An Introduction to the 8 Limbs of Yoga: Patanjali’s Complete Path in Plain Language

By Deep Kumar Ji, ERYT-500, Lead Master Teacher at Yoga New Vision, Ubud, Bali

The 8 limbs of yoga are Patanjali’s complete system for human development, described in Yoga Sutra 2.29 as Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi. These eight steps move from outer ethical behavior to inner meditative absorption. They are designed to be practiced together, not in rigid sequence, and they form the philosophical foundation of everything we teach at Yoga New Vision.

What Are the 8 Limbs of Yoga?

People usually find yoga through a class, a video, or a friend who told them it helped with back pain. That is a perfectly fine beginning. But at some point, something shifts. The class ends, the mat rolls up, and you feel like you left something on the floor that you cannot name. That unnamed thing is what the 8 limbs are pointing toward.

The Sanskrit word is Ashtanga. Ashta means eight. Anga means limb. The sage Patanjali organized these eight steps into the Yoga Sutras, a collection of 196 aphorisms written roughly 2,000 years ago. His goal was not to teach stretching. His goal was to answer one question: why does the human mind suffer, and how do we move past that?

The answer he gave was yogah chitta vritti nirodhah. Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. The 8 limbs are the method.

The 8 Limbs at a Glance

The first five limbs are called Bahiranga, the outer limbs. The final three are called Antaranga, the inner limbs. This is not just a classification. It tells you that the entire outer life of ethics, body, and breath is preparation for the inner life of attention, meditation, and liberation.

One more thing before we go deeper. When you hear the word Ashtanga in a modern yoga studio, the teacher likely means the vigorous posture-based practice made popular by K. Pattabhi Jois in the 20th century. That is a physical style named after this philosophy. Patanjali’s Ashtanga is something much broader. The asana in Patanjali’s system is one limb out of eight.

The Outer Limbs: Building the Foundation

Limb 1 | Yama: How You Treat the World Around You

I have seen students arrive in Bali carrying a perfect headstand and a very troubled inner life. Perfect inversions, terrible relationships with themselves and others. Yama is the first limb because Patanjali knew this. He knew you cannot build a quiet mind on a foundation of harm.

Yama means ethical restraints. There are five of them. Ahimsa is non-violence, not just physical but in thought and speech. Satya is truthfulness. Asteya is non-stealing, which extends to stealing credit, stealing people’s energy, stealing more than you need. Brahmacharya is right use of energy, the conscious direction of your vitality rather than its waste. Aparigraha is non-greed, the practice of taking only what is necessary.

Yama is not a rulebook you pass or fail. It is a mirror. I tell students to pick one Yama per week and watch how many times it surfaces in ordinary moments. Before reacting in a difficult conversation, pause. That pause is Yama.

Limb 2 | Niyama: How You Treat Yourself

Where Yama looks outward, Niyama turns the same inquiry inward. There are five Niyamas. Saucha is purity, cleanliness of body, space, and mind. Santosha is contentment, the radical practice of being satisfied with what is actually present. Tapas is austerity, the disciplined fire that keeps you showing up when comfort pulls you away. Svadhyaya is self-study, reading the texts and studying your own patterns with equal honesty. Ishvara Pranidhana is surrender to something larger than your own plans, whether you call that God, nature, or the force that runs through all of it.

Tapas is the one most students underestimate. It is what gets you on the mat at 6 a.m. when the bed is warm. It is not punishment. It is respect for the practice.

Limb 3 | Asana: The Body as a Diagnostic Tool

In the West, asana is treated as the destination. You come to yoga to get flexible, to get strong, to get the pose. I understand that. But in Patanjali’s original definition, asana means sthira sukham asanam: a steady and comfortable seat. That is it.

The actual physical practice, what happens in the shala each morning, is not the goal. It is a diagnostic. In my teaching through Physio Yoga Therapy, I watch how a student responds when their muscles tremble in Warrior II. That trembling reveals exactly how they respond to difficulty in their daily life. Do they hold their breath? Do they tighten their jaw? Do they mentally leave the room? Asana does not just work the body. It safely exposes the ego so you can see it clearly.

The Annamaya Kosha, the physical body layer, is what asana directly purifies. But when asana is practiced with awareness, it begins to touch the Pranamaya Kosha, the energy body, which is where Pranayama takes over.

Limb 4 | Pranayama: The Bridge Between Body and Mind

Prana means life force. Ayama means extension or regulation. Pranayama is not just breathing exercises. It is the conscious direction of your vital energy, the force that animates you.

Breath is the only autonomic function in the body that you can control voluntarily. That makes it the bridge. When you regulate your breathing through practices like Nadi Shodhan (alternate nostril breathing) or Bhramari (humming bee breath), you are directly influencing the parasympathetic nervous system. What Patanjali called working with prana, modern neuroscience recognizes as down-regulating the stress response.

My training in Buteyko Breathing showed me how much chronic over-breathing drives anxiety, poor sleep, and mental agitation. Pranayama addresses this at the root. It is where the outer practice begins to genuinely shift inner states.

