The 8 Limbs of Yoga Explained!

How to incorporate the 8 Limbs of Yoga into your life.

In the West, it's a common misconception that yoga is simply "yoga poses class" and that's all that yoga is – just doing postures.

Yoga is so much more than that. It's actually a process of union. Yoga means to unite or yoke body, mind, and spirit human and divine, our lower self with our higher self. However you want to think of it, yoga is simply union and it's the act of eliminating distractions removing thoughts that are unwanted and finding a deep place of bliss and peace.

The 8th limb of yoga is Samadhi, which could be translated as bliss, peace, enlightenment or total union with divine. The understanding from yogi's over thousands of years is that you know if you follow this path over time you will achieve increasing levels of bliss, peace, understanding of things, and union with God. Those are beautiful feelings and experiences to have over fear, doubt, clinging to life, chaos - all those things that most of us deal with on a daily basis. It's freedom, it's liberation from a lot of the suffering of this life and potentially future lives.

If you ever come across Buddhism the 8 Noble Truths are very similar to the eightfold path of yoga. Ashtanga is the word for eight limb path and ashtau just means 8. If you hear the word Ashtanga yoga, which I do practice, it simply comes out of a practice of all eight limbs of yoga versus only practicing asana so it may look like a lot of asana but it's so much more than that. So let's go over all the difference just really briefly and then we'll we have little videos on each one.

The first of the eight limbs is the Yamas followed by the Niyamas. The yamas are simply personal observances that really set the heart and mind on the right path. You're not really practicing yoga unless the intention is correct so you could be doing you know a whole bunch of postures you know you could do patty cake all of this stuff, but if we're not having the intention of yoga it's not yoga. A lot of yoga classes you might be doing things that look like yoga but if the intention is not to create harmony and peace within the self, to create love toward others, to heal, to heal others, to find a meditative inward looking space, then it's really not yoga, it's just movement to music. That's really something that we should consider as we call ourselves yogis, as we embark on yoga, and especially teach yoga.

The first of the the yamas is ahimsa, which is non-harming or the positive of it would be loving-kindness. All of yoga starts with a really strong perspective which says, "I am taking a stance in my life that says that I will not harm other beings, I will not harm myself, and this is in words acts, deeds, thoughts; and I'm going to send loving kindness to others in all that I do and to myself in thoughts, words, acts, deeds, all of the above.

When you take it into perspective, yoga has really been, I think, misconstrued in the West because you go to "yoga poses class" and you learn a few postures and you breathe you're like, "Oh I'm so sore," and yeah that's definitely part of it, but I think that we've kind of made a mistake in not really explaining to people what this really is. What it really is is a spiritual discipline, so if you go to yoga class and you're hurting yourself or you're trying to compete with your neighbor or you're pissed off with that person, you're not practicing yoga because you're not practicing any of the limbs of yoga starting with Ahimsa, which is the first of the first Yamas, which is the first limb of yoga because I think it's really that important to our practice. There are so many other Yamas, which are simply ways of being in the World, which say that I'm not going to steal from people, I'm not going to harm others and things like that. I'm going to be restrained in my behaviors and my actions, so i'm not going to be wild out of control. I'm going to practice some level of self-control sexual restraint restraint over my words my thoughts, my actions, even over my money.

Then we have the Niyamas, which are personal disciplines which are things like having a daily practice, self-study. Trying to understand yourself is really part of the second limb of yoga and the discipline or the consistency of putting effort in toward understanding who you are and how do to evolve into a brighter more evolved version of yourself. In order to do that, you have to really understand where you are right now and come to an honest place about who you are in the world, which is what the first limb of yoga helps you to find. The Yamas and the Niyamas together help you to set the mind and the actions in the right direction before even beginning Asana, which is the third limb of yoga.

I think it's really important to just stop here for a second and remember Asana, or the postures that we do in yoga class are the third limb of yoga there are two limbs that come before that. If we haven't set our heart in the right intention and haven't really set an intention to do a spiritual practice of inward reflection, yoga can become more like athletic exercise or something that's really not yoga.

