Beyond the Physical

As I outlined in my last post, yoga was originally intended as a spiritual immersion, where a yogi would dedicate their life to the pursuit of spiritual connection and enlightenment. The practice of yoga today is largely focused on the healing benefits of the physical postures of yoga, or asanas, and the breathing practices, or pranayama.

Asana: seated posture and hand mudra for meditation

In the full practice of Yoga, however, the physical and breath practices are actually only a portion of the practice.

While yoga has evolved greatly in the last few centuries, the crux of its modern manifestation still revolves around the Yoga Sutras, a collection of aphorisms written by the Indian sage Patanjali around 300-500 CE. The Sutras essentially provide yogis with a step-by-step roadmap to enlightenment.

In the Sutras, Patanjali lays out 8 specific practices - “the 8 limbs of yoga” - that together make up the entire practice of yoga (and sneakily correlate to the chakra system - I’ll write more about that later!).

The first four limbs of yoga prepare the body and mind for the more spiritually disciplined aspects of the practice:

• Yamas

  • The Sanskrit word yamas is usually translated as “restraints”. The 5 yamas guide behavior or ethics, our interactions with others and the world: ahimsa, or non-harming; satya, or truthfulness; asteya, or non-stealing; brahmacharya, or right use of energy (usually interpreted as sexual energy, i.e. abstaining); and aparigraha, or non-attachment.

• Niyamas

  • Niyamas can be translated as “observances”, “guidelines”, or “rules”. Niyamas are 5 guidelines for the way we relate with ourselves and bodies, intended to create self-awareness and “cleanse” the vessel the spirit inhabits (the body): saucha, or cleanliness; santosha, or contentment; tapas, or self-discipline; svadhyaya, or self-study; and ishvara pranidhana, or surrender.

• Asana

  • Asana translates to “postures”, which originally referred to how one sits in meditation and hand positions (mudras) that could be used to direct energy in the body. These days, asana is the primary vehicle for the practice of yoga and has become more focused on healing, strengthening, and opening the body, with the ultimate intention of creating ease while sitting in meditation.

• Pranayama

  • Pranayama is translated as “life force”, prana being the energy that flows through everything. Pranayama is the practice of breathing exercises to control the essence and move it through the energetic system of the physical body.

The last four of these limbs are advanced spiritual practices to be entered into after the yogi has mastered the first four limbs:

• Pratyahara

  • The word pratyahara is usually translated to “withdrawal of the senses”. Stemming from the words prati and ahara, which mean “withdraw” and “food”, this practice was originally one of fasting and challenging the body in other ways to disconnect from sensation: laying on a bed of nails, for example, in order to numb the body’s natural responses to pain. In modern western practices, pratyahara is often practiced more like meditation, along the lines of laying in an isolation tank.

• Dharana

  • Dharana is usually translated as “concentration” or “single focus”. This is the training of oneself to focus mind and energy on one thing: meditating while staring into a candle flame or focusing on the sensation of breath and the tip of the nose. In essence, dharana is the first stage of meditation; when the mind doesn’t know how to “turn off”, we give it a focal point. Once this practice becomes easy, the next stage is dhyana….

• Dhyana

  • Dhyana is often translated as “meditation”, but in this context, it may be more apt to call it “true meditation”: that is, the state of pure presence or simply being that is acheived once the mind is able to truly “turn off” and exist in a thought-less state.

• Samadhi

  • Samadhi is “enlightenment” or “wisdom”. This isn’t as much a practice as it is the final state of being reached upon mastering the other 7 limbs. Samadhi is a state of complete awareness of unity with the universe and all beings. While we may believe, on a rational or thinking level, that everything is connected and we are all One, samadhi is the state of fully experiencing that connection as opposed to just knowing or thinking about it.

Since we focus so much on asana and pranayama in classes, we’ll delve a little deeper into the other limbs of yoga in a series of posts!

Next up: Awareness in Action: Yamas & Niyamas

Feel free to comment with questions or your own experience and understanding of the 8 limbs of yoga!