Expand Your Practice with the Eight Limbs

by Sarah Ahimsa Asana Living Yoga Niyamas Pranayama Svadhyaya Tapas

It is common to think of yoga as primarily about getting on a sticky mat and putting your body in different positions and shapes – like Downward Dog or Headstand – for the purpose of physical exercise, but classically, the poses (called asana in Sanskrit) are only one eighth of the practice of yoga!

In The Yoga Sutras, the sage Patanjali laid out an eight limb path of yoga, which is most simply a guide to living a joyful life. Here is an outline of the eight limbs of a classical yoga practice:

1) Yamas – Ethical practices or guidelines for engaging with the world. There are five yamas:

  • ahimsa (non-harming or dynamic peacefulness)
  • satya (truthfulness)
  • asteya (non-stealing)
  • bramacharya (wise use of energy)
  • aparigraha (non-grasping)

2) Niyamas – Internal disciplines or ways of engaging with yourself. There are also fiveniyamas:

  • saucha (purity)
  • santosha (contentment)
  • tapas (consistent commitment or discipline)
  • svadhyaya (self-study)
  • ishvara-pranidhana (surrender)

3) Asana – The postures. The practice of moving the body to awaken a deeper experience of awareness and to prepare the body for stillness.

4) Pranayama – Breath work. Prana can be translated as life energy and the suffix yama means to expand or draw out with control.

5) Pratyahara – A turning inward of the senses.

6) Dharana – Concentration. A practice of bringing one’s awareness back to a focus.

7) Dhyana – Meditative absorption. Being able to hold the concentrated focus of dhyana.

8) Samadhi – An experience of interconnectedness with all living things (often translated as enlightenment).

I like to think of these Sanskrit words as murals that are slowly painted with years and years of practice. As our exploration of the eight limbs continues and our understanding begins to deepen, our murals slowly begin to fill in, to expand, and to more actively guide our practice.

A recent study at the University of Southern Mississippi found that the impact of a holistic yoga practice (incorporating breath work, meditation, and spiritual and ethical teachings) to be considerably more beneficial for students than a practice just involving asana. While this post only offers a basic understanding of the eight limbs, I hope it exposes you to the possibility of deepening your practice in new and different ways.

Photo Credit: Sarah Jamieson

Post also available on YYoga’s Blog

Commit to Compassion

by Sarah Ahimsa Compassion Philosophy Tapas

There is no power on earth greater than right action in the present moment. – Vasistha

sarah jamieson yoga

I teach a workshop on developing a daily yoga practice, and one of the key focuses of this workshop is learning to understand why yogic philosophy suggests a daily practice. To gain this understanding, we delve into the concept of tapas, which Patanjali wrote about in the Yoga Sutras around 200 CE.

In the midst of exploring this concept, I like to remind everyone (myself included) that tapas, a practice that can be described as consistency in striving towards your goals, was not included in the Yoga Sutras because it is something that most people find easy to do.

This practice of consistently striving towards our goals, learning to live with our most compelling priorities in mind, and investing our energy wisely is one of the most challenging things we can learn to do. A practice of consistency is demanding on a good day, but when life gets overwhelming, the practice gets even harder. And when we forget that consistency is something we’re learning, and we turn it into something we expect of ourselves, we make it infinitely more challenging.

When we berate ourselves for our failure to practice consistently, we lose track of a fundamental aspect of the practice of yoga. A consistent practice requires ahimsa (non-violence or non-harming); it requires a compassionate understanding of the challenges of being a human.

In the book Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff offers three elements of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. With the element of common humanity, she explains that “self-compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience – something that we all go through.” As you make new commitments in your life or re-commit to goals that have fallen away, first and foremost hold a commitment to being compassionate with yourself through the learning process.

Remember that maintaining consistency in striving towards your goals is a core component of the yoga practice (which has been around for thousands of years) because it is something that everyone finds challenging. Remember that the challenges you face are part of a shared human experience – everyone suffers and feel inadequate, and remember that one of the most powerful ways to overcome those feelings is to share them with someone who feels exactly the same way – in other words, almost anyone.

By holding compassion as our first commitment, we create the space to better understand the challenges that arise for us in a practice of consistency. We move into a place where we can compassionately guide our lives in a way that honours our strengths and weaknesses. And with self-compassion, we learn to be more empathetic and understanding of the people around us and deepen the extend to which we can support them in committing to compassion.



Photo Credit: Chris Yakimov

 

Love as a Life Practice

by Sarah Living Yoga Love Tapas

Sarah Jamieson Yoga

Falling in love, finding your true love, meeting your soul mate. In many ways, our culture’s idea of romantic love aligns with a fated, pleasure soaked experience of enviable bliss. Romantic movies consistently reaffirm this image with stories of “meant to be” couples finally overcoming the obstacles that were keeping them apart.

And, then, just as their relationship starts, the movie ends.

I always thought I knew that love wasn’t like it was in the movies. I knew that relationships took work. But I have come to realize that I didn’t know what I thought I knew. I was holding beliefs about romantic love that were more reflective of the movies than I thought.

I thought love was certain. I thought it was hard work, but the kind of hard that doesn’t feel too hard. I thought that when you met the person you would commit to spending your life with that there would be no doubts. I thought deep love was about doing crazy and impulsive things and feeling big, powerful, earthshaking feelings.

The yogic practice of tapas can be defined as learning to live with our most compelling priorities in mind. As I have learned to hold my yoga practice as a constant priority, my understanding of love has slowly shifted alongside. I have come to see love as a practice that requires the same disciplined approach.

In meditation practice, we develop our ability to bring our awareness back to a point of focus. We can also use this skill in the practice of love by consistently committing to bring our attention back to how to best love and respect our partner or friend. The focus of the relationship shifts from, “How I am I feeling about this person?” to “How am I treating this person?” The experience of love shifts from an internal feeling to an external offering. Love becomes a choice, an action, and a way of life. Love becomes less what you feel or don’t feel and more about what you do.

I now think that love is less about certainty and more about commitment, that it can feel unbearably hard, and that this difficultly can fuel doubt. I see more love in the daily commitment to support another person in the messiness of life than in grandiose gestures, and I believe the greatest acts of love are not fueled by the feeling of love but rather a commitment to act with love even in the absence of feeling it.

Love is a choice we face each and every day. To act from a place of love in the face of emotions like fear, anger or jealousy requires a deep commitment to holding love as a priority – but like anything else, choosing love gets easier with practice.



Photo Credit: David R MacKenzie