Yoga
The number of spiritual practices in Hinduism is endless. One category under which many of these practices fall is some form of yoga. Yoga is greatly misunderstood in the west to mean simply a form of exercise, which in actuality is but one of thousands if not millions of types of yogas. Of the millions of types of yoga a few are considered to be the most common ones. Some of those are covered below.
Hatha Yoga
The exercise form of yoga is actually called hatha yoga.
This involves a series of poses and/or body movements done along with deep
breathing and sometimes special breathing techniques, to help bring about not
only good fitness, but a deep sense of relaxation. Hatha yoga also works on the
energy level and helps to align and balance the energy fields of the body.
Hinduism has a very vast science of the energy fields.
Karma Yoga
Karma yoga is the yoga of doing good deeds. This means going out of your way to help others and not do anything harmful or negative. Karma itself is the concept of that which you do comes back to you. So if you do good then you receive back good. If you do mean things then you will receive back negative things. Really the concept is more complicated then this, but to understand it on a deeper level would require the study of Hindu philosophy is great depth. Karma yoga is also doing or hiring others (normally priests) to do special rituals to help bring about certain wishes or to improve certain bad karma. Also rituals of passage fall under this category too. Another aspect of it is doing your duty in life, whatever that may be based upon who you are.
Raja Yoga
Raja yoga is a series of methods for learning to control the mind so that you can find and maintain a sense of inner peace. The mind is considered the greatest enemy of the self in Hinduism because it is uncontrollable and always wondering from this thought to the other and we really have little control over where it goes. In Hinduism even thoughts are considered things as they too are a form of energy. Hindus have known for thousands of years what modern scientists have only recently realized, that all matter is energy. Thus if thoughts are energy, and matter is energy, they are one in the same, only one is more subtle then the other, but subtle leads to the other less subtle. This is also another level of karma, what you create in your mind, you create in actual eventually. It is for this reason that there is raja yoga, to learn to control what we create with our minds.
Bhakti Yoga
Bhakti yoga is the yoga of spiritual devotion to God (or
Goddess) in some particular form. It also can be devotion to a guru or spiritual
teacher. This is a very emotional yoga and involves developing a feeling of love
towards the one which the practitioner is focusing their bhakti (devotion).
Bhakti yoga can involve many practices, including worship rituals, singing
spiritual songs to the divine called bhajans, chanting the names of the divine,
meditating on the forms of the divine, reading about the pastimes of the divine,
and even cooking food for the divine and offering it to them. This is one of the
most popular yogas in Hinduism.
Jnana Yoga
Jnana is the yoga of learning what is real and what is not real, in the spiritual sense. It is the yoga of knowledge, spiritual knowledge. It involves learning the philosophies of Hinduism and sometimes many other spiritual and religious traditions and using this knowledge to ponder life the universe and everything and to come to understand the point to it all. This is probably the hardest yoga of all and considered the most intense path to take and not for everyone.
Tantra Yoga
Tantra yoga is a yoga focusing dissolving all opposite forces within the self so as to bring about a state of oneness with all of existence. Another aspect of tantra is the use of various forms, root sounds, shapes, etc, to altar the subtle levels of reality in some way as to eventually bring about some change within the physical world (magic). Most tantric practices are secretive and require initiation to learn about.
Kundalini Yoga
Kundalini yoga focuses on raising the dormant spiritual energy sitting at the bottom of the spine in the first chakra called kundalini. The chakra system is an integral part of yoga. In this system there are seven chakras arranged in ascending order starting from the base of the spine and going to the top of the head. Each is connected to different types of energies within the body and spiritual realms. The chakras are considered the connecting points between physical and non-physical parts of the self.
Mantra Yoga
Mantra yoga is the yoga of chanting various words and
phrases, mostly in the language of Sanskrit, to effect the subtle levels of
reality. Mantras can be repeated over and over as a form of meditation.
Sometimes they are chanted out load and sometimes only in the practitioners
head. It is common to use a string of beads called a mala to keep count of how
many mantras have been chanted. The most common number of beads on a mala is 108
plus one bead that sticks up called a head bead. 108 is the most sacred number
in Hinduism.