Vajroli mudra

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Vajroli mudra (Sanskrit: वज्रोली मुद्रा vajrolī mudrā), the Vajroli Seal, is a practice in Hatha yoga which requires the yogi to preserve his semen, either by learning not to release it, or if released by drawing it up through his urethra from the vagina of "a woman devoted to the practice of yoga".[1]

The mudra was described as "obscene"[2] by the translator Rai Bahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu, and as "obscure and repugnant"[2] by another translator, Hans-Ulrich Rieker.[2]

The mudra is rarely practised in modern times. It was covered in the 1900s by the American sexologist

Krishnamacharya, gives impractical instructions for the mudra, demonstrating in Norman Sjoman's opinion that he had never tried the practice.[5]

Context

Further information: Hatha yoga and Mudra § Yoga

satkarmas), non-seated postures (asanas), elaborate breath-control (pranayama), and physical techniques to manipulate vital energy, the mudras.[6][7]

Mudras are gestures of the body, used in hatha yoga to assist in the spiritual journey towards liberation. Mudras such as

Mula Bandha are used to seal in the vital energy, which can take various forms such as prana (related to the breath) and bindu (related to the semen). The classical sources for the mudras in yoga are two medieval texts, the Gheranda Samhita and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.[8] However, many hatha yoga texts describe mudras.[9]

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika 3.5 states the importance of mudras in yoga practice:

Therefore the [Kundalini] goddess sleeping at the entrance of Brahma's door [at the base of the spine] should be constantly aroused with all effort, by performing mudra thoroughly.

— HYP 3.5

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the yoga teacher Satyananda Saraswati, founder of the Bihar School of Yoga, continued to emphasize the importance of mudras in his instructional text Asana, Pranayama, Mudrā, Bandha.[8]

Mudra

Vajroli mudra, the Vajroli Seal, differs from other mudras in that it does not consist of sealing in a vital fluid physically, but involves its recovery. The mudra requires the

yogin to preserve his semen, either by learning not to release it, or if released by drawing it up through his urethra from the vagina of "a woman devoted to the practice of yoga".[1] It is described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika 3.82–89.[10]

The Shiva Samhita 4.78–104 calls Vajroli mudra "the secret of all secrets" and claims that it enables "even a householder" (a married man, not a yogic renunciate) to be liberated. It calls for the man to draw up the rajas, the woman's sexual fluid, from her vagina. It explains that the loss of bindu, the vital force of the semen, causes death, while its retention causes life. The god Shiva says "I am bindu, the goddess (Shakti) is rajas."[11]

The Shiva Samhita states in the same passage that Sahajoli and Amaroli are variations of the mudra. The yogin is instructed to practice by using his wind to hold back the urine while he is urinating, and then to release it little by little. After six months' practice he will in this way become able to hold back his bindu, "even if he enjoys a hundred women".[11]

The practice has been proposed to serve to clean the bladder by drawing liquids towards the urethra as an auto-

semen retention practice called asidharavrata.[12]

Place in medieval hatha yoga

Among early

Gorakṣaśataka, both of which describe hatha yoga techniques in detail, do not mention Vajroli mudra.[13]

Reception

Modern description

Further information:
Yoga in America
Ida Craddock was the first Westerner to write about Vajroli mudra. The use she made of it enraged the American authorities, and she killed herself.[3]

Vajroli mudra is not often described in modern accounts, still less actually practised. The earliest Westerner to write about it was the American yoga scholar and sexologist

Andrea Jain notes that Craddock's "sacralization of sexual intercourse"[3] is far from radical by modern standards, but it was "antisocial heterodoxy" in the 1900s, leading indeed to her "martyrdom".[3]

The British Orientalist John Woodroffe describes the ability of a yogi to draw air and fluid into the urethra and out, and says, "Apart from its suggested medical value as a lavement of the bladder it is a mudra (physical technique) used in sexual connection whereby the Hathayogi sucks into himself the forces of the woman without ejecting any of his force or substance—a practice which is to be condemned as injurious to the woman who 'withers' under such treatment"[14]

