The Tantric Body

The tantric body is the subtle-physiology that hatha yoga and tantra map upon the physical frame: the chakras’ lotus-stations, the nadis’ channels (ida, pingala, sushumna), and the energies (prana, kundalini, bindu) whose manipulation is the path.

Overview

The system’s textual development (the Buddhist tantras’ chakra-maps, the Nath corpus’s hatha-systematization — the Hathapradipika and Gheranda Samhita’s anatomy); the standard map (the seven-chakra schema’s medieval form; the 72,000-nadi network; the ida-pingala-sushumna triad); the energies (the five vayus, the kundalini’s coiled sleep, the bindu’s conservation).

Philosophy

The body as microcosm (the cosmic correspondences — the chakras’ elements, letters, and planes); the technology of liberation (hatha’s alchemy: the nectar-drop at the palate, the sun-moon union); the divergence from Ayurveda’s body (the srotas-versus-nadi systems’ separate logics — the scholarly comparison).

Practice

The practices that work the map (pranayama’s channel-balancing, mudra-bandha’s energy-seals, the visualization rites of the chakra-stations); the contemporary yoga-industry’s chakra-populism versus the texts’ initiatory frame.

Verification notes

• The textual genealogy and the standard map follow the hatha corpus; the comparative note is scholarship.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).