Limb 5 | Pratyahara: The Limb Everyone Skips

Pratyahara is the withdrawal of the senses from external objects. It is the fifth limb, sitting exactly at the hinge between the outer and inner practices.

I say this plainly: Pratyahara is the most ignored limb in modern yoga, and it is exactly why so many people tell me they cannot meditate. You cannot run a loud, music-driven Vinyasa class, then immediately sit in silence and expect the mind to be quiet. The senses do not switch off by command. Pratyahara is the process of gently disengaging them, the clutch between the engine of external life and the quiet gears of the inner limbs.

Practical Pratyahara can be as simple as closing your eyes and noticing the sounds in the room without following any of them. Feeling your body from inside rather than observing it from outside. Designating real periods of no screens, no noise, no input. The mind needs time to turn inward before it can go still.

The Inner Limbs: Where Yoga Actually Becomes Yoga

Limb 6 | Dharana: Concentration That Still Has an Owner

Dharana is focused, one-pointed attention held on a single object. That object can be the breath, a candle flame, a mantra, or the space between two thoughts.

Dharana still has effort in it. You are the one concentrating. You notice you are doing it. The meditator and the object of meditation are still two separate things. That distinction is the entire difference between this limb and the next one.

Limb 7 | Dhyana: What Happens When You Stop Trying to Meditate

Here is something I want to say clearly, because the confusion around this limb costs people years of unnecessary frustration. You cannot do Dhyana. It is grammatically and practically impossible. You can only practice Dharana. Dhyana is what happens to you when the effort of Dharana finally drops away.

When a student tells me they are failing at meditation, I know what is happening. They are doing Dharana correctly. They are concentrating, noticing the mind wander, bringing it back. That is the practice. Dhyana is the state that occasionally arises when that practice becomes effortless and unbroken. The observer and the observed stop being separate things.

My three-step process for approaching Dhyana: begin with the body, feel it fully as it is right now. Shift attention to the breath, slow and full. Then turn awareness to the thoughts and emotions arising, watching them without becoming them. You are the witness, not the witness’s commentary. Rest there.

Limb 8 | Samadhi: Not a Trance. A Recognition.

Samadhi is widely misunderstood. People picture a yogi in a blissful trance, floating slightly above the mat. That is not what Patanjali described.

Samadhi is the dissolution of the separate self. It is the recognition that the sense of being a separate observer, watching life happen from a private location inside the head, is a construct. When that construct loosens, what remains is sometimes called union, sometimes called liberation, sometimes called love.

There are two forms. Savikalpa Samadhi is absorption with a remaining seed of identity. Nirvikalpa Samadhi is absorption without any residual separation. Practically speaking, most of us experience brief moments of Savikalpa Samadhi in nature, in music, in a moment of complete presence with another person. Yoga did not invent these moments. It gives you a path to cultivate them deliberately.

As I wrote in our first version of this post: spend a few moments each day in silence or in connection with a tree, the sky, the sound of water. Start there. Samadhi begins at the point where you stop relating to life as something happening to you and start recognizing you are it.

Can You Practice the 8 Limbs Out of Order?

The 8 limbs of yoga are not a staircase. Patanjali designed them to be practiced concurrently, each one reinforcing the others. You do not need to perfect Yama before touching Asana. In practice, most students begin with Asana and Pranayama, then naturally move toward the ethical and meditative limbs as their practice deepens. Progress is spiral, not linear.

The outer limbs prepare the ground. Without some degree of Yama and Niyama, the mind is too unsettled for Dharana to take hold. Without Asana and Pranayama, the body is too restless for Pratyahara to happen. But you work them all simultaneously. One limb naturally draws another in through a side door, as I said in our original post. Begin anywhere. Everything else will follow.

The term Samyama describes the combined mastery of the final three inner limbs: Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi, held as one continuous practice. Patanjali describes this in Yoga Sutras 3.1 through 3.4. It is the deepest layer of the meditative path, where concentration, awareness, and absorption are no longer three separate acts but one integrated state.

How I See This Working in Real Life

Years ago, a student came to our training in Ubud. She was a physiotherapist from Australia, confident in her body knowledge, excellent in Asana, skeptical of philosophy. By day three she was struggling in our morning Pranayama sessions. Not physically. Mentally. The stillness was disturbing her.

We talked after class. She said she had spent a decade helping people fix their bodies without once turning attention inward. Pratyahara was confronting her with the silence she had been filling with work. By the end of our 22-day immersion, she described it as the first time she had felt genuinely rested in her adult life. Not because she learned to meditate perfectly. Because Pratyahara showed her where she had been leaking energy.

That is what the 8 limbs do in practice. They do not hand you a state. They show you where you have been running from one.

I am an ERYT-500 teacher trainer with Yoga Alliance and a Registered Master Teacher Trainer with the International Yoga Federation. My advanced training at Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute in Lonavala, one of the oldest scientific yoga research institutes in the world, shaped how I understand the relationship between this ancient framework and the modern human body and mind.

