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With an Account of How Freedom Might Sometimes Be Possible for Some

Yogi in meditation
Do you have enough free will to read this essay?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

The problem of free will has been described as ‘the most difficult and pressing problem in all of philosophy’—so I suggest you take your time over this essay.

In philosophy, so-called libertarians defend the kind of free will that the vast majority of people take for granted, that is, the kind of free will that makes us responsible for our choices, and thus for our lives, in a deep and meaningful sense.

However, libertarians are a minority among philosophers, who, for the most part, believe that this kind of free will is not possible or even intelligible, and that, like myth or magic (which is, in a sense, unfettered free will), it has no place in our modern, rational-scientific picture of the universe.

How could something that is so deeply ingrained in our psyche and that pervades every aspect of our lives be nothing more than a product of our minds? As the writer Isaac Singer (d. 1991) once quipped, ‘We must believe in free will—we have no other choice.’ Be this as it may, can a belief in free will, that is, in libertarian free will, be justified on rational grounds?

From the outset, it is important to distinguish the libertarian in matters of free will from the libertarian in matters of politics, who believes, broadly, that the role of government ought to be circumscribed to protecting individual liberties, at least insofar as those liberties do not conflict with the liberties of others. Although the free will libertarian need not share in the political libertarian’s ideal of society (many do not), there is a clear sense in which the political libertarian relies upon the existence of libertarian free will, which he or she, at least implicitly, takes for a given. Thus, if a belief in libertarian free will cannot be justified on rational grounds, neither can a belief in libertarian politics, or for that matter criminal justice, divine retribution, and much else besides.

Determinism

Given its importance to ordinary life, you’d expect libertarian free will to be popular among philosophers—but it isn’t, and this is why.

Given the physical state of the universe at any given point in time, and given the laws of physics which are universal and constant, it is impossible for the history of the universe to be any other than it is. In other words, all past and future events are written into the very fabric of the universe, which is merely ‘playing itself out’, albeit on a grand, cosmic scale.

Some 200 years ago, the polymath the marquis de Laplace transmogrified this concept of ‘causal determinism’ into a super-intelligent demon who could accurately predict the future, first, by knowing every physical fact about the universe, and, second, by applying Newton’s Laws to those facts.

Of course, Newtonian physics has since been superseded by quantum mechanics, which allows for indeterminism in the behaviour of elementary particles. Even so, quantum mechanics has not put paid to the initial concerns about causal determinism because (a) even if quantum mechanics is not itself to be superseded by a more comprehensive deterministic theory, indeterminism in the behaviour of elementary particles need not translate into indeterminism in human behaviour, and, (b) even if it did, the behaviour that resulted would be random and chaotic rather than free and responsible. 

Compatibilism

A widespread response to the problem posed by determinism is ‘compatibilism’, according to which freedom amounts to (1) being able to do something, and (2) not being prevented from doing that thing. Thus, I am free to run away if (1) I am able to run away, and (2) I am not prevented from doing so, for instance, by being held at gunpoint or locked up in a dungeon. According to the compatibilist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), a person is free when ‘he finds no stop in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do’. If this is freedom, then a person is free even if what he has the will to do happens to have been determined.

Many eminent philosophers, from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, might be said to support compatibilism. 

Children and the lower animals as well as men are capable of voluntary action, but not of choice. —Aristotle

Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. —Schopenhauer

But surely, you might say, freedom involves not only the ability to do something, but also the ability to do otherwise. The compatibilist’s response to this objection is to define ‘the ability to do otherwise’ in the same way that they defined freedom. ‘The ability to do otherwise’ amounts to (1) being able to do otherwise, and (2) not being prevented from doing otherwise. Had I wanted to do otherwise than run away, nothing would have prevented me from doing so. However, I did not want to do otherwise than run away (because what I wanted to do was determined), and, in this sense, I acted freely.

Still, even if the compatibilist account is able to capture surface freedoms involving the ability to do or not do something, it does not seem to capture the deep freedom of choice that most people associate with free will. When you and I talk about free will, we do not mean merely ‘unconstrained choice’, but also control over that choice. But the compatibilist would insist that this sort of strong, libertarian free will is simply incoherent: the same past cannot lead to more than one possible future, basta, un point c’est tout, end of the story.

