Eight Limbs Of Yoga Meditation

In this meditation, you are guided through an inner experience of what are known as a the Ashtānga or Eight Limbs of yoga: Yama-Niyama (guiding principles), Āsana (embodiment), Prānāyāma (cultivation of life force), Pratyāhāra (inner focus), Dhāranā (centering), Dhyāna (communing), and Samādhi (Absorption into the Divine).

The meditation was recorded during a live class, so the tone is informal, but the energy is deep.

Transcript

So,

Tune into the experience of your breath.

I'm going to lead you through a meditation going through all of the eight limbs of yoga.

It might be different than how you have experienced or understood the eight limbs in the past.

So begin by just checking your intention before we even get into a meditation process at all.

Before we even get into the experience of how we're sitting or how embodied we are.

The first two limbs are Yama and Niyama,

Yama and Niyama.

These are these energetic principles of being and there are five of each.

We're not going to get into all of them for this meditation except for just to check to make sure that we're being loving towards ourselves and that we're recognizing the sacred power within ourselves.

If we do that,

Then we check off all 10 of the Yama and Niyama,

Meaning as you're sitting here with your eyes closed,

Participating in this,

Letting yourself be guided in meditation.

What is your attitude?

What is your bhavana?

Are you coming here the way that you would come to some other entertainment?

Are you coming here completely,

Partially?

Bring yourself here as fully as you can for this meditation and then immediately check and see,

Is there any self-directed violence in you?

One of the Yamas is Ahimsa.

Ahimsa means malice or harm,

Intentional harm.

We all have some parcel of self-hatred or self-nonacceptance or self-alienation or self-punishment in us.

We all have it.

It's a principle that is just in the universe.

It's in society.

And so we have it.

So notice to what extent you're bringing that into this meditation to begin with.

Are you trying to fix yourself?

Can you make this meditation an act of self-loving?

Let's start there.

Like the next breath,

Loving.

The next breath,

Taking you out of any mode of pushing or hustling.

See if you can find some self-sweetness.

One of the Niyamas is Ishvara Pranidhana.

Ishvara Pranidhana means surrender to the divine.

And for our purposes,

We can consider in this meditation,

Are we coming here with humility?

Are we coming here with the awareness that what we're tuning into is sacred,

That we're turning into the temple of our bodies,

The temple of our hearts,

And that this is the most sacred temple.

And the deity,

If you will,

In this temple is the divine itself.

Do we have that attitude combined with that loving attitude?

Even if we're all over the place,

Even if we don't feel like we have the best approach in the beginning,

At least we have the attitude of humility toward it,

The attitude of loving ourselves to some extent.

Start there.

Then we go to asana.

Asana in the way that we look at it in Maha Yoga,

It's not the practicing of yoga asanas or asana sequences.

We think of asana as embodiment of arriving in the body.

Asana in Sanskrit means seatedness.

So you're here,

You're sitting,

You might even be lying down.

But can you fully come into your body,

Fully come into your seat,

So to speak?

Like you're here in the next breath,

You're so here from the top of your head to the soles of your feet,

Every bone,

Every organ,

Everybody,

Your skin,

Every hair.

Are you here?

Then we come to pranayama,

Pranayama in the eight limbs.

Pranayama is a practice.

There are so many different pranayama practices where we use the breath and I teach different pranayamas.

But in this sense of talking about the eight limbs in Maha Yoga,

Pranayama is the command of our life force.

It's the cultivation of our life force.

So assuming we have the attitude,

Assuming that we're getting embodied,

Getting embodied,

The next level of embodiment is reigning in and taking account of and taking care of our life force.

The life force that permeates the physical,

But it's not just that,

It's our mind also.

Our life force goes into our whole body,

But out into our life as well.

And so for this practice,

We call in our life force.

Is it scattered?

Is it in some moment that we were in before still,

It's stuck there.

We have to bring it into the present from the past.

Is our life force jumping into the future?

Just bring it back.

Is it with others?

Sometimes our life force gets stuck to our loved ones.

As a parent,

I have to always pull back my life force from my kids.

They have their own life force.

Their dad needs his life force to be nice and full.

So I use my breath and just really simple.

It's not even a pranayama exercise.

I'm just breathing in and just drawing any diaspora life force,

Any life force that's gone out and is elsewhere into this moment,

Into this body,

Into this asana.

And there's all kinds of ways we can work with the breath,

But today we're just calling in the life force itself,

Pranayama.

We're cultivating the prana that brings us to pratyahara.

Pratyahara is the fifth limb and it's really the turning point.

This is where the meditation,

So to speak,

Begins because pratyahara,

Pratya means like reversing or turning.

Pratyahara means nourishment.

We're changing our nourishment.

We're not getting nurtured from the outside world.

We're finding our nourishment within.

We're not getting nourished by the gross,

Like hopefully our body is comfortable.