The 8 Limbs at Yoga New Vision

All eight limbs form the philosophical backbone of our 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Bali. We teach Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras not as history but as a living curriculum. Each morning asana session is framed within the context of which limb it is developing. Each pranayama session is explicitly connected to the nervous system science behind it. Philosophy classes are not optional extras at the end of a long day. They are woven through everything.

In the 22-day immersion in Ubud, you live the limbs rather than study them. Meals are vegetarian and eaten in awareness. Technology is reduced during certain periods, which is Pratyahara in practice. Morning meditation sessions build Dharana before students even know that is what they are doing.

Over 15,000 graduates have moved through this training since 2009. Many of them tell us the philosophy classes were the part they least expected to care about and the part they carried home most deeply. That does not surprise me. The body benefits are real, but the 8 limbs are a framework for a whole life, not just a stronger practice.

If you want to explore this in person, you are welcome to book a free 15-minute call with our team. No pressure. Just a real conversation about whether this training is right for where you are.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the 8 limbs of yoga in order?

The 8 limbs are Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi. First named in Yoga Sutra 2.29, they move from outer ethical behavior through physical and breath practices, then into concentration, meditation, and complete inner absorption. They are designed to work together, not in rigid sequence.

2. Who created the 8 limbs of yoga?

The sage Patanjali described the 8 limbs in the Yoga Sutras, written approximately 2,000 years ago. Patanjali did not invent yoga, he systematized a much older tradition into 196 clear aphorisms. The 8 limbs appear specifically in the second chapter, called Sadhana Pada, the chapter on practice.

3. What does Ashtanga mean in the 8 limbs of yoga?

Ashtanga comes from two Sanskrit words: ashta, meaning eight, and anga, meaning limb or component. In Patanjali’s system, Ashtanga Yoga refers to this complete eightfold path. The vigorous physical Ashtanga Vinyasa style practiced in modern studios was named after this philosophy but represents only the third limb, Asana.

4. What is the difference between Dharana and Dhyana?

Dharana is active concentration: you deliberately hold attention on one point and notice when it wanders. Dhyana is what arises when that concentration becomes effortless and uninterrupted. In Dharana, you are still the one concentrating. In Dhyana, the separation between the meditator and the object of focus dissolves. One requires effort; the other releases it.

5. Are the 8 limbs of yoga sequential or practiced together?

They are practiced together, not in sequence. Most practitioners begin with Asana and Pranayama, which are more accessible entry points. As the practice deepens, the ethical limbs and meditative limbs naturally follow. Patanjali presents them in order to show their logical relationship, not to set a completion prerequisite for each stage before the next.

6. What is the purpose of Pratyahara in the 8 limbs of yoga?

Pratyahara is sense withdrawal, the practice of disengaging attention from external stimulation. It sits at the hinge between the outer limbs and the inner limbs. Without Pratyahara, the mind remains too attached to sensory input to enter genuine concentration or meditation. It is why deep quiet after a busy day does not automatically produce stillness.

7. What is Samadhi and how do you reach it?

Samadhi is complete absorption, the dissolution of the boundary between the observer and what is being observed. It is not a trance or an altered state imposed from outside. It arises naturally as the preceding seven limbs mature. Patanjali describes two forms: Savikalpa, with a remaining trace of self-awareness, and Nirvikalpa, complete absorption with no residual separation.

8. What are the 5 Yamas in yoga?

The five Yamas are Ahimsa (non-violence in thought, speech, and action), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing, including of energy and credit), Brahmacharya (conscious direction of vital energy), and Aparigraha (non-greed, taking only what is necessary). They apply universally regardless of culture, background, or level of practice.

9. What are the 5 Niyamas in yoga?

The five Niyamas are Saucha (purity of body and mind), Santosha (contentment with what is present), Tapas (disciplined effort and consistency), Svadhyaya (self-study through both sacred texts and honest self-observation), and Ishvara Pranidhana (surrender to something larger than the personal self). They are the inner disciplines that make the outer practice sustainable.

10. How are the 8 limbs of yoga taught in Yoga Teacher Training?

A quality YTT integrates all 8 limbs through asana framed within philosophy, Pranayama tied to nervous system science, and dedicated Yoga Sutras study. At Yoga New Vision’s 200 HR YTT in Bali, students live the 8 limbs daily across a 22-day immersion, from morning practice to evening meditation, philosophy to teaching methodology.

Blessings Deep, A Yogi Friend Yoga New Vision, Ubud, Bali

Deep Kumar Ji is an ERYT-500 certified teacher trainer with Yoga Alliance (America) and a Registered Master Teacher Trainer with the International Yoga Federation (Europe). He completed advanced yoga teacher training at Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute, Lonavala, India. He leads the 200 Hour and 300 Hour Yoga Teacher Training programs at Yoga New Vision, Ubud, Bali.

Address: Jl. Raya Sanggingan No.36, Kedewatan, Ubud, Bali 80517, Indonesia Contact: info@yoganewvision.com