Walk into most yoga studios and you will encounter the third limb.
Only the third. The one about posture. It occupies the hour, the mat, the marketing, and for a great many practitioners it is the whole of what the word means.
Patanjali gave it three sentences out of 196.
The eight limbs, ashtanga, appear in the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras as a complete path, and understanding what the other seven are does something useful: it makes the familiar third one look different.
“The eight limbs are not eight separate practices. Together they describe a path from ethical conduct and bodily steadiness toward increasingly refined states of attention.”
Limb, Not Rung
The Sanskrit is anga, which means limb in the anatomical sense.
That word choice matters, because the eight are routinely described as a ladder to be climbed in order, mastering each before moving to the next. Patanjali does not say this. Vyasa’s commentary does not require it.
Limbs of a body work simultaneously. You do not perfect your left arm before starting on your right. The eight develop together and support one another, and the sequence is a description of how they relate rather than a queue.
The traditional division is into bahiranga, the outer five, and antaranga, the inner three.
The First Two Are About Other People
Before anything else, Patanjali puts ethics.
Yama, five restraints, concerning how you behave toward the world:
- Ahimsa, non-violence, in thought and speech as well as action
- Satya, truthfulness
- Asteya, non-stealing, including of credit, time and attention
- Brahmacharya, usually right use of energy, and historically continence
- Aparigraha, non-grasping, not accumulating beyond need
Niyama, five observances, concerning how you conduct yourself:
- Shaucha, cleanliness, of body and of mental content
- Santosha, contentment with what is
- Tapas, disciplined effort, the same inner heat the Vedas described
- Svadhyaya, self-study and study of texts
- Ishvara pranidhana, surrender to a higher principle
Ten commitments before a single posture. That ordering is a statement: a person who is dishonest, grasping and careless with others is not going to get very far by improving their hamstrings.
There is a further claim attached to the yamas that is easy to read past. Sutra 2.31 calls them sarvabhauma mahavratam, a great vow that is universal, not qualified by birth, place, time or circumstance.
In other words, the restraints do not come with exemptions. There is no category of person to whom they do not apply, and no situation in which they are suspended.
That is a demanding position, and it was written in a society organised around exactly the kinds of distinctions the sutra sets aside.
Then the Body, Briefly
Asana is the third limb, and Patanjali’s definition runs to three words. The seat should be steady and comfortable.
He then says the posture is achieved through relaxation of effort and attention to the infinite, and that from it comes freedom from being disturbed by opposites, heat and cold, hunger and satiety.
That is all of it. The physical practice most people call yoga is, in the classical text, a preparation for sitting still without distraction.
Pranayama, the fourth, is breath regulation. Patanjali describes the pause between inhalation and exhalation as the operative element and notes that the practice thins the covering over inner light.
Both limbs share a purpose. A body that aches and a breath that is ragged will pull attention outward continuously. Settle both and attention becomes available.
The Turn Inward
Pratyahara, the fifth, is the hinge of the whole system and the one that gets least attention.
It is usually translated as withdrawal of the senses, which sounds like shutting things out. Patanjali’s description is subtler: the senses disengage from their objects and follow the nature of the mind instead.
The classical analogy is bees following the queen. Not blocked, not forced, simply no longer pursuing their own directions independently.
Anyone who has been so absorbed in something that they did not hear a person speaking to them has experienced pratyahara accidentally.
After this, the remaining three limbs are entirely internal.
The Last Three Are One Thing
Dharana is concentration. Fixing attention on a single point and returning it there each time it wanders. The returning is the practice, not a failure of the practice.
Dhyana is meditation, and the difference from dharana is continuity. Where concentration is repeatedly re-established, meditation is attention that no longer breaks. It is unbroken flow toward the object.
Samadhi is absorption, in which the distinction between the one attending and what is attended to falls away. Patanjali describes several grades of it, and the later chapters distinguish states that still carry a seed of separation from those that do not.
These final three are collectively named samyama, and the text treats them as a unit rather than as three achievements. Chapter 3 describes powers arising from samyama applied to various objects, and then, notably, warns that these powers are obstacles to the actual goal.
| Limb | Sanskrit | Domain |
| 1 | Yama | Conduct toward others |
| 2 | Niyama | Personal observance |
| 3 | Asana | Steady seat |
| 4 | Pranayama | Breath |
| 5 | Pratyahara | Sense withdrawal |
| 6 | Dharana | Concentration |
| 7 | Dhyana | Meditation |
| 8 | Samadhi | Absorption |
Where the Modern Class Fits
None of this means a studio class is doing something wrong. It means it is doing something narrower than the name suggests.
A well-taught class often smuggles in more of the eight than it advertises. Attention to breath is the fourth limb. Being asked to keep your gaze at one point is the sixth. The instruction to stop comparing yourself to the person on the next mat is, in substance, the first.
The limbs are not absent from a modern practice. They are mostly unnamed.
Why This Matters for a Modern Practice
None of this is an argument that physical yoga is illegitimate. It has its own long lineage through the hatha traditions, it does real good, and there is no obligation on anyone to practise all eight limbs to benefit from one.
But the proportions are worth knowing.
A system in which ethical conduct comes first, the body gets three sentences, and the final third is about the quality of attention is a different thing from a fitness discipline. Knowing that changes what a person might reasonably expect from it, and it puts the mat in context.
The other seven limbs are not advanced material for people who have got good at postures. In Patanjali’s arrangement, two of them come first.
Common Questions
What are the eight limbs of yoga?
Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi, set out in the second chapter of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
Do you have to practise them in order?
Not strictly. Anga means limb rather than rung, and the eight are generally understood to develop together and support one another rather than forming a queue.
Which limb is physical posture?
Asana, the third. Patanjali defines it only as a seat that is steady and comfortable, and devotes three sutras out of 196 to it.
What is pratyahara?
The fifth limb, in which the senses disengage from their objects and follow the mind. It marks the transition from the outer limbs to the inner ones.
What is the difference between dharana and dhyana?
Dharana is concentration repeatedly re-established on a point. Dhyana is that attention becoming continuous and unbroken.
What is samyama?
The last three limbs, dharana, dhyana and samadhi, treated together as a single practice rather than as separate stages.
Sources consulted: Edwin Bryant, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali (2009); Vyasa, Yoga Bhashya, standard translations; B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1993); Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Yoga”.
Sources and further reading
Primary texts are linked in public-domain translations where one exists; modern scholarship is linked to the publisher.
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