Even though many people have written about yoga, including myself, that does not mean that that which has been written in the name of yoga is actually yoga.   Yoga was first defined by Patanjali.   Yoga is what Patanjali defines.   If I or anyone else choose to use the word yoga to describe something that conflicts with what Patanjali says I am of course free to do so.   But that does not make what I speak about be yoga.   I say this because there are many different opinions about all of the different apects of yoga, there are even different opinions as a what yoga as a whole is.   Like Desikachar, like B.K.S Iyengar, like Pattabijois, like Krishnamacharya, I regard Patanjali as the one who has defined yoga.   However it seems clear that what I might say about yoga, what Desikachar, Pattabijois, Iyengar and Krishnamacharya might say about yoga are not necessarily the same and may even be in conflict with each other.  

This is because we are interpreting Patanjali.   We can not represent Patanjali.   Only Patanjali really knows what Patanjali really meant therefore, obviously everything that I say is simply my opinion and should in no way be construed as being the truth.   I speak it lightly and may you receive it lightly. If it conflicts with your pre-existing ideas allow that to be a light and fruitful conflict taking place without prejudice, without attachment to your own opinion because you´re used to it, and without attachment to my opinion because I speak with authority.   The authority with which I speak is simply an expression of my character, not necessarily wisdom. So be careful.
Patanjali defines yoga at the beginning of the second chapter as a process.   A process which has eight aspects: ashta anga. These eight aspects of yoga are defined within the yoga sutras.   The first two aspects are yama niyama. The way these two aspects are defined by Patanjali is quite different from the way the other six are defined.   And it´s clear if you go back to the sanskrit that yama niyama relate to that which is done. Asana, pranyama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi relate to what then (maybe) happens. Provided of course that that which is being done is appropriate. And is being done in the manner outlined, which is contextualising it within yama niyama .  

Patanjali says that asana, the first of the inner limbs by this definition, is joyfull steadiness in the body freee from tension manifesting the infinite beyond duality. So I´m going to start at the beginning of that. Joyful steadiness is sthiram sukham. They come first because they are the expression of the body free from tension. In order to free the body from tension yoga postures must be established within sthiram sukham: steadiness and comfort.   The actions being taken in the postures must be taken in order to cultivate stirahm sukham.   Not in order to cultivate flexibility, not in order to cultivate strength, not in order to cultivate stamina. As stirahm sukam becomes possible in more simple postures, then the deeper tension in the body must be challenged on the basis of stirham sukham in more complex postures. As the body becomes free from tension it of course becomes more flexible, stronger as a by-product. Although not as a result of you trying to become flexible or strong.   You are trying to become stable and comfortable. When the body is free from tension, it manifests the infinite naturally, inevitably, without any thought being taken with regard to what the infinite might be.

Yoga postures are very strange.   We don´t think so because we do them but if you look objectively, at almost any yoga posture you can´t help but see strangeness.   Kandasan, with the feet bent in towards the navel, it´s pretty weird. Chakorasan, where you balance on your hands and put your leg behind you head: pretty weird. This is not normal human activity   The postures can very easily create tension, if they are not done with care and attention. But if you use them judiciuosly they can challenge tension in the body. Provided you go slowly, slowly; step by step.   Freeing the body from tension with the compass stirham sukham.   There is no need for yoga practice to be a struggle.   There is no need for yoga practice to be difficult.   It´s only difficult when you are acting beyond your capacity.   If you go back and honour your capacity it becomes easy.   If you honour your capacity where it is easier to do so your capacity increases.    If you keep doing that you will soon be where you wanted to be in the first place but with no struggle.   If you keep doing that slowly slowly, step by step, staying with your capacity as it is and in doing so allowing your capacity to grow organically, your capacity will soon meet your ambition without struggle or injury, but simply with practice. How far you go depends how ambitious you are.   But there is no need to be ambitious in terms of flexibility or strength in order to know what yoga is.   We all have the capacity to totally relax no matter how much tension we normally carry, no matter how deeply held.   If I were to inject you with anaesthetic, which cuts the mind out of the picture completely, the tension would immediately disappear, immediately.   It is not inherent, it is a habit but a very deep habit.  

