User:O. Pen Sauce/Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP)

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Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP) is an online open source system of self-directed yoga practices. It integrates principles and methods from bhakti yoga, mantra yoga, kriya yoga, hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, tantra yoga, and other schools of knowledge.

AYP utilizes principles of practice set forth in ancient scriptures such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Bhagavad Gita and the Holy Bible. It is a non-sectarian approach which claims no disciples. The online lessons and support forum of AYP are free to the public.

Whereas AYP has introduced no new yoga practices, it has developed a practical full-scope integration of powerful techniques previously explained only piecemeal from fractured sources. It has also departed dramatically from the usual pattern of yoga teaching, in which the advanced practices are kept secret and revealed under the guidance of a guru. Everyone utilizing the freely available AYP techniques is encouraged to go at their own speed and exercise their own judgement in adding on new practices. Much attention is devoted in the lessons to developing skills in "self-pacing," with the aim of assisting every practitioner to become self-sufficient in yoga. This innovative approach contrasts with the traditional approach in which a guru sets the pace for the practitioner.

History
AYP started when an anonymous retired Florida man took the pen name "Yogani" and started posting a series of lessons to a Yahoo! Group in 2003. Since then, hundreds of lessons have been placed on Yahoo!, and the writings have expanded to several websites and an active support forum. They have also been translated into other languages. Yogani adamantly rejects the "guru" label, and ends every lesson with the phrase, "The guru is in you." In addition to offering the practices for free on the Internet, Yogani has authored several books.

Practices
The two primary practices in AYP are deep meditation (for cultivating inner silence) and spinal breathing pranayama (for cultivating balanced ecstatic conductivity). The lessons focus on these two main pillars of enlightenment, expressed by the metaphorical union of Shiva and Shakti within each person. The AYP lessons gradually expand on the two core practices with a variety of additional methods, including Asanas, Mulabandha/Asvini, Sambhavi Mudra, Siddhasana, Yoni Mudra Kumbhaka, Uddiyana/Nauli, Kechari Mudra, Dynamic Jalandhara (Chin Pump), Samyama, Navi Kriya, Amaroli and other advanced methods. It is claimed that while none of these methods is "new", they've never before been clearly explained or sequenced into an integrated system (much less offered freely to all).

Criticisms
It has been said that some of the advanced yoga practices made freely available by Yogani have been traditionally kept secret, to a large extent because of their potency and because of the potential for instability in the nervous system if they are not used correctly (i.e. with careful self-pacing). Yogani has made them publicly available, and this is controversial. Some in the yoga community consider this irresponsible and dangerous; others believe that, in this information age, the free accessibility of the practices improves safety. (The same has been said about the teachings of Yogananda, Yogi Bhajan, and many tantric schools, among others, which have made public similar materials on mudras, kundalini and traditional yoga teachings while stressing that they have previously been kept secret.)