Imagine that Emma, in her final year at college, is deliberating between careers: teaching on the one hand and investment banking on the other. After due consideration, she ‘chooses’ to go into investment banking. Given the same past—the same upbringing, the same beliefs and desires, the same thought processes—how could she possibly have ‘chosen’ otherwise? Emma could only have chosen otherwise if her past, that is, the past, had been different—but, of course, the past could not have been different for the simple reason that there is only ever one past. Even if she could have chosen otherwise, such a choice would seem inexplicable, and therefore arbitrary, in light of her upbringing, her beliefs and desires, and so on.

In essence, says the compatibilist, people have a confused notion not just of freedom, but also of determinism, which they associate with constraint or compulsion. Clearing up this confusion does not usually bring them round to compatibilism, because what they actually believe is that determinism is in itself incompatible with free will. In other words, they are incompatibilists. 

Indeterminism

It gets even thornier for the incompatibilists, in that their idea of free will is incompatible not only with determinism but also with indeterminism!

If undetermined events like quantum leaps occur by chance, and if free actions are undetermined events, it seems that free actions also occur by chance. But this is a contradiction in terms, since free and responsible actions cannot, by definition, occur by chance. If my actions are the result of undetermined events in my brain, they are random and chaotic, and undermine rather than enable my freedom.

Imagine that I am deliberating between fast food and a healthier but more time-consuming home-cooked meal, and that, at the outcome of this deliberation, I opt for the home-cooked meal. If my choices are undetermined, I might at this point, despite the process of deliberation that I have just undergone, suddenly and inexplicably ‘change my mind’ and plump for fast food. You might argue, along with the idealist philosopher GW Leibniz (d. 1716), that prior reasons merely ‘incline without necessitating’. But it is precisely because prior reasons inclined me towards the garden risotto that I chose it over the cheeseburger. Had I instead gone for the cheeseburger, this ‘choice’ would not truly have been my own.

Or, imagine that I have an exact counterpart, Neel*, who lives in another possible world which is in all respects identical to this one. One day, I succumb to the temptation to steal a bicycle, whereas Neel* resists this temptation—even though both of us have had exactly the same past up to that point. In the words of the philosopher Alfred Mele (b. 1951), ‘If there is nothing about the agents’ powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character and the like that explains this difference in outcome … the difference is just a matter of luck.’ 

Mind, Soul, and the Causa Sui

If they are to hold that free will is compatible with indeterminism, libertarians need to provide an account of how we might be able to act and act otherwise without it seeming completely arbitrary. After Descartes, who distinguished the immaterial mind from the material body, a common libertarian move has been to posit an additional factor such as the mind or soul that is not bound by the laws of physics. Although the mind or soul exists outside the material realm, it is able to intervene in the material realm to influence events—possibly by exploiting the indeterminism in the brain.

Some libertarians believe that such a Cartesian dualism of mind and body is the only possible solution to the problem of free will. But, putting aside traditional concerns about mind-body dualism, it is not at all clear that mind-body dualism is an effective response to the threat of indeterminism. If Emma’s decision to go into banking is no longer determined by the prior activity of her brain, then it is determined by the prior activity of her disembodied mind or soul. In other words, all that mind-body dualism achieves is to shift the problem to one remove, that is, from the brain to a (hypothetical) mind or soul.

All that remains to dualist libertarians is to appeal to mystery and claim that disembodied minds or souls exist in a realm that is beyond reason or science. This was, more or less, the line adopted by Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), who argued that free will is presupposed by our practical and moral lives. Although reason and science can tell us about how things appear in the world (‘phenomena’), they cannot tell us about how they are in themselves (‘noumena’). Our noumenal selves, which govern our practical and moral lives, lie beyond the material realm of reason and science, and cannot be apprehended in those terms.

