The Eight Limbs of Yoga (Part 5)

Niyama: Responsibility

Niyamas are the life practices that yoga is supposed to create and maintain from day to day. Because these deal with lifestyle practices, there is a fair amount of variation in the explications of the niyamas, but I think the basic concepts can be understood fairly easily.

The five sub-limbs of niyama are: shaucha (cleanliness), santosha (satisfaction), tapas (purification), swadhyaya (chanting/memorization), and ishwarapranidhana (selflessness).

Shaucha: cleanliness

Shaucha refers to both internal and external cleanliness. It means eating well while avoiding indulgence, keeping the body clean, and behaving in a seemly manner. Shaucha reminds us that, while much of the yoga experience takes place internally, we also share our practice with the community and develop ourselves through and in the company of others. By keeping clean and pleasant we make sure that the environment we share remains a pleasant one.

Santosha: satisfaction

Part of practicing yoga is learning to understand and accept and understand the shortcomings of life. Through santosha we learn to be satisfied with what we have and not let the difficulties in life disturb our focus our irritate our minds. “Stress management” might be a more accessible term for what santosha is about. Every day a person has to make decisions about what to concentrate on and what to ignore; and in yoga we try to focus on the positive, the doable, the manageable, and the good.

Tapas: purification

Tapas is fairly puritanical in its application, although it’s concerned less with obedience to God as it is with simple physical and psychological continence. By living abstemiously, by perhaps fasting on certain days, or avoiding certain indulgences, one becomes better acquainted with the nature of the body. Tapas highlights why it’s important to differentiate necessity from desire in the mind, and that the two should be treated differently.

Swadhyaya: chanting/memorization

Swadhyaya has a particular meaning which refers to the memorization and chanting of Vedic verses in very particular, proscribed ways. However, for most of us that’s not really an option or necessarily something we’d like to put a whole lot of time or effort into. Thus I — though I am not alone in doing so — interpret swadhyaya more broadly, to refer to the study and learning of canonical works in such a way that they stand out in the memory and can come readily to the mind. While we try to make progress within ourselves, it’s important to recognize the works and achievements of others, and to understand them for ourselves; so that we can make the best, most informed decisions for ourselves in our own works.

Ishwarapranidhana: selflessness

Ishwarapranidhana is a call for selflessness, for submission to the universe and the erasure of the sense of the individual vs. the whole. Sort of like admonishments to love your neighbor as yourself, or to hate the sin but not the sinner, this one is sort of a steep, seemingly insurmountable goal. Nonetheless, it’s a nice, and often helpful perspective to take (if not actually maintain all of the time) to realize that the world, the whole universe really, is much bigger and more important than any one person. It’s like the opposite of solipsism, in which you say that everything that isn’t “me” is what’s really real and important, and the “me” is just a facade: a ripple on the ocean’s surface, with no more claim to primacy than any other piece of the world.