Grow your Yoga Practice by Understanding the Eight Limbs of Yoga
- Radhika Brinkopf
- Mar 1, 2019
- 3 min read
The practice of yoga is a quest for the soul, or the journey to know yourself completely. When I first started my yoga practice, each class I attended seemed to have a focus on three key elements: breath, posture, and a meditative flow. As I continued to attend more and more yoga classes, I found that even as I was getting deeper into my postures, finding strength and flexibility that I didn't know that I had, I wasn't building my mental and spiritual fortitude. Each time I left the studio and went back into the real world, I faced the same struggles and the same stressors. While I felt better about myself and calmer after each yoga practice, I was still missing the elusive state of enlightenment or equilibrium of mind and body. I was still trying to escape through yoga rather than trying to breathe into my circumstances and gain a clear perspective of my reality.
To truly cultivate all aspects of a yoga practice - the physical, mental, and spiritual, I needed to expand my practice from just breath and posture to include my mind.
As Michael Stone says in the Inner Tradition of Yoga,
"Yoga psychology sees the mind and breath as bound together in the frame of the human body. There is no mind without breath, no stillness in the body without stillness in the mind, and no stillness in the mind without settled breath…The practice of waking up the mind and body and the practice of stilling the mind and body go hand and hand in what is referred to as the royal path of yoga."
The royal path of yoga is what Patanjali describes as the Eight Limbs of Yoga.
The Eight Limbs of Yoga are a complete practice of yoga and can be balanced simultaneously. Each limb complements the other limbs and the limbs and their branches are varied enough to ensure that we practice the moral, ethical, physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of our being. In essence, the Eight Limbed Path is a path of balance and the path that I continue to walk as I continue interpreting what balance means to me.
The Eight Limbs of Yoga:
(1) Yamas (External Restraints): An understanding of our relationship with the world around us, both people and objects
There are five practices to help us build these relationships and to understand our moral obligations:
Ahimsa: Non-Violence, Freedom from Harming
Satya: Truthfulness
Asteya: Non-Stealing, Freedom from Stealing
Brahmacharya: Moderation, Wise use of Energy
Aparigraha: Non-Hoarding, Freedom from Grasping, Non-Possessiveness
(2) Niyamas (Internal Restraints): How we should conduct ourselves
Saucha: Cleanliness
Santosha: Contentment
Tapas: Self-Discipline
Svadhyaya: Self-Study
Isvara-pranidhana: Surrender, Dedication to the study and the ideal of pure awareness
(3) Asana: The practice of the physical postures of yoga
(4) Pranayama: Breath/Energetic Life Force
Observation of breathing and the refinement of breath to bring stillness to mind and body
(5) Pratyahara: Withdrawal from the senses
The ability to stop reaching out to external stimuli and direct energy and attention inward toward the heart and mind
(6) Dharana: Concentrated Meditation
The ability to bring awareness to a single object such as breath or a sensation
(7) Dhyana: Complete Absorption
A concentration so deep that subjects and objects dissolve
(8) Samadhi: Integration/Experience of Enlightenment
A state of complete evenness or equilibrium of the mind
The Eight Limbed Path begins with an ethical and moral practice - the Yamas and the Niyamas. The Yamas help us understand that yoga is more than just an internal practice. If we continue to focus only on ourselves and our escape, we miss the opportunity to truly understand how we relate to the world around us. By leveraging the Eight Limbed Path to reframe our thinking and our practice, we continue to work towards finding equilibrium or balance between ourselves and the world around us.
Stay tuned for future blog posts that will dive deeper into the Yamas and the Niyamas.
Until then, the divine light in me, honors and respects the divine light in each in every one of you. To you I bow my head with gratitude and say Namaste.
Comments