For a good introduction to the anatomy and physiology involved in the Hatha Yoga practice, check out David Coulter's Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, or Leslie Kaminoff's Yoga Anatomy.
Many of the important results that develop from the proper practice of Hatha Yoga are actually considered to occur on the subtle levels of the being. Now we're talking more about things like channels of prana, currents of force, and energetic focal points on the body that operate according to their own "subtle anatomy". These, even more than the strictly physical elements of the body, are of primary concern to the early sages who wrote the user's guides to Yoga. Sound a bit funny? Well, it is! - from the viewpoint of a modern mindset, at least. Most of us have been trained to think of the material world as the only reality that exists. As the old scientist's adage goes: "If you can't count it, then it doesn't count, and if you can't kick it, then you can't count it."
The question of whether this framework of subtle anatomy is describing anything that's actually objectively real, or whether it's all just a series of pretty metaphors, is a highly contentious one. Different traditions sometimes say different things in this regard, and much of what is proposed lies outside the reach of our current methods of scientific inquiry. There has been a good deal of research conducted to-date, which has attempted to ascertain the validity of these supposed fields and subtle forces of Yoga. That's all a bit outside the scope of this general introduction, but as we expand the Big Book of Yoga, we'll introduce a section which addresses research efforts in this direction. In this chapter, we aim to describe this Yogic vision as it exists in the various systems and traditions of Hatha Yoga. As to whether
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