Taroga: Tarot and Yoga

An Introduction to Taroga: Tarot and Yoga

There is so much a single Tarot card can teach us, so many insights it can provide. A very unexpected one came to me a few years ago.  

Looking at the Rider-Waite Magician card, I suddenly thought, Hmmm, the way he’s standing looks just like that point in a yoga routine when you are fully extended in the Heaven and Earth Stretch.

The next card in my deck that day was The Star. I looked at her and got really excited – she, too, was in a position similar to a yoga pose. In fact, looking at her brought to mind an entire yoga sequence!

What if there’s a connection here?

Yoga and Tarot come from very different sources and have very different histories. Yoga originated in India, and while some theories suggest that Tarot may also have originated there, the cards became known for their more spiritual properties in Europe in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.  But one thing is certain – both practices can provide healing. In fact, many fellow Tarot readers have also considered this connection, including James Wanless (creator of the Voyager Tarot deck) and Elisa Lodge, who hosted a Tarot Retreat on the Big Island of Hawaii that I attended many years ago, with a seminar on this topic.

But as with interpreting Tarot, what each reader finds can be highly personal, even if the root meanings remain the same. As I looked at each card in the Rider-Waite deck, yoga poses or breathing techniques (pranayama) presented themselves to me. I wanted to share my own series of movements based on each Major Arcana card that would allow people to literally draw in what they need physically, as well as spiritually.

Of course, not all of the Major Arcana cards show a position that closely echoes a yoga pose. For these cases, though, other ideas came to me, of poses that have the same energy as the card, and allow us to draw that in and explore it.

While working on this project, a word playfully came to mind: Taroga, a mix, of course, of “tarot” and “yoga.”  The term has stuck with me. Not only is it fun to say; it makes the process feel like a real, legitimate variant of yoga, which, at least in my mind, it has become. I believe it should be for others, as well. In the process of combining cards and yoga poses, I’ve also found healing, personal discovery, and release.

It’s been a fun and fascinating process, and I’m excited to share it with you. In due course, I’ll publish some articles and blog posts about particular cards and their corresponding poses. I invite you to play with these poses and to check for yourself how they evoke the Tarot archetypes that I match them up with.