Theos Bernard demonstrated with this photograph that he had learnt the physical posture for the obscure hatha yoga practice of Vajroli mudra, probably the first Westerner to do so.[15]

The explorer and author

participant observer book Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience. The posture, somewhat resembling Navasana, is seated, the legs raised to about 45 degrees and held out straight, the body leaning back and the back rounded so that the palms can be placed on the ground below the raised thighs, the arms held straight.[15] Bernard states that he was instructed to learn this once he could do lotus position (Padmasana) so that he would be strong enough to use it "in the more advanced stages" of his hatha yoga training; there is no suggestion in the book that he followed the full practice.[4]

The yoga scholar

Krishnamacharya, otherwise known as the father of modern yoga, for including "material on yogic practices from these academic sources in his text without knowing an actual tradition of teaching connected with the practice."[5] Sjoman explains that Krishnamacharya recommended for Vajroli mudra "a glass rod to be inserted into the urethra an inch at a time."[5] In Sjoman's view, this showed "that he has most certainly not experimented with this himself in the manner he recommends."[5]

The magazine of Satyananda Saraswati's Bihar School of Yoga, noting the criticism of Vajroli mudra, defends the practice in a 1985 article. It states that the Shatkarma Sangraha describes seven Vajroli practices, starting with "the simple contraction of the uro-genital muscles and later the sucking up of liquids".[16] It adds that only when the first six practices are completed can the last, "yogic intercourse",[16] succeed. It notes also that sexual climax is the one moment in ordinary lives when "the mind becomes completely void of its own accord",[16] but the moment is brief as the lowest chakras (energy centres in the subtle body) are involved. Withholding the semen allows the energy to awaken kundalini, the energy supposedly coiled at the base of the spine, instead.[16]

Colin Hall and Sarah Garden, writing in

bramacharya, dispassion towards sexual desire.[12]

Modern omission

The lack of discussion of Vajroli mudra is related to the more general historic denigration of

sadhana",[2] along with sahajoli and amaroli. Similarly, Singleton notes, the leader of Arya Maitreya Mandala in Europe, Hans-Ulrich Rieker called these three practices "obscure and repugnant"[19] and omitted them from his 1957 translation of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b Mallinson & Singleton 2017, pp. 242, 250–252.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Singleton 2010, pp. 44–47.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Jain 2015, pp. 22–25.
  4. ^ a b Bernard 2007, pp. 28–29.
  5. ^ a b c d Sjoman 1999, p. 66.
  6. ^ Mallinson 2011, pp. 770–781.
  7. ^ Mallinson & Singleton 2017, pp. xx–xxi.
  8. ^
    ISBN 81-86336-04-4
    .
  9. ^ Mallinson & Singleton 2017, pp. 228–258.
  10. ^ Hatha Yoga Pradipika 3.82–89.
  11. ^ a b Mallinson & Singleton 2017, pp. 250–252.
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-3-73700-862-4
    .
  13. ^ a b c Birch 2024, pp. 20–23.
  14. ^ Woodoroffe 1919, p. 210.
  15. ^ a b Bernard 2007, p. 127, plate XXVI.
  16. ^ a b c d "Vajroli Mudra (The Thunderbolt Attitude)". Bihar School of Yoga. 1985. Archived from the original on 6 March 2019. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  17. Yoga International
    . Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  18. ^ Vasu, S. C. (1915). The Yoga Sastra, Consisting of an Introduction to Yoga Philosophy, Sanskrit Text with English Translation of 1 The Siva Samhita and of 2 The Gheranda Samhita. Bahadurganj: Suhindra Nath Vasu. p. 51.
  19. ^ Rieker, Hans-Ulrich (1989) [1957]. The Yoga of Light: Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Unwin. p. 127.

Sources

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