Another ‘additional factor’ strategy, the agent-causal strategy, consists in arguing that Emma’s choices are determined, not by prior events (determinism), nor by chance (indeterminism), but by Emma herself. This kind of ‘immanent’ causation brought about by the agent herself differs from the ‘transeunt’ causation brought about by events in that it involves a ‘prime mover unmoved’—in other words, an entity, at least in this respect, akin to God. But, of course, immanent causation is no less mysterious than Cartesian mind-body dualism or Kantian noumenal selves, and, like them, merely shifts the problem to one remove, in this case, to a prime mover unmoved, uncaused cause, or causa sui (Latin, ‘cause of itself’).

For Nietzsche (d. 1900):

The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself… with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated—the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society—involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Munchausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.

A Possible Way Out

The real challenge for libertarians is to furnish an account of free will that does not rely on mysterious forms of agency, but sits comfortably with our modern, rational-scientific picture of the universe.

The idea that freedom might lie in the control of attention is an ancient one. In the Indian tradition, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras locate liberation in mastery of the mind through concentration and meditation. Much later, in his Philosophy of Physiology (1779), the twenty-year-old medical student Friedrich Schiller argued that freedom lies in attention. More than a century later, William James developed a similar account in terms of an ‘effort of attention’.

So one more modern possibility is this. Neurotransmission, that is, electrical signalling in the brain, may be subject to quantum indeterminacies of a kind that could provide the leeway or ‘point of engagement’ for the exercise of free will. As demonstrated by Edward Lorenz (d. 2008), small changes in the initial conditions of a chaotic system can, through a snowball effect, result in much larger, if unpredictable, changes in that system’s behaviour. Potentially, the flap of a butterfly wing in Kyoto could result in a thunderstorm in Paris. Similarly, an effort of thought or concentration could sway or shepherd random and chaotic patterns of neurological activity so as to culminate in an undetermined action that is free in the strong, libertarian sense.

Most of the time, a person’s actions and corresponding brain activity would be determined by past events and the cumulative effects of those past events on the person’s patterns of thought. Most of the time, in fact, almost all of the time, the person’s actions would be determined by a commixture of neuroses, obsessions, learnt behaviours, socialisation, enculturation, and so on. But on certain occasions, such as when the person was genuinely torn between two competing choices, the degree of indeterminacy in their brain would rise to such a degree as to permit an undetermined action.

Such a window of freedom would be rare, but even a single free action (or non-action) could impact on all subsequent actions and completely alter the course of a life, and the lives affected by that life, and the lives affected by those lives… If Emma had freely decided to go into teaching instead of banking, she would have had a different set of colleagues and friends. She would have married someone whom she would not otherwise have met. Together, they would have had ‘other’ children, almost certainly in another house, and so on.

Are Some People Freer Than Others?

A corollary of this ‘effort of thought’ theory of free will is that some people are freer than others. First, people who are more imaginative, more independent, or more rebellious are freer than people who fall into conventional patterns of thought. Most people would not know possibility if it slapped them in the face; but a few actively seek to disturb fixed patterns of thought, thereby increasing the indeterminacy in their brain and so their latitude for freedom. Second, people who can ‘see into the future’, that is, people who have a high degree of insight into the potential ramifications of their choices, are freer than people who are unable or unwilling to project. Third, people who cultivate attention and concentration ought also to be freer. Indeed, this, and not bendiness, was the historical purpose of yoga. 

Of course, there is overlap between those who are mired in convention and those who are unable to see into the future (and who therefore lack intuition), since both conditions are mutually reinforcing, and both arise from the same ultimate source, namely, fear or cowardice. Conversely, there is a high degree of overlap between free thinkers and visionaries. Courage underpins both freedom of thought and freedom of action. In life as in chess, the best players are those who can see several steps ahead, and who can respond to ever changing circumstances with the boldest and most original moves.

Maybe you are not convinced by the ‘effort of thought’ theory, but if we are to rescue free will, which is essential if we are to take seriously the possibility of changing ourselves and our lives, it is probably the best we have to go on.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide.

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If Not Physical Fitness, What Was Yoga Originally For?