Yoga is established as a challenge to that habit of tension.  What is tension?   Tension is chronic muscular effort that is not related to action being taken.   In other words tension is muscular effort that is not appropriate, not necessary. Whenever you are not lying down some muscular effort is required to resist gravity.   This need not be tension but it sometimes is.   So freeing the body from tension means to free the body from unnecesary muscular effort. This means to let go of making unnecesary effort deliberately and challenge muscular activity that is there out of habit. So there are two kinds of tension.   Tension that arises because you are working too hard or ineffectively.   Tension that is there anyway, out of habit.  

This second kind of tension can also be divided into two.   Tension that arises automatically just because you are in the situation that you are in, independent of the actions that you are taking or going to take.   Some people become tense as soon as somebody looks at them.   Some people become tense as soon as someone tells them what to do.   This can happen to yoga students when they are being told what to do by yoga teachers.   The situation itself creating tension.   Underneath that kind of situational tension there is even deeper tension, tension that we carry around regardless of the situation.   Residual tension that maybe left over from having been attacked by a dog.   Tension left over from being told to be quiet all the time as a child. Tension left over from being told that you are too fat. Whether that is your friends telling you so or a magazine.  

So yoga is addressing itself to all of these kinds of tension: active, situational and residual. But it´s challenging them with action and action involves and requires muscular effort.   So muscular effort is being used to release muscular effort.   Necessary muscular effort is being required to release unnecesary muscular effort.   Therefore we can not just take the easy way out.   Sukham or comfort, does not mean least effort.   Sukham means that the action being taken in a particular place is directly inviting deeper comfort in the bodymind as a whole.   Effort is required.   The particular efforts required are unfamiliar. Learning them therefore can be difficult, and that difficulty can create tension. But once the actions are better understood and the body becomes better able to apply them they will not generate tension they will relase it.  

In particular the muscular effort required of yoga is directed towards stability or stirham.   Only within stability can comfort happen.   If you don´t feel stable you don´t feel safe.   Your body constantly feels more or less stable, more or less safe, no matter what your mind is saying or not. I´m speaking of the body feeling safe.   The body will only relax if it feels safe.   You can not force the body to relax, you can invite it to relax by establishing it in stability. Which fundamentally means to ground the foundation.   To actively and evenly ground those parts of the body that are supposed to be on the floor. To do only that which is required to bring that about. Upon that stability the body is then articulated in space as an opening of all of the joints, as a challenge to tension in the joints.   All muscles begin and end in the joints.   This opening into the body is sukham. Releasing as you open, flowering as you release, as your roots ground you stirham.   So this is stirham sukham .   

But before he speaks of stirham sukham Patanjali speaks of yama niyama .   This is so that whatever technique we have decided to use to free the body from tension can be used effectively. The yoga postures are not the only ones available: tai chi, chikung, whirling, zazen. There are many things that can be used to free the body from tension. We happen to be using the yoga postures. Patanjali says nothing about yoga postures.   The word asana in the yoga sutras refers to a quality in the bodymind.   It is a state of awareness relative to the body, in which the body is free from tension, comfortable and stable manifesting the infinite beyond duality .   I have a limited location in space, my body fills a finite amount of space.   The experience of space is based upon the experience of opposites. Front relative to back, left relative to right, top relative to bottom: the polar coordinates of the threee dimensions.   It is our sense of these that makes us feel limited in space, makes us feel finite.

In a symmetrical posture the articulation of the left hand and arm when there is no tension in them will be the same as the articulation of the right hand and arm when there is no tension in them.   If there is tension in one arm it will not be the same articulation as the other.   But when the articualation of both hands and arms are the same, because they are both free from tension, there is no possibility of distinguishing between them. Unless you look at them, with your eyes or with your mind.   But if you are simply experiencing your arms as actions and your hands as awarenesss, your arms as awareness and your hands as actions, you will not be able to distinguish between them. They will be singing the same song.   Two voices one song, exactly in harmony, with exactly the same tone coming from exactly the same distance away and you can not distinguish between them.  

When you apply this process to the whole of the body, every left part relative to every right part, every front part relative to every back part, every top part relative to every bottom part, every inner part to every outer part the finite nature of the body no longer asserts itself.   You all know this. You are no longer treating your body as an object at all. There is simply an effortless awareness of your undeniable existence which has nothing to do with the actions being taken.   And there is within that the feelling of being totally unrestricted.   This is what Patanjali means by manifesting the infinite: unrestricted, no longer feeling limited or finite. This is a result of having gone beyond duality.   Having balanced lefts with rights, fronts with backs, tops with bottoms, insides with outsides,   in action.  

