From Adiyogi Shiva to the Cleansing Fires

The full arc of yoga — from the first yogi on the Himalayas, through Patanjali and the Nath siddhas who forged Hatha Yoga, to the moment the West kept the postures and lost the point. And why the six purifications, the shatkarmas, are how the body is tuned to receive the high bandwidth of sound and light.

In the yogic tradition, Shiva is not worshipped as a god so much as revered as Adiyogi — the first yogi, the primal source of the entire science. Yogic lore holds that over fifteen thousand years ago, on the heights of the Himalayas, Shiva attained full enlightenment and fell into an ecstatic dance, alternating between wild movement and utter stillness, tears of bliss the only sign of life in him.

Curious onlookers came and went, but seven seekers refused to leave. They begged for what he knew. Testing them, Adiyogi gave them preparatory sadhana and ignored them for eighty-four years . Then, on the first full moon after the summer solstice, he turned and saw they had become shining receptacles of knowing. On that day — remembered as Guru Purnima — Adiyogi became the Adi Guru , the first teacher, and began transmitting yoga in its fullness to these seven, the Saptarishis , who carried it across the world.