The yogic body is often described as an elaborate matrix of channels (nāḍīs), energies (such as prāṇa) and wheels (cakras) that the practitioner should ritually construct and manipulate in order to attain power and liberation. However, in the texts of the early haṭha corpus we find little concern with either the esoteric body or the mundane, material (jaḍa) or saṃsāric body. Rather, the sources are practice manuals the focus of which is setting out techniques of yoga. Yet, an examination of the descriptions and principles of the body that do appear in these sources indicates that a key conceptualisation of the body relates to reproduction: the saṃsāric body is that which reproduces; the liberated body (jīvanmukti or videhamukti) is one which can be understood as reversing reproduction.

Drawing from her recently completed PhD dissertation on “The Body in Early Haṭha Yoga” Ruth Westoby offers a close analysis of key passages in texts such as the Amṛtasiddhi, Yogabīja and Khecarīvidyā to sketch concepts of reproduction and its reversal. She contextualises this within a framework of approaches to sex and reproduction that range from pronatalist to antinatalist, but nevertheless complicates an easy assumption that these approaches map only onto a strict ascetic and householder binary. She finds instead a prosaic approach to sex and sexuality.