This is incredibly powerful. Simple though it may be, unexciting as it may sound. Nevertheless its power is undenibale when you start to see that left and right, front and back, top and bottom, inside and outside are simply functions of perception. They are all relative perceptions, and not absolute facts.   They are how we perceive and explain objects. This relates not just to the dualities of the body structure, but also to its implication: to self and other.   That self and other are also functions of perception, not of actuality. And on the basis of your activation of   your body in the postures, the objectification of the body dissolves.   This has a deep conditioning impact on how you live. The objectification of life also begins to dissolve. The perception of self and other and the seperation that this expresses, the warfare that this generates, begins to dissolve.
This is what it means to manifest the infinite beyond duality.   To no longer insisit that the left is separate from the right. To no longer insist that the right is better than the left; the white is better than black; female better than male; muslim is better than jew etc.  

This is the gift of yoga, being delivered in action. There is no need for philosophy, no need for opinions, agreement or disagreement. Yoga, freedom, only need actions and the recognition of experience.   This is what yoga is for and when Patanjali talks about the deeper limbs of yoga, he´s simply taking about how this unfolds. How the mind becomes free from right and wrong.   This doesn´t mean it becomes free from accurate and inaccurate; accurate and precise actions are required.   However, if an action which is required is not possible,   the action that takes it´s place is not wrong, it is right.   The action that you are capable of taking is the right action to take.   Trying to take an action of which you are not capable is wrong, you may hurt yourself.   Not taking an action of which you are capable is wrong, you may hurt yourself.  Trying to do a set of actions of which you are not capable (a posture) is wrong, you will hurt yourself.   I´m talking about actions in yoga postures; there is a right and wrong.   Let us not become too politically correct and damage ourselves as a result.  

All actions are not equal. NO: all actions are unique.   If we do not keep our back leg striaght in Virabadrasan we will damage our lower back. If we can not keep our back leg straight in Virabadrasan then we should not be doing Virabadrasan, because we are not able to.   So we should not be pretending to because that pretence invites injury. But that injury can be very subtle, incremental and gradual. So that when you finally become aware of it you tell yourself that something else caused it. This is because you love your yoga practice and you don´t want to say bad things about it.   But you must be willing to do so in order to protect your body.   Whatever technique it may be that you have taken, in order that it not create injury, exhaustion, pride, frustration, anger, Patanjali gives us guidelines.  

The first one is ahimsa .   Mahatma Gandhi toppled the British Empire through the utilisation of this one principle, for once India was lost the British Empire could not sustain itself. Gandhi toppled the British Empire. This is how powerful ahimsa is: The greatest empire the world had ever known toppled by one little man dedicating his life to ahimsa .   Imagine what we can do in our bodies if we do likewise.   But Patanjali didn´t just give ahimsa he gave more; he also gave satya which Gandhi also espoused. But he also gives asteya , bramhacharya , aparigraha , sauca etc .   Five yama and five niyama .  

Sensitivity is the application of ahimsa to practice.   Honesty is the application of satya to practice.   Openness is the application of asteya .   Focus or presence is the application of bramhacharya .   Generosity is the application of aparigraha .   Commitment is the application of sauca .   Contentment is   the application of samtosa . Passion is the application of tapas .   Looking within is the application of svadhyaya.   Directing that enquiry to the source of action is the application of ishvarapanidana .   These are the ten principles Patanjali gives us to guide our use of technique. So that our technique might free our body from tension.

Sensitivity means feeling what you are doing, not thinking about it, not talking about it, not judging, not evaluating: just feeling it.   Honesty means responding to it.   Sensitivity also means feeling the impact of what you are doing and honesty means responding to that also.   Doing what you can to become more stable, more comfortable requires you be sensitive and honest, that you feel what is happening and that you do what you can on the basis of what you feel. In order to be sensitive and honest you also need to be open. If you are not open to the fact that you may not be able to straighten your back, you willl not be honest about the fact that you aren´t and you will stay there injuring your lower back by being insensitive.   So you must be open to whatever may be possible, whatever may actually happen.   In order to be sensitve and honest you have to be present, you have to be focused.   Otherwise how do you know, how can you tell? In order to remain open you need to be generous to yourself about what you have found, what you can and can´t do. In other words do not judge what you can or can´t do according to your expectations, your desires, your assumptions or your ideals.  

