8 Limbs of Yoga - Yamas

The first of Patanjali's 8 Limbs of Yoga are the yamas - observances for living well in the world.  

There was a time when spiritual pursuits were solely the domain of the Brahmin class.  In Vedic times it was only a member of the Brahmin class who could be a priest, perform religious observances and translate the Vedic texts.  But by the time of the Buddha and Patanjali, many of these religious ceremonies had become meaningless ritual; the shallow outward trappings of faith.  In response to this lack of genuine religious endeavour came the Upanishads, Buddhism and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

Patanjali's system of yoga took away the need for someone to be of a certain class or social standing by birth to follow a spiritual path - then as now, yoga is for everyone.  The Yoga Sutras also give responsibility for one's path to the student himself; we may consult teachers or learn from others, but essentially the yoga path is something we must do by and for ourselves.  To walk along the path of yoga, you have to practise; you have to experience it for yourself.

The yamas are Patanjali's rules for this new breed of yoga practitioners who were often living normal lives in the world, rather than living cloistered lives as priests or scholars.  They describe a set of restraints, which if practised, give yoga students a firm foundation on which to build their yoga practice. 

They yamas are as follow:

• Ahimsa - non-harming/non-violence

• Satya - truthfulness/honesty

• Asteya - non-stealing/integrity

• Brahmacarya - chastity/self-restraint

• Aparigraha - non-grasping/freedom from greed/non-attachment 

These restraints are consistent with the purpose and method of all yoga practice, for instance we cannot practice yoga successfully if we are being violent or causing harm elsewhere in our lives; we will not have a fruitful practice if we are being dishonest to ourselves or to others.

Patanjali describes the yamas as follows:

jati desa kala samaya anavacchinnah sarvabhaumah mahavratam
Yamas are the great, mighty, universal vows, unconditioned by place, time and class

YS II.31 translation by BKS Iyengar

These are vows for everyone regardless of their place or situation of birth (this had particular meaning for a culture with a caste system like India's) - they are for everyone.  They must not be broken for any excuse, be it time, place, or circumstance - it is no good being truthful all week and dishonest on Friday because it was expedient to for you be so.

It is helpful to think of the yamas not as rules, but as freedoms... to be free from causing harm; free from dishonesty; free from the guilt caused by having stolen; free from over-indulgence; free from greed.

The yamas require a commitment to self-reflection: sometimes it is obvious when we have transgressed one of the yamas, other times our actions are more subtle, our motivations more profound.  As when we become angry (ahimsa) because we did something we didn't want to do because we were unable to say no (satya).

A dedicated yoga practice requires not the highest levels of moral rectitude, there is no judgement to be taken here, there is no hierarchy of goodness; yoga requires only that we commit daily to the concept of yamas and each day forgive our shortcomings and commit once more to Patanjali's observances for living well in the world.

Patanjali's 8 Limbs of Yoga - Essential for Modern Practice

The practice of yoga goes back thousands of years, but the way it is practised has changed emphasis over the millenia.  Nowadays most of us come to yoga through the practice of asana, but when Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutras in about 200BC the word asana simply meant 'seat' and was used to refer to the posture assumed for meditation (typically a seated lotus, siddhasana, or cross-legged position) and to the place where you sat to meditate.  Patanjali's only instruction when it came to asana was as follows:

sthiram sukham asanam
yoga pose is a steady and comfortable position

YS II, 46 translation by Mukunda Stiles

That's it.  Sit in a comfortable and steady position and practise yoga.  For a modern yoga student, it doesn't give us much to go on... and some of us can't sit comfortably in a seated position on the floor for very long without experiencing pain... and some of us can't sit quietly with ourselves for even a few minutes without being distracted by the chattering of our minds... we need a bit more help and that came later in the form of Hatha Yoga, a system which gives us the physical exercises to get us to the point of being able to sit quietly with ourselves.

But the 8 limbs of yoga naturally occur during any good modern asana practice and contemplation of all 8 limbs will deepen your yoga practice, whatever form it takes.

