Review of the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga - Asana
Over the years of practicing yoga asana (the physical yoga poses in a yoga class we work on), I realized that doing the yoga poses was only a small part of understanding what yoga is and teaching us. Yoga in Sanskrit means union. Gurus, monks, and spiritual aspirants throughout the centuries developed and passed down their knowledge and instructions with one goal: Through stilling the mind, we can find union with the divine source.
“Yoga is the cessation of thought waves in the mind” Sage Patañjali, Yoga Sutras.
The thought progression of the discipline of yoga is this: The practices of yoga (sadhana) purify the mind and body to develop concentration > Perfect concentration leads to a thoughtless mind and superconsciousness (samadhi) > Higher consciousness brings knowledge of reality and peace.
Sage Patañjali prescribed a process to achieve inner peace in a collection of writings called the Yoga Sutras. He described this process as having eight parts or “limbs”; thus, the system is called Ashtanga (ashta = eight, anga = limb) Yoga.
The eight limbs are:
Yama (restraints)
Niyama (observances)
Asana (posture, seat)
Pranayama (control of prana, breath)
Pratyahara (withdrawing the mind from sense perception)
Dharana (concentration)
Dhyana (meditation)
Samadhi (superconsciousness)
Asana
Photo by Marcus Aurelius from Pexels
Translation: “Seat, posture.”
Asana is the limb of Ashtanga that the western world has embraced with ferocity. When you attend a yoga class, you are practicing yoga asana. The reason why the limbs talk about the “seat” is because of the practice of meditation. Maintaining a healthy body encourages mastery of meditation. Yogis developed a series of postures to make the body strong, sound, and flexible.
Moving through asanas may help with the following:
Tones muscles and nerves
Regulates glandular excretions
Massages internal organs
Improves circulation and digestion
Improves muscle and joint strength and flexibility
Reduces body fat
Increases physical and mental endurance
Develops will power
Boosts immunity and increases immunity to disease
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
Asana and the subtle body
In ancient texts like the Upanishads, yogi’s described a system in our bodies known in English as the subtle body. Western philosophy, science and medicine historically considered the mind and the body to be distinct and separate. This philosophy is known as mind-body dualism. The subtle body examines the “quasi material” qualities of the human body. Neither solely physical nor purely spiritual, the subtle body consists of energy focal points known as chakras (“energy wheels”), which connect through a series of channels called nadis (“tube, pipe, nerve, blood vessel, pulse”). Prana (“breath, "life force,” or "vital principle”) is moved through the body through these subtle body channels.
Yogis believe that the yoga asanas could act as a stimulant to the subtle body by purifying the nadis and directing the flow of prana upward, aiding in the awakening of kundalini (“coiled snake”). Kundalini is a reservoir of divine feminine energy (or Shakti) believed to reside at the base of the spine, in the muladhara (root chakra).
Asanas can be categorized in a variety of ways. I was trained to break it down through where you started the posture (i.e., standing, sitting, or lying down) and headed in the pose (i.e., balances, folds, backbends, inversions). By doing so, I learned to develop some flow from pose to pose to create a cohesive class and highlight or focus specific areas of the body or targeted movement on working toward an apex posture.
The thing that draws so many people back to yoga classes is how you can compare yourself from the beginning of the class to how you feel rising from savasana (“corpse pose”) at the end of the lesson. Yoga brain is a thing: one can feel calmer, more limber and rejuvenated after a yoga class. Many also experience reward when they can mark their progress week over week by bending a little further, reaching a little longer, and holding a pose with a little more ease. Learning to connect with your breath and mind are skills that you can take off your mat and into everyday situations, allowing us to experience more calm and peace in our day.
If you can find some time for even twenty minutes of yoga asana regularly, I promise you will feel its positive effects.