The eight limbs of yoga

Ask what yoga is and most answers describe the third of its eight limbs. Āsana, the postures, is what a class teaches and what the word brings to mind; but in the text that organised yoga as a discipline, posture is one part of eight, and not the first. The eight limbs are Patañjali’s map of the whole practice: how a person conducts themselves, how they treat their own body and breath, and what happens to the mind when the rest is in order.¹ This page says where the map comes from and walks through each limb in turn, following B.K.S. Iyengar’s account, which sets out the eight limbs before a single posture.²

Where the eight limbs come from

The Yoga Sūtras are a short text, 196 aphorisms in four chapters as Iyengar counts them, attributed to a compiler called Patañjali about whom almost nothing is known. Scholars have placed the text anywhere from the second century BCE to about 400 CE; the weight of recent opinion is the early centuries of the Common Era.³ Its second sūtra defines the subject in four words, yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ: yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind.¹ The second chapter, the Sādhana Pāda, is about practice, and it is there, at II.29, that the eight limbs are named: yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi. The sūtra before it says why: by practising the limbs of yoga, impurities dwindle and the light of knowledge grows.¹

The word is aṣṭāṅga, aṣṭa, eight, and aṅga, a limb or a part of the body. The image is a body, not a staircase: the limbs grow together, and a practice that leaves some out is incomplete rather than merely unfinished. Iyengar groups them in three. Yama, niyama and āsana are the outward quest, bahiraṅga sādhanā, which keeps a person in harmony with other people and with nature. Prāṇāyāma and pratyāhāra are the inner quest, antaraṅga sādhanā: the breath regulated, the senses mastered. Dhāraṇā, dhyāna and samādhi are the quest of the soul, antarātmā sādhanā.²

One point of confusion is worth clearing up at the start. Ashtanga Yoga is also the name K. Pattabhi Jois gave his method of flowing, breath-linked sequences, the source of most of today’s vinyasa classes. The name honours the eight limbs; the method is one way of practising the third of them. The lineage page on Jois tells that story.

1. Yama: the five restraints

यम · yama is restraint, from the root yam, to hold or rein in; the dictionary senses run from a bridle to self-control to any great moral rule. Iyengar’s gloss is universal moral commandments.² The Sūtras give five: ahiṃsā, non-violence; satya, truth; asteya, non-stealing; brahmacarya, continence; and aparigraha, non-coveting (II.30). The next sūtra calls them the great vow, mahāvratam, universal because they are not limited by class, place, time or circumstance (II.31).¹

Iyengar begins the whole discipline here, with character rather than the body, and he reads each restraint as a positive quality. Non-violence is more than not killing: it is love, and the conviction that every creature has as much right to live as oneself. Truth is in thought, word and deed. Non-stealing covers the wish to possess what belongs to another, not only the taking of it. Continence is of body, speech and mind. Non-coveting is not hoarding: taking what is needed and no more. Practised without yama and niyama, he says, the āsanas are mere acrobatics.²

2. Niyama: the five observances

नियम · ni, down, within, and yama, restraint: where the yamas govern conduct toward others, the niyamas are the disciplines a person keeps for themselves. Iyengar’s gloss is self-purification by discipline.² Again there are five (II.32): śauca, purity; santoṣa, contentment; tapas, ardour or austerity; svādhyāya, study of the self; and Īśvara praṇidhāna, dedication to the Lord.¹

Iyengar reads them outward from the body. Purity comes first, and the postures are part of it: they tone the body and clear it. Contentment he pictures as a flame that the wind of desire does not shake. Tapas comes from the root tap, to burn, to blaze: the burning effort behind any aim worth reaching. Svādhyāya is sva, self, with adhyāya, study: the education of the self. Dedication to the Lord is the offering of one’s actions and will.²

3. Āsana: posture

आसन · from ās, to sit: a seat, a sitting, and then a posture. Patañjali’s definition is two words, sthira sukham āsanam: a posture is steady and at ease (II.46).¹ Iyengar: āsana brings steadiness, health and lightness of limb, and a steady and pleasant posture produces mental equilibrium and prevents fickleness of mind. The postures are not merely gymnastic exercises, he insists; the body is conquered and made a fit vehicle for the spirit, and the first gain is health, which he defines as a complete equilibrium of body, mind and spirit.²

This is the limb most people know, and the one this site’s study guide covers in full: 200 āsanas as Iyengar teaches them, each name taken apart word by word, with the technique step by step. The names themselves, Iyengar notes, tell the story of the practice, from plants and animals to sages and gods.²

4. Prāṇāyāma: the breath extended

प्राणायाम · prāṇa is breath, and much more: respiration, life, vitality, wind, energy, strength, and the soul as against the body. Āyāma is length, expansion, stretching or restraint. Together: the extension of the breath, and its control.² The Sūtras define it as the regulation of the movements of inhalation and exhalation, once the posture is secure (II.49).¹ Iyengar names the three movements it governs: pūraka, inhalation, filling; recaka, exhalation, emptying; and kumbhaka, retention, when the breath is held with neither. A yogi’s life, he writes, is measured not by the number of his days but by the number of his breaths.²