The 8 limbs of yoga as taught by Patanjali are:

• Yamas - social observances for living well within society

• Niyamas - individual practices for living well

• Asana - a steady and comfortable position

• Pranayama - breathing practice

• Pratyhara - withdrawal of the senses/drawing the mind's focus inward

• Dharana - concentration through fixing the attention on one point

• Dhyana - meditation

• Samadhi - deep meditation to such an extent that you forget yourself entirely

Some people imagine the 8 limbs of yoga as a ladder - in this analogy we must conquer each step in turn, first mastering the yamas, then moving on to the niyamas, etc. all the way through to samadhi, or enlightenment. 

Another common analogy is to imagine the 8 limbs like the legs of a spider with ourselves as the body; in this analogy each limb contributes concurrently to yoga practice. 

This image resonates more with my own experience of yoga practice.  Not only did I come to asana practice before I had even heard of the yamas or niyamas, but many of the concepts expounded in the 8 limbs had risen naturally in the course of my deepening asana practice before I knew or understood that they had names and had been codified by Patanjali thousands of years before.  For me, therefore, mastering each rung of the ladder in turn was not a prerequisite for experiencing a profound and transformative yoga practice.

Patanjali himself does not prescribe how we should approach the 8 limbs, so in a sense we are free to choose how we view them.  If you decide that you would like to begin by mastering the first rung of the ladder before moving on the next, then let me know how you get on - I am in awe... I fear that were I to take that option, I would spend the whole of this lifetime on that pursuit and end my days no nearer to being ready to step onto the next rung!

Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing about the 8 limbs... taking each one in turn, examining their meaning and considering how they enhance and enrich modern yoga practice.  Perhaps you'll have ideas and experiences to add to the conversation.

I think I am fairly typical - I tried yoga; it worked for me: life felt better, I felt better, and so I wanted to know more.  In seeking to know more I found that much of what I was experiencing in my practice had been described by various teachers and writers over the course of the preceding 2,500 years or so.  It's one of the wonderful things about yoga that once in a while you stumble across something that describes your own private experience so accurately that it amazes you, some of these descriptions are modern, but many of them are from ancient teachings, still as relevant today.  These teachings from centuries past are essential to modern yoga practice, even if that modern practice looks very different to what Patanjali would have understood as yoga.

Yoga for Love

This weekend I took part in a workshop run by Kate Binnie, a pioneer in bringing yoga into hospices and an inspiring teacher.  Kate has been working in hospices for years, helping those in the final stages of their lives to enjoy a little bit of movement, whether in their beds or in wheelchairs, bringing family groups together in shared breathing practices that help to calm anxiety and lessen fear, and using yoga in its most authentic sense: as a peaceful, grounding practice that touches every layer of being.

We all understand that yoga is so much more than a physical practice.  Through yoga, we learn how to anchor ourselves in each present moment; how to deepen and slow our breath in order to calm the nervous system; how to remain composed and flexible in the face of life's vicissitudes; and how to build reflective space into even the most frenetic of days.  Yoga brings us time and again, out of our fearful, riotously thinking minds and into our bodies, for it is in our bodies and not in our heads that we experience peace, love and connection.

If you are a student of yoga, then you are also a teacher of yoga - you don't need any special skills to bring yoga to loved ones with life limiting illnesses.  If you are a student of yoga, then you know how to be still with someone, how not to be afraid of silence; you know how to use gentle breathing techniques to settle agitated minds and bodies; you know how to touch someone's body in order to soothe them; and how to share love.

Here is the message that Kate left us with this weekend : just begin.  It's not about Sanskrit terms, esoteric philosophy or complicated concepts (as interested in those things as you might be), it's about being with another person in peace.  Whether you are a health care professional, a nurse, a doctor, a volunteer, a yoga teacher, or someone with a sick relative or friend, bring yoga to those who need it, wherever they are and however near the end of their life.  Yoga helps.