Indian yogi in meditation
The original purpose of yoga was not to strengthen the body, but to free the mind.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Millions of people practise yoga for stronger backs, greater flexibility, or relief from stress. These are genuine benefits. But they were never yoga’s original purpose.

The first yogis were not searching for physical fitness. They were searching for freedom.

More than two thousand years ago, Indian philosophers concluded that the root of human suffering lies not in the body but in the mind—or, more precisely, in our mistaken understanding of who we are. Yoga emerged as a practical method for overcoming that mistake.

The First Meaning of Yoga

One of the earliest surviving discussions of yoga appears in the Katha Upanishad, composed around the fourth century BCE. There, the brahmin boy Nachiketa rejects wealth, power, and a long life to ask Yama, the god of death, a single question: What becomes of us after death?

Yama replies that this knowledge cannot be gained through study alone, but only through yoga, which he defines as ‘the firm holding back of the senses’:

When the five organs of perception become still, together with the mind, and the intellect ceases to be active: that is called the highest state.

From the beginning, then, yoga was not a form of exercise but a discipline of inner stillness.

Why We Suffer

Classical yoga rests on Samkhya, one of the oldest schools of Indian philosophy. It seeks to explain both the nature of reality and the origins of human suffering.

According to Samkhya, reality consists of two fundamental principles. The first is Purusha, pure consciousness or the witnessing self. The second is Prakriti, which includes not only the physical world but also the body, the senses, the ego, and even the mind itself.

An ancient Indian image captures the idea beautifully. Two birds perch in the same tree. One pecks eagerly at the fruit, tasting now sweetness, now bitterness. The other simply watches. The first bird represents the self absorbed in the changing experiences of life; the second, the silent witness that remains untouched by them.

Yoga teaches that we mistake ourselves for the first bird when our true nature is the second. We identify with our thoughts, emotions, and fears, forgetting that these are passing experiences rather than our deepest identity.

Yoga Beyond Meditation

Composed in the centuries around the beginning of the Common Era, the Bhagavad Gita broadened the meaning of yoga. Alongside meditation, it described the yoga of knowledge (Jnana Yoga), selfless action (Karma Yoga), and loving devotion (Bhakti Yoga).

Its central message is that freedom comes not from withdrawing from life but from living without attachment to success or failure. Like Stoicism, the Bhagavad Gita teaches that peace of mind depends less on what happens to us than on how we meet it.

As the god Krishna tells the warrior Arjuna:

Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the Yoga of wisdom.

Yoga was no longer confined to the forest or meditation hall. Everyday life itself could become a spiritual practice.

Patanjali’s Yoga

The philosopher Patanjali transformed these ideas into a practical discipline in the Yoga Sutra, the foundational text of classical yoga. He famously defined yoga as:

Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.

To achieve this, Patanjali described an eightfold path combining ethics, posture, breath control, concentration, and meditation, culminating in samadhi, complete absorption. Significantly, the physical postures (asanas) formed only one stage of this much larger discipline.

How Yoga Became Exercise

If yoga began as a path to liberation, how did it become associated with stretching and physical fitness?

The answer lies in its long evolution. Later traditions, especially Hatha Yoga, placed increasing emphasis on physical postures, though still in pursuit of spiritual liberation.

The decisive shift came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Indian teachers such as Tirumalai Krishnamacharya presented yoga in dialogue with Western physical culture and modern medicine. Their students—including B. K. S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois—introduced these new forms of postural yoga to Europe and America, where they proved enormously popular.

Modern yoga is therefore not a misunderstanding of the tradition so much as one particular branch of it. While its philosophical roots remain ancient, its familiar image as a form of exercise is surprisingly modern.

The yoga practised by millions today is therefore only one chapter in a much older story.

The Original Purpose of Yoga

Millions of people come to yoga hoping for stronger backs, greater flexibility, or relief from stress. The first yogis hoped for something altogether more ambitious: freedom from suffering through a deeper understanding of the self.

Whether or not we accept their answers, the first yogis were asking one of humanity’s oldest and most profound questions:

Who am I?