Iyengar teaches prāṇāyāma as a practice of its own, after the āsanas, and approaches it with care: the breathing made slow, deep and rhythmic, nothing forced, and the postures mastered first.²

5. Pratyāhāra: the senses drawn back

प्रत्याहार · prati, back, against, and āhāra, taking in, the ordinary word for food. The senses feed on their objects; pratyāhāra draws that feeding back. The Sūtras describe it as the senses, withdrawn from their objects, following the nature of the mind instead (II.54).¹ Iyengar introduces it with the chariot of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad: the Self is the lord in the chariot, the body the chariot, the intellect the charioteer, the mind the reins, and the senses the horses, with the objects of desire as their roads.⁴ A person whose reason gives way to the pull of the senses is lost; with rhythmic breathing the senses turn inward instead of running after what they want, and the person is set free from their tyranny.²

6. Dhāraṇā: the mind held in one place

धारणा · from the root dhṛ, to hold, to bear, to support: a holding of the mind in one place, which is exactly Patañjali’s definition, the binding of the mind to one spot (III.1).¹ When the body has been tempered by āsanas, the mind refined by the fire of prāṇāyāma and the senses brought under control by pratyāhāra, Iyengar says, the practitioner reaches the sixth limb: concentration on a single point, or on a task in which one is completely engrossed. The mind must be stilled for that absorption to be possible.²

7. Dhyāna: concentration without a break

ध्यान · from dhyai, to think of, to contemplate: meditation. The Sūtras define it as the continuous flow of attention toward the object on which the mind was fixed (III.2).¹ As water takes the shape of its vessel, Iyengar writes, the mind that contemplates an object takes the shape of that object; when the flow of concentration toward it is unbroken, the state that arises is meditation. He borrows the Bhagavad Gītā’s image for the meditating mind: a lamp in a windless place, its flame not flickering.⁵

8. Samādhi: the end of the quest

समाधि · sam, together, completely, with ā and dhā, to put: a placing-together, a composing of the mind until it is wholly absorbed. (Not the sama of Samasthiti, which is a different word meaning even.) Patañjali’s definition: meditation in which only the object shines, as if the mind were empty of its own form (III.3).¹ Iyengar calls samādhi the end of the practitioner’s quest. At the peak of meditation the body and senses are at rest, as in sleep; the faculties of mind and reason are alert, as in waking; and yet the person has gone beyond ordinary consciousness, fully aware and fully at peace. It is not a trance or a loss of awareness; he calls it the peace that passes all understanding.²

How the limbs fit together

The last three limbs run into one another. Concentration becomes meditation when it flows without a break, and meditation becomes samādhi when only the object remains; the Sūtras give the three practised together on one object a name of their own, saṃyama (III.4).¹ The first five are the preparation that makes those three possible, and they are not left behind once the mind can sit still: the yamas and niyamas are kept for life, the body is kept steady, the breath kept even.

That is why the word is limbs. A beginner in a posture class is already practising the third limb and, if the class is taught the way Iyengar taught it, the first two as well. The breath comes next, in its own time, and the inner limbs are what the practice is for.

Questions people ask

What are the eight limbs of yoga?

Yama (moral restraints), niyama (observances), āsana (posture), prāṇāyāma (control of the breath), pratyāhāra (withdrawal of the senses), dhāraṇā (concentration), dhyāna (meditation) and samādhi (absorption, oneness with the object of meditation). Patañjali lists them in that order in the Yoga Sūtras, II.29.

Where do the eight limbs come from?

From Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, a text of 196 short aphorisms in four chapters, most likely written down in the early centuries of the Common Era. The second chapter names the eight limbs as the means of yoga. B.K.S. Iyengar sets them out at length before he teaches a single posture.

Is Ashtanga yoga the same as the eight limbs?

Aṣṭāṅga means eight limbs, and that is what Patañjali’s phrase refers to. Ashtanga Yoga is also the name K. Pattabhi Jois gave his method of flowing, breath-linked sequences; the name honours the eight limbs, but the method is one way of practising the third of them, āsana.

Do you have to practise the eight limbs in order?

They are called limbs, not steps, and Iyengar treats them as parts of one body that grow together: character and posture first, breath and the senses next, and the last three as the fruit of the rest. Āsana is where most people begin, and the ethical limbs are practised alongside it from the start.

What is the difference between yama and niyama?

Yama is restraint in conduct toward others: non-violence, truth, non-stealing, continence and non-coveting. Niyama is discipline kept for oneself: purity, contentment, ardour, study of the self and dedication to the Lord. Iyengar calls the first the universal moral commandments and the second self-purification by discipline.

What is the difference between dhāraṇā, dhyāna and samādhi?

Dhāraṇā is concentration, the mind held on one point. Dhyāna is that concentration continued without a break. Samādhi is the state in which only the object remains and the meditator is one with it. The Sūtras treat the three practised together as saṃyama.

Is āsana the whole of yoga?

No. Āsana is the third limb of eight, and the one most classes teach. Iyengar says that without yama and niyama the āsanas are mere acrobatics, and his practice of the postures is meant to lead on to prāṇāyāma and the inner limbs.