The Down of Physical Yoga: Dispelling the Hindrances of Immortality, by Giacomella Orofino

Dispelling the Hindrances to Immortality belongs to a remarkable corpus of texts preserved in the Tibetan canon, ancillary to the Amṛtasiddhi, the earliest known Sanskrit source to articulate the foundational principles and techniques of a yoga system based on physical practice, later referred to as 'the yoga of force' (haṭhayoga).While the colophons within this corpus consistently trace the tradition back to the seminal figure Virūpa (Tib. Bir ba pa), the compilation of these materials is attributed to the mahāsiddha Yogeśvara Amoghavajra, a yogin from eastern India who was active in Tibet during the latter half of the 11th century—and who most likely authored the collection directly in Tibetan. Among these, Dispelling the Hindrances to Immortality stands out for its presentation of 108 dynamic physical movements, each designed to remove obstacles to the tantric Buddhist practice, according to the Amṛtasiddhi tradition. Strikingly, many of these physical postures resemble āsanas later codified in Indian haṭhayoga literature and foundational to both premodern and modern yoga traditions. This makes Dispelling the Hindrances to Immortality one of the earliest known manuals to document dynamic yogic postures.

Through a close and comprehensive analysis of this little-known text, the study offers fresh insights into the origins and early development of physical yoga. It highlights the rich and dynamic transmission of yogic knowledge across regional and cultural boundaries, shedding light on the deeply interconnected trajectories of tantric physical practices in India and Tibet. As such, it represents a rigorous and insightful contribution to the scholarship on the origins and cross-cultural evolution of haṭhayoga.