When I go to yoga classes, I think it's really important to consider:

"I know we're doing postures here,

I know there are asanas being practiced,

but are we really practicing yoga?

Are there cues for me to look inwardly or are there cues for me to look outwardly?

Are there cues for me to study myself or are there cues for me to hey look at everybody else?"

Just really thinking about that and what we're really learning in our yoga practice. Are we learning the full breadth of yoga or are we learning just asanas, which takes us to the 4th limb, which is pranayama or breath control.

The 4th limb is pranayama or breath control. Prana is the life force energy one could say prana is God itself. Prana is the air we breathe in, it's the stratus we walk through - you can feel it as you move your arms , you can feel the wind in the air. We're trying to enliven ourselves with more fresh prana, fresh energy, and so it's super important to have a steady breath, to be able to create a long inhalation, a long exhalation, to find calmness evenness of breath, and to be able to take control of the breath because that helps us to control the mind. Ideally, we want to have a slow, calm, steady, breath all throughout the day, not just during yoga practice, but pranayama exercises can help us to achieve that - it's like exercising the lungs.

A lot of times we'll find that it's difficult to sit in pranayama until you've kind of practiced some asanas of some kind. One could say that the earlier limbs of yoga prepare the practitioner for the later limbs of yoga because they kind of get more subtle and more difficult from here. If you think about asana, I like to think of it as like recess for adults. A lot of people have difficulty just sitting - t's really hard for a lot of people. I teach so many classes, people want to fidget and when we start class, they'll be standing there like kind of moving around, just kind of moving around, just kind of moving around, and it can be deceptively difficult to simply sit.

Pranayama begins our seated exercises of not moving the whole body. Having gotten some of that energy out through asana, having set the intention in the right place through the yamas and the niyamas now we can sit and work on just the breath which is a much more subtle practice. So many people will find total disinterest in pranayama until they've been practicing for a couple of years and it's like, "Huh oh what's that? Oh I want to try that now." The first couple years, a lot of people don't really care, and that's totally cool because you kind of have to get to the place where you want to do it and then you'll want to do it.

The next limb of yoga is Pratyahara or withdrawal of the senses. Withdrawal of the senses is simply learning to eliminate all distractions. As i'm looking here, I'm focusing my attention or my drishti, looking point, at the camera at you guys. There are so many other things in this room that I could be looking at. I could be looking here, there, everywhere. I could be looking all over the place, but one could say that the eyes control the mind. In Ashtanga yoga we practice the tristhana method which helps us to focus the mind during Ashtanga asana practice, and that includes asana, breath and drishti. Breath would be pranayama. Drishti to me is really that pratyahara also a little bit of concentration but we'll get to that too.

Pratyahara or sense withdrawal I feel like comes before concentration because before you can concentrate on one thing you have to eliminate distractions of all the other things. Your drishti or your looking point - focusing the eyes helps to focus the mind. You'll find sense withdrawal in a lot of different things. You could be reading and kind of forget your surroundings. You could be running. You could be drawing. You can do a lot of things where you're like, "Wow I totally forgot how long I've been sitting here." Having a fun conversation with a friend, you know, there's a lot of things that can take you into that state of pratyahara. So i feel that sense withdrawal helps prepare you for the next limb which is concentration.

Concentration is coming out of the ability to remove distractions. While you're still like bing bing bing bing bing bing you're never able to concentrate. Once we're able to focus the mind, now we can use that focus on a task. You can use this concentration for a lot of different things, whether it's meditative practices which is the next limb of yoga or whether it's simply being able to focus on your job better focus on starting a business focus on your kids or your family. Finding this place of, "I can eliminate distractions at any time and totally focus my mind," can be super helpful for pretty much anything that you do.

