According to Patanjali there are eight “limbs” of
yoga. How they work together can be understood
from the following story:
Once upon a time a couple lived happily together
in a country that had an unjust king. The king
became jealous of their happiness and threw the
man into a prison tower. When his wife came to the
tower at night to comfort him, the man called down
to her that she should return the next night with a
long silken thread, a strong thread, a cord, a rope, a
beetle, and some honey. Although puzzled by the
request, the wife returned the next evening with all
the items. Her husband then asked her to tie the
silken thread to the beetle and smear honey onto its
antennae. She should then place the beetle on the
tower wall with its head facing upward. Smelling
the honey, the beetle started to climb up the tower
in expectation of finding more of it, dragging the
silken thread as it did so. When it reached the top
of the tower the man took hold of the silken thread
and called down to his wife that she should tie the
strong thread to the other end. Pulling the strong
thread up, he secured it also and instructed her
further to tie the cord to the other end. Once he had
the cord the rest happened quickly. With the rope
attached to the cord he pulled it up, secured one
end of it and, climbing down, escaped to freedom.
The couple are, of course, yogis. The prison tower
represents conditioned existence. The silken thread
symbolizes the purifying of the body through asana.
The strong thread represents pranayama, breath
extension, the cord symbolizes meditation, and the
rope stands for samadhi, the state of pure being.
Once this rope is held, freedom from conditioned
existence is possible.
Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga relate to Ashtanga
Vinyasa practice thus:
The first limb consists of a set of ethics, which
ensures that the yogi interacts in a harmonious way
with the surrounding community. The ethical precepts
are: not to harm others, to be truthful, not to
steal, to engage in intercourse only with one’s
partner, and to abstain from greed.
The second limb consists of observances, which
ensure that body and mind are not polluted once
they have been purified. Purification in yoga has
nothing to do with puritanism. Rather it refers to the
“stainability” of body and mind. “Stainability” is the
propensity of the body/mind to take on a conditioning
or imprint from the environment. The observances
are physical and mental cleanliness, contentment,
simplicity, study of sacred texts, and acceptance of
the existence of the Supreme Being. The first two
limbs are initially implemented from the outside, and
they form a platform from which practice is undertaken.
Once we are established in yoga they become
our second nature: they will arise naturally.
The third limb is asana. Many obstacles to knowing
one’s true nature are manifested in the body, for
example disease, sluggishness, and dullness. The
body profoundly influences and, if in bad condition,
impinges on the functioning of mind and intellect.
Through the practice of yoga asanas the body is
made “strong and light like the body of a lion,” to
quote Shri K. Pattabhi Jois. Only then will it provide
the ideal vehicle on the path of yoga.
As the Yoga Sutra explains,5 every thought, emotion,
and experience leaves a subconscious imprint
(samskara) in the mind. These imprints determine
who we will be in the future. According to the Brhad
Aranyaka Upanishad, as long as liberation is not
achieved, the soul, like a caterpillar that draws itself
from one blade of grass over to the next, will, by the
force of its impressions in this life, reach out and
draw itself over to a new body in a new life.
This means that the body we have today is nothing
but the accumulation of our past thoughts, emotions,
and actions. In fact our body is the crystallized
history of our past thoughts. This needs to be deeply
understood and contemplated. It means that asana is
the method that releases us from past conditioning,
stored in the body, to arrive in the present moment.
It is to be noted that practicing forcefully will only
superimpose a new layer of subconscious imprints
based on suffering and pain. It will also increase
identification with the body. In yoga, identification
with anything that is impermanent is called
ignorance (avidya).
This may sound rather abstract at first, but all
of us who have seen a loved one die will remember
the profound insight that, once death has set in, the
body looks just like an empty shell left behind. Since
the body is our vehicle and the storehouse of our
past, we want to practice asana to the point where it
serves us well, while releasing and letting go of the
past that is stored in it.
Yoga is the middle path between two extremes. On
the one hand, we can go to the extreme of practicing
fanatically and striving for an ideal while denying
the reality of this present moment. The problem
with this is that we are only ever relating to ourselves
as what we want to become in the future and
not as what we are right now. The other extreme is
advocated by some schools of psychotherapy that
focus on highlighting past traumas. If we do this,
these traumas can increase their grip on us, and we
relate to ourselves as we have in the past, defining
ourselves by the “stuff that’s coming up” and the
“process that we are going through.” Asana is an
invitation to say goodbye to these extremes and
arrive at the truth of the present moment.
How do past emotions, thoughts, and impressions
manifest in the body? Some students of yoga experience
a lot of anger on commencing forward bending.
This is due to past anger having been stored in the
hamstrings. If we consciously let go of the anger, the
emotion will disappear. If not, it will surface in some
other form, possibly as an act of aggression or as a
chronic disease. Other students feel like crying after
intense backbending. Emotional pain is stored in the
chest, where it functions like armor, hardening
around the heart. This armor may be dissolved
in backbending. If we let go of the armor, a feeling
of tremendous relief will result, sometimes
accompanied by crying.
Extreme stiffness can be related to mental rigidity
or the inability to let oneself be transported into
unknown situations. Extreme flexibility, on the other
hand, can be related to the inability to take a position
in life and to set boundaries. In this case, asana
practice needs to be more strength based, to create
a balance and to learn to resist being stretched to
inappropriate places. Asana invites us to acknowledge
the past and let it go. This will in turn bring us
into the present moment and allow us to let go of
limiting concepts such as who we think we are.
