Topic 2.03: The Eight-fold path of Classical Yoga

Classical Yoga, or the Eight-Fold Path, authored by the Indian sage, Rishi Patanjali thousands of years ago, is still practiced in the world today. It is a holistic discipline, which implies care of the trilogy of mind, body, and spirit. It consists of the following:

• Restraint, 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.