For them, the search for that answer was the true purpose of yoga.

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To learn more about yoga and the world that it unfolded from, see my book Indian Mythology and Philosophy.

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Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy.

A darshana is an outlook, a philosophy, literally, a “vision.” The term darshana is especially associated with the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, the so-called shaddarshana, or “six visions.” What makes them orthodox, and therefore Hindu, is that they accept the authority of the Vedas. With good reason, the shaddarshana are often presented in pairs: Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa-Vedanta. In this post, I shall, of course, be focussing on Samkhya-Yoga.

The Samkhya School

The founder of the Samkhya school is held to be Kapila, who lived, perhaps, in the sixth century BCE. Little is known about him. He is sometimes described as an avatar of Vishnu or the grandson of Brahma. He is mentioned by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita as the greatest of sages: “Amongst the gandharvas I am Chitrath, and among the siddhas, I am sage Kapila.” According to Puranic lore, his meditation produced such intense inner heat that, when they disturbed him, he incinerated the Sagarputras, the 60,001 sons of King Sagara, simply by opening his eyes.

In the Buddhist tradition, the students of Kapila built the Shakya capital of Kapilavastu. The Buddha, who was raised in Kapilavastu, was therefore steeped in Samkhya philosophy, explaining the affinities between Samkhya and Buddhism.

Kapila is held to have authored the Samkhya Sutra, although the extant text appears to be medieval in origin. Instead, the school’s primary text is the Samkhyakarika by Ishvarakrishna, who lived in the third or fourth century CE.

In the first verse, Ishvarakrishna states the aim of Samkhya: to eliminate the three forms of dukkha (suffering): internal, from physical and mental disease; external, from outside threats, especially other people; and divine, that is, from natural disasters.

Samkhya is a radical dualism that holds that the universe is made up of two independent, infinite, and eternal realities: Purusha (souls) and Prakriti (matter or nature). The Purushas are conscious but have no attributes. They are pure ‘witness consciousness.’ Prakriti is composed of the three gunas (qualities or tendencies of matter), sattva (preservation, harmony), rajas (creation, passion), and tamas (destruction, apathy). 

Initially, the gunas are in equilibrium. But at its approach, Purusha disturbs this equilibrium in favour of rajas, and this imbalance sets off material creation.

Comparisons With Western Dualism

Unlike Western dualism, which is between mind and matter, Samkhyan dualism is between self and matter—with “matter” encompassing most of what Westerners would consider “mind” (intellect, ego, emotions, etc.)—everything, in fact, except witness consciousness, of which mind is the instrument.

Also, unlike Western dualism, Samkhyan dualism is atheistic or agnostic. Although an orthodox school, Samkhya is remarkably silent about God and the Vedas.

The Samkhyan Account of Creation

At the approach of Purusha, undifferentiated Prakriti evolves 23 tattvas (elements, aspects), first buddhi (intelligence), and from buddhi ahamkara (ego or self-consciousness).

Under the influence of sattva guna, ahamkara yields the five organs of sense (eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue), the five organs of action (arms, legs, speech, organs of elimination, organs of creation), and manas (mind).

Then, under the influence of tamas guna, ahamkara yields the five subtle elements (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste), from which the five material elements (earth, air, water, fire, ether) emerge.

Notice that the material world is last in the order of creation. Its evolution from the five senses suggests that the world is an illusion, although this is never explicitly stated.

Manas has a special role in mediating between the ten organs, the five senses, and the world without. Being of Prakriti, buddhi, ahamkara, and manas are not conscious. However, they appear to be conscious and are set into motion by proximity with Purusha—functioning, as it were, by reflected consciousness.

The Samkhyan Account of Liberation

Adding Purusha and Prakriti to the 23 tattvas makes a total of 25 tattvas—of which 24 are of Prakriti. Nonetheless, it is for the sake of Purusha that the differentiation occurs, to provide it with experience and, in time, with liberation (moksha). By reflecting the consciousness of Purusha, Prakriti is showing Purusha to itself.