The fourth limb is pranayama. Prana is the life
force, also referred to as the inner breath; pranayama
means extension of prana. The yogis discovered that
the pulsating or oscillating of prana happens sim
ultaneously with the movements of the mind
(chitta vrtti). The practice of pranayama is the study
and exercise of one’s breath to a point where it is
appeased and does not agitate the mind.
In the vinyasa system, pranayama is practiced
through applying the Ujjayi breath. By slightly
constricting the glottis, the breath is stretched long.
We learn to let the movement follow the breath,
which eventually leads to the body effortlessly
riding the waves of the breath. At this point it is
not we who move the body, but rather the power
of prana. We become able to breathe into all parts of
the body, which is equivalent to spreading the prana
evenly throughout. This is ayama — the extension
of the breath.
The fifth limb is pratyahara — sense withdrawal.
The Maitri Upanishad says that, if one becomes
preoccupied with sense objects, the mind is fueled,
which will lead to delusion and suffering.6 If, however,
the fuel of the senses is withheld, then, like a
fire that dies down without fuel, the mind becomes
reabsorbed into its source, the heart. “Heart” in
yoga is a metaphor not for emotions but for our
center, which is consciousness or the self.
In Vinyasa Yoga, sense withdrawal is practiced
through drishti — focal point. Instead of looking
around while practicing asana, which leads to the
senses reaching out, we stay internal by turning
our gaze toward prescribed locations. The sense of
hearing is drawn in by listening to the sound of the
breath, which at the same time gives us feedback
about the quality of the asana. By keeping our
attention from reaching out, we develop what tantric
philosophy calls the center (madhya). By developing
the center, the mind is eventually suspended and
the prana, which is a manifestation of the female
aspect of creation, the Goddess or Shakti, ceases to
oscillate. Then the state of divine consciousness
(bhairava) is recognized.7
The sixth limb is dharana — concentration. If you
have tried to meditate on the empty space between
two thoughts, you will know that the mind has the
tendency to attach itself to the next thought arising.
Since all objects have form, and the witnessing
subject — the consciousness — is formless, it tends
to be overlooked by the mind. It takes a great deal
of focus to keep watching consciousness when dis -
tractions are available.
The practice of concentration, then, is a pre -
requisite and preparation for meditation proper. The
training of concentration enables us to stay focused
on whatever object is chosen. First, simple objects
are selected, which in turn prepare us for the
penultimate “object,” formless consciousness, which
is nothing but pure awareness.
Concentration in Vinyasa Yoga is practiced by
focusing on the bandhas. On an external level the
focus is on Mula and Uddiyana Bandha (pelvic and
lower abdominal locks), but on an internal level it is
on the bonding together of movement, breath, and
awareness (bandha = bonding). To achieve this
bonding, we have to let go of the beta brain-wave
pattern, which normally accompanies concentration.
Instead we need to shift to an alpha pattern, which
enables multiple focus and leads into simultaneous
awareness of everything, or being in this moment,
which is meditation.
The seventh limb is dhyana — meditation.
Meditation means to rest, uninfluenced, between the
extremes of the mind and suddenly just “be” instead
of “becoming.” The difference between this and the
previous limb is that, in concentration, there is a
conscious effort to exclude all thoughts that are not
relevant to our chosen object. In meditation there is
a constant flow of impressions from the object and
of awareness toward the object, without any effort
of the will. Typical objects chosen are the heart lotus,
the inner sound, the breath, the sense-of-I, the
process of perception, and intellect, one’s meditation
deity (ishtadevata) or the Supreme Being.
In Vinyasa Yoga, meditation starts when, rather
than doing the practice, we are being done or moved.
At this point we realize that, since we can watch the
body, we are not the body but a deeper-lying witnessing
entity. The vinyasa practice is the constant
coming and going of postures, the constant change
of form, which we never hold on to. It is itself a
meditation on impermanence. When we come to the
point of realizing that everything we have known so
far — the world, the body, the mind, and the practice
— is subject to constant change, we have arrived
at meditation on intelligence (buddhi).
Meditation does not, however, occur only in
dhyana, but in all stages of the practice. In fact the
Ashtanga Vinyasa system is a movement medi -
tation. First we meditate on the position of the body
in space, which is asana. Then we meditate on the
life force moving the body, which is pranayama.
The next stage is to meditate on the senses through
drishti and listening to the breath, which is pratyahara.
Meditating on the binding together of all
aspects of the practice is concentration (dharana).
The eighth limb, samadhi, is of two kinds —
objective and objectless. Objective samadhi is when
the mind for the first time, like a clear jewel, reflects
faithfully what it is directed at and does not just
produce another simulation of reality.8 In other
words the mind is clarified to an extent that it does
not modify sensory input at all. To experience this,
we have to “de-condition” ourselves to the extent
that we let go of all limiting and negative programs
of the past. Patanjali says, “Memory is purified, as if
emptied of its own form.”9 Then all that can be
known about an object is known.
Objectless samadhi is the highest form of yoga.
It does not depend on an object for its arising but,
rather, the witnessing subject or awareness, which is
our true nature, is revealed. In this samadhi the thought
waves are suspended, which leads to knowing of
that which was always there: consciousness or the
divine self. This final state is beyond achieving,
beyond doing, beyond practicing. It is a state of pure
ecstatic being described by the term kaivalya — a
state in which there is total freedom and independence
from any external stimulation whatsoever.
In the physical disciplines of yoga, samadhi is
reached by suspending the extremes of solar (pingala)
and lunar (ida) mind. This state arises when the inner
breath (prana) enters the central channel (sushumna).
Then truth or deep reality suddenly flashes forth.
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