Concentration helps to prepare you for meditation which is to me one of the most awesome but also one of the hardest parts of yoga. So again, yoga is so much more than asana practice. Yoga is also meditation. So one could practice yoga and never do any of the postures that we do in traditional yoga classes - never do a triangle pose, never do a downward facing dog, but they could simply sit in meditation and say, "I'm a yogi too. i do yoga." and I think it's really important to remember that. Yoga is so much more than postures.

In seated meditation, the goal is that you've gotten a lot of this excess energy out, so all the bing bing bing bing of your mind has kind of disappeared or maybe not disappeared, but it's been described as like a lake with muddy water. You can kind of stir it up, or even like a glass of water with something in it you stir it up, and it's all mixed up. That's kind of how our mind is most of the time in its default state - it's muddy, it's like bing bing bing, it's all over the place. Once you've given it time, the mud will start to settle down, and then at the base of the lake it'll just be mud and that's fine for that to be there. Then, the whole rest of the water will be totally clear and that's what we're slowly trying to do through our yoga practice.

We're slowly trying to clear out impurities, toxins, bad habits, waste that we've absorbed from the world for our whole lives, or maybe even from previous lives, slowly getting that out. Slowly eliminating the samskaras, which are the grooves in the minds, or the habits that we go to usually in times of stress or trouble where you know, "Oh I'm stressed out I'm gonna go run and do this, or I'm gonna act this way." those are the samskaras. We're trying to find a place of calmness and equanimity, which simply means evenness of mind, calmness of mind, where we're no longer focusing our on our preferences, likes and dislikes, how we feel about other people, all that stuff. We're really able to live a life of ahimsa which is not harming to others, not harming to self and then offering loving kindness and all that we do which can help to create a really peaceful and calm mind state. Once we found this mind state, then it becomes a lot easier to sit in meditation.

A lot of times, we'll find when you're beginning meditating, I know I had this experience where I felt like the second I would close my eyes or the second I would try to sit and relax, things would kind of come up in my mind that I was not happy about. This is called the vrittis or the fluctuations of the mind, the turnings of the mind. A lot of us will find that bing bing bing I'm talking about - that's the vritti. A lot of people will find, and I definitely had this experience for years, that I would try to sit in meditation and it felt like either I was just constantly just thinking about stuff like bing bing bing, thinking about this, thinking about that. My mind was just wandering. swirling around or it would go into a negative place and think about bad things that happened to me, "Oh oh I remember when this happened, that was so bad," and it would become almost a negative experience because it would take my mind into a whole different place where I didn't really want it to be.

Slowly over time, by practicing all eight limbs of yoga, you can really find improvement in things like that. You can find improvement in sleep, your relationship with others, your relationship with yourself, with your business, with your job, with your ability to find calmness and peace of mind anytime anywhere regardless of what is happening and what it is that you have to do. It's taking you into this calm centered place where you're focusing inward, not focusing outward and just thinking about

What is my energy doing right now?

What is my breath doing right now?

What is my mind doing right now?

How is my body positioned right now?

Am I reacting to the situation around me?

And of that yoga. The longer that you practice, it becomes so much more than a class that you go to. It really becomes a part of your lifestyle. For me, all life is yoga. Every conversation is an opportunity to practice yoga. Even driving is an opportunity to practice yoga. I practice pranayama while i'm driving quite frequently. You don't have to do alternate nostril breathing to practice pranayama - it's simply mindfulness of breathing and breath control. Likewise, asana can be totally outside of yoga class. Right now, I'm practicing an asana. Any way that you're sitting or standing or moving with mindful intention is asana practice and so you can practice asana all day if that's how you feel. While you're driving, you could consider the posture that you're sitting in while you're driving, if it's a mindful posture, that's asana. And so for me, the eight limbs of yoga is really a way to incorporate yoga into your lifestyle so that it's part of your everyday activities. Concentration can be something you do at work. Withdrawal of the senses can be something that you do when you're simply at home reading and so just really thinking about that part.

I hope this was helpful and kind of explaining what the eight limbs of yoga are how they fit into your life. They definitely fit into my life all throughout the day.

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Peace & Pineapples!