Obviously this is not necessarily easy to do.   To be continuously focused, open, generous, honest and sensitive to what you are doing is not easy.   It is to a great extent a function of your commitment.   So you could say that the five yamas rest on niyama : especially commitment or sauca . If you come to your mat and you happen to find that you have very little commitment today you are likely to hurt yourself if you do what you normally do when you have commitment.   Your commitment is expressed in your tapas, your enthusiasm, your passion.   Your tapas is an expression of your commitment. Your commitment is an expression of your tapas . Your commitment depends entirely on how interested you are. If you are not interested you will not bother.   This is why tapas is so important.   On the basis of your enthusiasm and your passion, your commitment arises and supports sensitivity, honesty, openness, generosity and focus. On the basis of your commitment, your passion arises and supports sensitivity, honesty, openness, generosity and focus.  

The application or presence of tapas relative to yoga practise is a function of your interest being focused within.   If you are more interested in what the person next to you is doing you can not be sensitive, open, honest etc. Therefore yama also rests on svadhyaya : looking within.   Looking within in a very particular way: ishvarapanidana. Looking for the source of action. Patanjali says kriya - yoga - tapas-svadhyaya-ishvarapranidana.   This is his definition of the process of yoga. Kriya means action, activity.   Yoga means yoga. Tapas means passion. Svadhyaya means looking within. Ishvarapanidana means finding the source of action, or more literally: clarifying the making of choice.   Earlier in the yoga sutras Patanjali says that the deepest fruit of yoga can come from Ishvarapanidana alone. Yogas fruit can come from looking at the source of action.   Not intellectually, not analytically, not philososphically or as a matter of opinion: but in action.   Feeling where actions come from. This is the purpose of yoga according to Patanjali.   Not according to my books, not according to Svatmarama, Goraksha, etc but according to Patanjali.  

The yoga postures are absolutley brilliant at providing endless opportunities to investigate internal actions.   All the actions of yoga postures are internal.   They have an internal purpose, they do not lead to anything external, except incidentally.   The actions are taken in order to create internal stability and comfort.   Stability and comfort in the body and mind.   They are not taken in order to get rich, they are not taken in order to become beautiful, or healthy. According to Patanjali they are taken in order to become stirham sukham . But if you take action in the yoga posture looking for stirahm sukham, health will come, beauty will come, all sorts of good stuff will come. But all of these things are incidental.
 
Ishvarapranidana is sometimes translated ´surrender to God'. This is an interpretation. An accurate one, but not a helpful one. How do you surrender to God?   Do you make human sacrifices every Sunday?   Six hour Pujas every Monday? You neither have the time or the knowledge.   Some people do not believe in God. Patanjali is not so mean.   The word Ishvara literally means the choicemaker. We all take actions, we all take actions all of the time. Even those who don't belive in god still take action and those actions rest on selction, choicemaking, whether conscious or unconscious.   If we can find their source we will be surrendered to God as the source of all action.  

This is the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.   That all actions are brought about through the dynamic of the Gunas, through Prakriti, through the agency of manifestation as the observable expression of their source: sometimes known as God.   All actions express the matrix of manifesattion, and thereby its source. The teaching of the Bhagavad Gita makes very clear that not only the fruits of our actions but also the actions themselves belong to the whole and its underlying source: belong to the one for which there is no other: which you can call God.   The Bhagavad Gita calls God Krishna. It´s just a name.   God is just a concept that indicates that all actions come from the same source, and in a way that we cannot control.

Ishvarapranidana is to find that source in your own actions: and when that source is found you can not ever, ever abandon God.   Whever you look , whatever you see, however much you do not like it, however much it challenges your desires, however much it confounds your understanding, you still and always see God.   This is Ishvarapranidana.   This is what yoga is for.   No philosophy is required, no blind faith is required, no belief is required, no argument is necessary, no opinions are relevant. All that is relevant and all that is required is that you investigate your internal actions and you will come to God: if you have found the source of your actions. So that´s not a bad result from standing on your mat and doing funny things with your body, is it?

learn to practice yoga from this perspective