But right now we're not seeking an experience in our senses or in our body.

We're seeking an experience within of the subtle.

It's a decision,

Pratyahara.

It's a changing over of fuels.

You can think of it like the energy source is not what's coming from the outside.

The energy source is coming from within.

So even though I'm guiding you and you're taking refuge in this guidance.

You're taking refuge with the other people in community.

Maybe.

You're using this container to source power from inside.

This is pratyahara in the eight limbs.

Then we can go into dharana,

Dharana.

Dharana is when we start to focus directly on the beloved.

On the goal of our meditation,

On the divine.

And dharana also means a technique of meditation.

So for this meditation,

I want to offer a dharana where you just feel your whole body.

You feel your whole life force,

Like a sphere,

Like an aura,

Like a,

Like a globe.

Like a ball of energy that goes out beyond your physical body.

And you bring your attention into the middle of it.

It's a spatial orientation.

If you like nature imagery,

You can think of a,

Of a tree that branches out into many branches and tiny little branches and has leaves and maybe even fruit on it.

And we're pulling our attention from the fruit,

From the leaves,

Into the tiny twiggy branches,

Into the thicker branches,

Into the biggest branches,

Into the trunk.

If you're physically oriented in your body nicely,

You can just feel the central channel in your torso.

From the crown of your head going right down through your perineum.

You can engage the muscles of your pelvic floor to find your perineum.

And this is a subtle dharana.

This is a very subtle dharana.

Maybe this isn't the best one for beginners.

But maybe you're not a beginner.

If you're following these eight limbs.

You've done pratyahara.

You,

You,

You're deciding to find this nourishment within.

Well,

There is a stream,

An energy stream of nourishment that runs right through the center of you.

It's like an artery,

You know,

Trees have arteries.

It's like an artery that goes right through the middle of you and you draw the nourishment from.

From there,

But it's not blood.

It's not electricity,

Like in your spinal cord.

In this central artery,

In this central channel,

Flows nectar,

Spiritual nectar,

Amrita.

Amrita is the Sanskrit word for nectar.

It means immortal.

Mrita means death.

Amrita means that which transcends death.

That which goes against death.

So this dharana,

We're just relaxing from the outside in.

And tuning into this nectar that runs right through the middle of us.

Just imagining it,

Just trying to do it,

Just approaching it.

This is the stage in the eight limbs called dharana.

And you might need to do it again and again.

You might need to do pratyahara again and again.

You might need to do pranayama again and again.

You might need to do asana again and again.

You might need to do yama and niyama again and again.

In the same meditation,

We get pulled all over the place.

Is it your attitude?

Is it your embodiment?

Is it your life force?

Is it that really basic inner outer orientation thing?

That's where your work is,

Wherever you're getting pulled out.

Assuming you can stay with those,

Then you come back to the dharana.

And it's like you're drinking it with the middle of you too.

It's running through the middle of you,

But you're drinking it.

You're taking it with this middle part of you.

This is what you could call the heart.

To whatever extent you're tapped into this artery,

This is dhyana,

This is meditation and the eight limbs,

This is what this limb means,

It's a communion.

It's like,

You're there,

You're embraced,

You're entwined.

You and the nectar,

The nectar in you.

Come out,

Come back to dharana.

You come out further,

You come back through pratyahara.

You go out further than that,

You need to really rein in your life force,

Pranayama.

You're uncomfortable,

You need to shift,

You need to go back to asana,

You need to go back to the embodiment.

Your attitude,

Your whole approach gets tweaked and you start to punish yourself or spank yourself,

Get into a space of complaining or distraction.

You need to come back to yama,

Niyama.

But when you're tapped in,

In that dhyana state,

You lean in and you lean in towards merging and when you merge,

That is samadhi.

There's no more you,

You just dissolve into the nectar.

It's not nectar,

It's fire and you are rice paper.

It's not nectar,

It's warm water and you are just a clump.

Of salt.

This nectar,

You realize you are yourself.

Only nectar.

The nectar of your awareness merges into this inner nectar of the divine.

No more you.

No more drop,

Only ocean.

You come out,

You come back to dhyana.

You come out further,

You come back to dharana.

You come out further,

You come back to pratyahara.

Pranayama,

Asana,

Niyama,

Yama,

Yama,

Niyama,

Asana.

Pranayama,

Pratyahara,

Dharana,

Dhyana and back into dissolving.

Again and again.

These are the eight limbs.

This is a way to work with the eight limbs.

Just let yourself have this medicine.

When you are ready,

Staying in the nectar,

Leaving part of you in samadhi.

Let your body move.

Let your breath deepen.

And when you are ready,

You can let your eyes come open.

Namaskaram.

Reviews

Harshada’s guiding has been so helpful for me learning to source within and better see where my work is needed to keep doing that better and better. In gratitude 🙏🏻