Soul · Meditation

Ashtanga & Dhyan, the eight limbs

Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras map the whole terrain, ethics to absorption, in eight limbs. This page names the map and shows where every practice on this site sits upon it; the eight support one another like storeys of one building.

The eight limbs

Yama Restraints, non-harm, truth, non-stealing, moderation, non-grasping
Niyama Observances, purity, contentment, discipline, study, devotion to the highest
Āsana Posture, steady and comfortable

This site: the asana database →
Prāṇāyāma Breath-regulation, the life-force guided and stilled

This site: the pranayama collection →
Pratyāhāra Withdrawal, the senses gathered home
Dhāraṇā Concentration, attention held on one point

This site: begin with the breath →
Dhyāna Meditation, attention flowing unbroken
Samādhi Absorption, only the object shining

The essence

Read the list bottom-up and it is a ladder; read it top-down and it is a life. The tradition's own caution is order: attempt absorption without the ethics (yama, niyama) and the practice amplifies whatever is practising it. Attempt āsana as gymnastics and it stays gymnastics, useful, but not yet the sūtra's project.

The last three limbs, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi; are really one attention deepening through three phases; Patañjali calls them together saṁyama. No one "does" samādhi; one does the first five, and the last three arrive as the fruit.

From the tradition

Yoga is the stilling of the mind

Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali · 1.2

The Yoga Sūtras' second sūtra, the whole system in four words.

yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ ||

Yoga is the stilling (nirodha) of the turnings (vṛtti) of the mind-field (citta).

Patañjali defines yoga not as posture, breath or even meditation, but as the condition when the mind’s turning (vṛtti) stills. The next sūtra adds the reason it matters: “then the seer rests in its own nature.” Everything else in the 195 sūtras, including the eight limbs; is scaffolding for this one definition.

This site’s whole meditation page is downstream of this sentence; the soul-pillar’s ashtanga pages map the scaffolding. Four words, and a psychology two millennia old that modern attention research keeps arriving beside.

The eight limbs, named in one sūtra

Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali · 2.29

Patañjali lists the entire path in a single breath, yama to samādhi.

yama-niyama-āsana-prāṇāyāma-pratyāhāra-dhāraṇā-dhyāna-samādhiḥ || aṣṭāṅga-āni ||

The eight limbs are: restraints, observances, posture, breath-regulation, withdrawal, concentration, meditation, absorption.

One sūtra, eight words, the whole curriculum. The order is the teaching: ethics (yama, niyama) before body (āsana), body before breath, breath before senses, senses before attention, and only then dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi, the inner three that no effort reaches directly.

Modern yoga classes live mostly on limbs three and four; this site’s body pillar feeds the first four, the mind pillar the fifth and sixth, and this page names them all; because the tradition is explicit that the limbs support one another like a building’s storeys, not like a menu.

The posture is steady and comfortable

Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali · 2.46

Everything modern yoga says about āsana grows from these three words.

sthira-sukham āsanam ||

The posture (āsana) is that which is steady and comfortable.

Two qualities, held together: sthira (steadiness, strength, alertness) and sukha (ease, comfort, softness). Neither alone is a posture, a pose that is steady but rigid is sculpture; comfortable but collapsing is a couch. Patañjali wants both at once, and the next sūtra names the method: “loosening of effort and meditation upon the boundless.”

For a sūtra about sitting for meditation, it has had a long afterlife in the world’s yoga studios; every alignment cue, prop and modification is an argument between sthira and sukha. This site’s whole asana collection quietly obeys these three words.