Harold Coward explores how the psychological aspects of Yoga philosophy have been important to intellectual developments both East and West. Foundational for Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist thought and spiritual practice, Patañjali's Yoga Sutras, the classical statement of Eastern Yoga, are unique in their emphasis on the nature and importance of psychological processes. Yoga's influence is explored in the work of both the seminal Indian thinker Bhartrhari (c. 600 C.E.) and among key figures in Western psychology: founders Freud and Jung, as well as contemporary transpersonalists such as Washburn, Tart, and Ornstein.. Coward shows how the yogic notion of psychological processes makes Bhartrhari's philosophy of language and his theology of revelation possible. He goes on to explore how Western psychology has been influenced by incorporating or rejecting Patañjali's Yoga. The implications of these trends in Western thought for mysticism and memory are examined as well. This analysis results in a notable insight, namely, that there is a crucial difference between Eastern and Western thought with regard to how limited or perfectible human nature is—the West maintaining that we as humans are psychologically, philosophically, and spiritually limited or flawed in nature and thus not perfectible, while Patañjali's Yoga and Eastern thought generally maintain the opposite. Different Western responses to the Eastern position are noted, from complete rejection by Freud, Jung, and Hick, to varying degrees of acceptance by transpersonal thinkers.

The present work is the product of author`s profound studies in India`s yogic system. The author has worked out this abstruse subject in a peculiarly comprehensible way. The comparison of the Eastern system of Yoga with the system of analytical psychology

"Psychoanalysis itself and the lines of thought to which it gives rise," said C. G. Jung, "are only a beginner’s attempt compared to what is an immemorial art in the East"—by which he was referring to the millennia-old study of the mind found in Yoga. That tradition was hardly known in the West when the discipline of psychology arose in the nineteenth century, but with the passing of time the common ground between Yoga and psychology has become ever more apparent. Georg Feuerstein here uses a modern psychological perspective to explore the ways Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina yogas have traditionally regarded the mind and how it works—and shows how that understanding can enhance modern psychology in both theory and practice.

This is a new release of the original 1934 edition.

Practical Yoga Psychology is a guide to applying the principles of yoga to understanding the human mind and character. The book relates the practice of yoga to the principles and practice of psychology. Psychology is a science that tries to understand how the human mind functions. It tries to explain individual human traits, the behaviour of a person, the way they relate to other people, their surroundings and the world in general. The character and behaviour of a person is studied not just for an abstract understanding but also to find ways in which each person can improve relationships, improve the way they interact with the world and thus enhance their life experience.The science of yoga studies the human soul. In the view of yoga, it is not the body and mind that experience life. It is the soul that undergoes all these experiences through the body. Yoga classifies the character of a person based on the three Gunas, Tamas, Rajas and Sattva.Tamas is inertia, Rajas is passion and action and Sattwa is purity and balance. Yoga also studies the influences of the various chakras on the body and mind of a person. The chakras are centers of concentrated energy. The book explains the core qualities inherent in each chakra.

This volume represents a selection of papers that were presented at the Yoga & Psyche Conference: The Future of Psychology, held in San Francisco, USA, in April 2014. This was the first academic conference in the Western world focused on the integration of Western psychology and yoga, and attracted an international presence from over 15 countries. With the increasingly widespread permeation of Eastern philosophy into Western society and the spread of Western values around the world, the time was ripe for a deeper investigation into the intersection of these subjects. This collection of articles serves as a foundational text for an emerging field. This inquiry begins to integrate the vast context of yoga – which includes ethics, the study of canonical texts, self-inquiry, breath management, physical postures and meditation – with Western psychological theory and clinical practice, including the breakthroughs in somatic psychology and trauma research, and insights from neuroscience. This book will appeal to psychologists, yoga teachers and practitioners, neuroscientists and researchers, sociologists, scholars of comparative religion and Indic studies, physicians and health practitioners interested in complementary medicine, and those interested in joining the conversation of a new field of investigation that integrates the perennial wisdom of yoga with the practice of modern Western psychology.