The Eight Limbs of Yoga (Part 2)

To finish up our discussion of the 8LoY, I’ll be describing the proscriptions of the eight limbs themselves. Again, this is not meant to be a definitive treatment, but more of an abridged introduction for those of you who don’t own or haven’t read the books like The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, or B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga. Many of these ideas have been (liberally) cribbed from such yoga authorities as these, along with the wisdom that sort of floats around the rest of the yoga community. So (and it should come as no surprise) this will not be all new information for those of us who have been around this stuff for a long time.

Being a bit of a logophile myself, though, and always looking to improve things where I can, the translations from the Sanskrit are essentially my own, and any errors or quibbles that anyone might have should be attributed directly to the source (i.e. yrs. truly). Many of the ideas have been streamlined or rendered more palatable for a western audience as well, by me, and the reasons for this are twofold. First, the influence of my own practice and ideals has led me to understand the 8LoY in my own unique way; and second, some of the ideas expressed in the more seminal works of yoga are simply more complex and potentially alien to be dealt with here, today. I do expect to cover all of the major bases, though, and with luck I hope this will be all anyone might need to go out and get practicing with confidence and a basic understanding of what their yoga’s about.

So, as I wrote in my earlier post, and just to reiterate, the eight limbs of yoga, in their order, are: Yama (Restraint), Niyama (Responsibility), Asana (Posture), Pranayama (Active Breath), Pratyahara (Eliminating Outward Confusion), Dharana (Cultivating Inner Awareness), Dhyana (Meditation), and Samadhi (Serenity). I’ve written that the limbs are “in their order,” because this is indeed the order in which they have traditionally been described and repeated over the years. However, in our discussion, I’ll be modifying that order so that Yama and Niyama will come at the end, and we’ll start instead with the final six limbs, before moving on to a brief introduction to the ethics and broader life practice of yoga. I’ll be doing this because Yama and Niyama are more “end goal” type LoY, and they’re really meant to be cultivated in the context of regular yoga practice and study. By going about the discussion in this way, I hope to more accurately show how a beginning yoga student would encounter these limbs and incorporate and develop them over time. Furthermore, and maybe this is just the way I see it, but both Yama and Niyama each include five different sub-limbs of their own, which can make them seem kind of hairy and involved in a way that I’d rather not get tied up with for too long, especially right at the beginning of a post.

So let’s start, then, with limb #3.

Asana: Posture

Asana is indeed the easiest limb to describe, and it’s certainly the most recognizable part of yoga. You can take pictures of asanas, and show them to your friends. They’re the hundreds of poses that make up your practice, and they’re the first thing you learn when you walk through the door. Yoga, which means unity, is the work of putting the whole the mind to work within the body. The asana is the place where that work gets done, as well as the place where it takes shape.

If you think of your body’s asana practice as a yoga factory, though, —let’s say it’s a factory with an assembly line, just for clarity — you still need power and movement to make your product. And this is where your breath comes in, for limb #4.

Pranayama: Active Breath

We all know that we get our oxygen from breathing, and (if we took biology) that that oxygen is used to react with the glucose in our bodies to give us energy. Thus, the importance of breathing while exercising. However, in yoga, the breath serves a further purpose, or two further purposes in fact. For one thing, because we develop our asanas with the movement of the body, we have to recognize the way that breathing itself can move us, in the act of expanding and emptying our lungs. The interactions between your breath and your spine, your whole torso really, can make an enormous difference in your ability to move through the asana practice. And furthermore, we recognize that breathing is the first and most obvious outward point of access to our bodies. As we take control of our bodies, we realize that the breath must be tamed first, before the other problems that we’re trying to unravel in ourselves, whether mental or physical, will start to loosen themselves up for us.

By being engaged with your breath, you become active within your body as a whole. And in this way you start to cultivate a unity of body and mind. But… things aren’t always so easy as that, and breathing with control is only the first step to really developing that unity. Your concentration on your breath and your posture has to be sustained, and put to use.

Pratyahara: Eliminating Outward Confusion (Limb #5)

Part of yoga is learning to detach yourself from the outside world, and subsist mentally on what you and your body can provide in terms of fodder for happiness and contentedness. There are various proscriptions in the realm of Niyama, which I’ll touch on at the end here, that encourage a more abstemious lifestyle; but first I think it’s important to learn, in the context of an asana practice, why that might be desirable.

Pratyahara is about learning to ignore whatever distraction that might crop up as you practice, like learning to keep your balance while your neighbor loses hers; but it’s also about a level of concentration that runs deeper than the superficialities of the present. I like to tell my students that they’re trying to cut down their “temporal bandwidth” in their yoga practice: ignoring the past and the future, and just concentrating on what they’re doing in the moment. I tell them that’s the only way they’re ever going to learn to know what it’s really like to be embodied. So you have to get your mind in order, and, as much as possible, bring it to bear on the task at hand. You’ll never be able to achieve the unity of body and mind, and discover the manifold benefits and abilities that you contain, latent within yourself, if you aren’t able to keep your mind present and active as you practice yoga.

Which brings us to limb #6.

Dharana: Cultivating Inner Awareness

When you get to a place where you can effectively cultivate the sixth limb, things really start to take off in terms of your yoga practice. Once you’ve brought your whole mind to bear on your practice, your breath is moving steadily, and you know the positions of the asanas and where they’re moving, your whole sense of yourself and what you’re capable of starts to undergo a radical transformation.

Dharana is awareness of your body, from the extremities all the way to your center. It comes from attention to detail, and an ability to send that kind of close attention all over your self. You start to take control of your body, and move it with an authority and active knowledge. You develop physical power and capability by teaching your body, through the process of expanding your mind into it, to grow stronger and healthier. This is really a two way street, where the body and mind work together, and develop together to increase strength, elasticity, and stamina.