Topic 2.03: The Eight-fold path of Classical Yoga

Classical Yoga, or the Eight-Limb (ashtanga) Path, authored by the Indian sage, Rishi Patanjali, thousands of years ago, is still practiced in the world today.

It is the broad system of yoga that forms the context for a holistic discipline, implying that the eight limbs are interrelated approaches within the school of yoga,  which, through care of the trilogy of mind, body, and spirit develop a laser-like focus of the mind.  This focus is utilised to explore  any and all physical and mental phenomena that arise in order to reveal that they are composites of their backgrounds, and not anything separate, external or eternal. This revelation or insight leads the practitioner on and on to deeper states of insight into the nature of their mind and the world and eventually to liberation from conditioned existence.

The eight limbs consists of the following:

• Restraint, Self culture, yama

Applicable to our relationships with other people, and includes commitments such as non-violence (ahimsa), truthfulness (satya), non-stealing (asteya), self-control (brahmacharya), and non-attachment (aparigraha).

•   Observances, niyama

Applicable to our relationship with ourselves, and includes commitments such as purity (saucha), contentment (santosha), self-disciplined effort (tapas), self-study (swadhyaya), and the ability to concede to something higher than one’s self (ishwara pranidhana).

• Steady and firm posture, asana

The practice of asana establishes a body that is less susceptible to outside influences. When you come home to your body you embrace and heal your temple and establish a stable platform to build your life upon.

Asana presents an opportunity to explore the intimate conversation between your body, breath, senses, and awareness. Restorative yoga mat practice brings expansiveness, energy, and spaciousness for healing.

In addition to significant health benefits, yoga postures help you maintain a meditation position without being distracted by the body.

• Breath control, pranayama.

Breath is the link that connects the body with the mind. With the stress and pressures in life, quick, shallow breathing becomes a symptom of our busy minds. A regular, deep, rhythmic yoga breath practice delivers a concentrated, clear, and positive mind.

• Awareness beyond the senses, pratyahara.

Every day you need some quiet time away from the senses and the distractions and stimulations of the external world. Pratyahara is also a prelude to an increasingly focused state of mind as it enters a meditative state.

• Concentration, dharana.

Continuity of the thought process is yet a further step towards a deepening meditative state. Dharana is reached when you can steadily focus on an object of contemplation.

• Meditation, dhyana.

Absorptive meditation is an intense form of concentration.  Through the continuous practice of meditating for some time each day, a state of actual meditation is reached. This profoundly aids spiritual life.

• Equanimity, samadhi.

The mind entering into the rare state of samadhi has been compared to salt being dissolved in water. In this state, the mind dissolves its ‘worldly’ consciousness into a state of super-consciousness.  Samadhi is a life-changing, evolutionary pinnacle of spiritual life.

SUMMARY

The primary ground on which the eight limbs of yoga is built is an establishment of the ethical framework from weich the other limbs of practice may then flourish. The support built from the first two limbs, the yamas and the niyamas, provides a net of interactive kindness and responsiveness to both oneself and within relationships to others.

As part of the framework, the next two limbs, the physical posture practices, asana, and breathing practices, pranayama, begin to open the body, the breath, and the sense fields, de-conditioning the practitioner from the overlay of concepts and memories. This paves the way for the meditative limbs to work easily and with less danger of becoming lost in thought and abstracted from the body.

In the fifth limb, pratyahara, the mind is trained to observe the sense fields without identifying with or separating objects from their background. In this way the attention no longer moves about in the sense fields.

In the sixth limb, dharana, the attention is concentrated on a single area.

The seventh limb, dhyana, occurs when concentration flows without conflict or tension.

In the eighth limb, samadhi, the mental habit of making a constructed object and subject stops. This allows a free, unobstructed view of whatever is being obswerved, allowing insight into its true nature.

The advantage of ashtanga yoga’s multiple approaches through various limbs is that it ensures that practitioners do not neglect any aspect of their inner or outer life, and this in turn fosters the ability to stay grounded in reality rather than being swept away by concepts of fantasy.