocre discipline, Świtkowski not only gives it so much attention but also continually contrasts it with raja yoga.

Dhyāna in the period of haṭhayoga acquires new shades of meaning and changes its significance. The texts clearly articulate the opportunity to practice dhyāna, regardless of belonging to different religious and philosophical trends in India. Dhyāna acquires a new direction, paving the way for the understanding of the hidden knowledge about the body. The practitioner of dhyāna acquires the ability to attain “true understanding”, revealing the psychological potencies that are deeply embedded in the human mind and "hidden there". “Amanaska Yoga” indicates the rejection of the stereotypical understanding of dhyāna and its objects. One of the new meanings that dhyāna acquires during this period is “gazing at”. The gnosiology of dhyāna during this period consists in attempt to understand physical and metaphysical body, as well as in the comprehension of the metaphysical space in which it dwells. Only when such gnosis becomes "natural" for a practitioner can one be considered of mastering dhyāna. The resulting knowledge, in its turn, leads to liberation.

(Russian) Дхьяна в текстах «хатха-йоги» приобретает новые оттенки смысла и меняет свою значимость. Четко формулируется возможность практиковать дхьяну вне зависимости от принадлежности к разным религиозно-философским течениям Индии. Дхьяна приобретает и новую направленность, прокладывая путь к познанию "скрытых знаний" о теле. Практик дхьяны приобретает способность достигать «истинного понимания», раскрывая  психологические потенции, глубинно заложенные в сознании человека и "скрыто там присутствующие". В «Аманаска йоге» указывается на отказ от стереотипного представления о дхьяне и ее объектах. Одно из новых значений, которое приобретает дхьяна в этот период – «пристальное всматривание» (ДТЙШ). Гносеология дхьяны в этот период заключается в познании физического и метафизического тела, а также в постижении метафизического пространства, в котором оно пребывает. Только когда такой гнозис станет естественным для практикующего, можно считать дхьяну освоенной. Полученное знание, в свою очередь, приводит к освобождению.

(Ukrainian)
Дг’яна в текстах «хатха-йоги» набуває нових відтінків сенсу і змінює свою значимість. У текстах чітко формулюється можливість практикувати дг’яну незалежно від приналежності до різних релігійно-філософських течій Індії. Дг’яна набуває і нову спрямованість, прокладаючи шлях до пізнання "прихованих знань" про тіло. Практик дг’яни набуває здатності досягати «суттєвого розуміння», розкриваючи психологічні потенції, які закладені в свідомості людини і "присутні там приховано". У «Аманаска йоги» вказується на відмову від стереотипного уявлення о дг’яні і її об’єктах. Одне з нових значень, яке набуває дг’яна в цей період - «пильне вдивляння» (ДТЙШ). Гносеологія дг’яни в період «хатха-йоги» полягає в пізнанні фізичного і метафізичного тіла, а також в осягненні метафізичного простору, в якому воно перебуває. Тільки коли такий гнозис стане "природним" для практикуючого, можна вважати дг’яну освоєною. Отримане знання, в свою чергу, призводить до звільнення.