When you think of yoga you would be forgiven for thinking of bendy women in expensive Lycra moving through gymnastic style poses. This is how yoga has been promoted in the West, but it’s so much more than that and newsflash you don’t need to be any of those things to practice yoga either. However it is usually through the postures that most people are introduced to yoga, likely because they want to relieve stress or be more flexible. But once you get into the thick of it you realise that yoga is actually a philosophy and has so much more to offer.
According to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali there are eight limbs of yoga with postures being just one of them. Each limb offers guidance on how to live a meaningful and purposeful life. The word yoga means to unite, connecting us to our true self or soul (atman) resulting in liberation (moksha). These eight limbs can be practised on and off the mat and are summarised below.
- Yama
The first limb is yama. These are practices for how we interact with the people and things in the outside world. There are five yamas which include:
- Ahimsa – non-violence
- Satya – truthfulness
- Asteya – non-stealing
- Brahmacharya – right use of energy
- Aparigraha – non-possessiveness
- Niyama
The second limb is niyama which refers to the duties that affect how we interact with our ourselves in our internal world. The five niyamas are:
- Sauca – cleanliness
- Santosha – contentment
- Tapas – discipline
- Svadhyaya – self-study
- Isvarapranidhana – surrender to the divine
- Asana
So the movement and postures are the third limb of yoga and actually get very little mention in the Yoga Sutras. This part of our practice is called asana and is used as a preparation for the next five stages.
- Pranayama
The fourth limb is breath control. Pranayama along with asana help to move the prana (life force) around the body helping to maintain and restore health and vitality and preparing the mind and body for mediation.
- Pratyahara
The fifth limb focuses on withdrawal from the senses. You may have experienced this during mediation when your focus turns inwards and you lose all awareness of what is happening outside of your body.
- Dharana
The sixth limb is focused concentration, maintaining a single focus in the mind’s eye. Candle gazing is sometimes used to help focus and steady the mind to stop it from wandering.
- Dhyana
Contemplation and reflection are the seventh limb of yoga and is said to help you experience a deeper awareness of your consciousness, seeing things more clearly.
- Samadhi
The final stage of the eight limbed path is enlightenment. Samadhi is considered to be the state in which the individual and universal consciousness unite. It is a blissful form of total meditative absorption. Some say it is very difficult to reach, but I think it can be reached and we all may have experienced moments of samadhi in our lives.
So next time someone asks if you practice yoga everyday, if you practice the above on and off the mat, then you can reply ‘yes’ because yoga is so much more than twisty postures, it’s a lifestyle.
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