Purusha and Prakriti are like a lame man and a blind man, lost in the wilderness. The blind man carries the lame man, who guides his steps. Both are looking for their way home, to moksha, when they will part ways. But having never traveled, the lame man is avid of experience and so enthralled by his adventure that he forgets about his destination.

To be consistent with the universal law of karma, Samkhya assumes that a Purusha that is bonded to Prakriti (that is, a jiva), has two bodies: a gross, mortal body, and a subtle body made up of the higher functions which transmigrates according to past merit. The continuity of the subtle body enables the Purusha to keep on learning through numerous incarnations.

Final liberation consists in the realization of the separateness of Purusha and Prakriti. This involves a process of involution, or “going back to the womb”—that is, reversing, through intellect and understanding, the process of evolution from the material elements back to undifferentiated Prakriti and beyond.

In short, salvation consists in counting backwards.

The Yoga School

Samkhya exerted such a profound influence on Yoga that the two schools are sometimes merged as Samkhya-Yoga. But whereas Samkhya emphasizes knowledge and discrimination as the path to liberation, Yoga rather emphasizes discipline.

Although Yoga essentially borrows the metaphysics of Samkhya, it introduces a twenty-sixth tattva, namely, Ishvara, or “the Lord”—for which reason it has been called “Theistic Samkhya.” The nature of “Ishvara” is open to interpretation, but it may be regarded as a special Purusha that is unentangled and, therefore, inactive.

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali

In the second century BCE, or perhaps the fifth century CE, Patanjali collected the ideas around yoga in the Yoga Sutra. These 196 verses became the foundational text of Yoga, which, towards the end of the first millennium, began to be mentioned as a separate school.

Patanjali’s synthesis influenced all other schools of Hindu philosophy, which regard it as authoritative. It is sometimes referred to as Raja Yoga (Royal Yoga) or Ashtanga Yoga (Eight-Limbed Yoga) to distinguish it from the many other forms of yoga, such as Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, Mantra, and Tantra—which are, of course, more complementary than mutually exclusive.

The Yoga Sutra has four sections: Samahdi (Concentration), Sadhana (Practice), Vibhuti (Yogic or Magical Powers), and Kaivalya (Isolation or Liberation). In the first section, Patanjali defines yoga as “the cessation of mental fluctuations” (chitta vritti nirodha)—with chitta (mind) assimilated in the Samkhyan system to buddhi, ahamkara, and manas. In the third section, he warns against practicing yoga for the perverted purpose of acquiring yogic powers—suggesting that this sort of thing may have been common.

Ashtanga or Eight-Limbed Yoga

The eight stages of Patanjali’s Yoga are:

  1. Yama (abstinence or restraint)
  2. Niyama (discipline or observances)
  3. Asana (‘seat’, posture)
  4. Pranayama (breath control)
  5. Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
  6. Dharana (concentration of the mind on some object)
  7. Dhyana (steady meditation on that object) and
  8. Samadhi (absorption, ecstatic union with the ultimate).

The first two stages are ethical preparations. Yama involves abstinence from injury, falsehood, stealing, lust, and avarice. Niyama involves purity or cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God.

The next two stages are physical preparations, each involving a series of exercises to remove physical or bodily distractions.

The fifth stage involves taking control of the mind by emptying it of impressions.

The remaining three stages, which may take several lifetimes to perfect, aim at increasingly heightened states of awareness and return.

According to Patanjali, the five kleshas (poisons, obstacles to Yoga and liberation) are ignorance, ego, attachment or desire, aversion to unpleasant things or truths, and fear of death and desire to live.

Final Remarks

The aim of yoga, and ascetic practice in general, is essentially to react against ordinary human habits, which entangle us, or our Purusha, with Prakriti, to the extent that Purusha identifies with Prakriti and more particularly with the restless chitta and its manifold modifications.

This is a far cry from the yoga practised in the West as a form of physical culture, with postures borrowed from Hatha Yoga and optional spiritual sprinkling for stress relief. Even Hatha Yoga is about a lot more than that.

Read more in Indian Mythology and Philosophy.