Hatha Yoga Pradipika
Written by Yoganand Michael Carroll
This is a 14th century text that is a foundation for Tantric Hatha Yoga. This is the translation I use in the Pranakriya 500 hour teacher training. I use it mostly because it is the translation Swami Kripalu based his commentary on.
There are many ancient versions of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and this is one of the earlier ones. Until recent times copies were made by hand leaving room for errors. It appears that teachers sometimes changed the text, leaving out verses they did not understand or did not support, sometimes adding pieces they either made up or borrowed from other texts.
More modern versions have a list of ten yamas and ten niyamas not found in earlier copies. Verses describing the hatha yoga mudras vary from text to text and some more modern texts have extra chapters.
In preparing this text for commentary Swami Kripalu divided the verses into groups to elaborate on. I find his grouping an important key in understanding this text.
Swami Kripalu’s commentary “Revealing the Secret- a commentary on The Small Burning Lamp of Sun-Moon Yoga,” may be downloaded as a PDF from http://www.naturalmeditation.net .
