The Eight Limbs of Yoga: Pathway to Liberation

The Eight Limbs of Yoga, known also as Ashtanga in Sanskrit, is the centrepiece of the Yoga Sutras, the most poignant and relevant text on yoga for modern-day practitioners. Written some 2,500 years ago by the great sage Patanjali, the Sutras offer us a time-tested pathway to self-realization, inner harmony, contentment and peace. In this book, Bhava Ram applies the Eight Limbs to the challenging circumstances of our modern lives and shares how each of us can open our hearts and transform ourselves through this profound wisdom. At the very core of Bhava's message is that each of us possesses a great inner power to unfold our innate creativity, tap into our inner wisdom and manifest our fullest potential.

One of the greatest ancient texts of yoga is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Here in this book, the focus is on the centrepiece of Patanjali's work known as Ashtanga, the Eight Limbs of Yoga. The Ashtanga system is articulated in the Sadhana Pada. It provides a blueprint for living a conscious life, engendering personal transformation and ultimately experiencing self-realization. It is not the only system in Yoga. There are many different pathways and techniques in this sacred science. The limbs do, however, give us great guidance and insight into the heart of Yogic practice and philosophy, while offering us the opportunity to grow, heal and thrive. They are synergistic and as we weave them into our lives there arises a tapestry of spiritual awakening.

Patanjali's Ashtanga provides a proven and time-tested pathway for this self-extraction, like a prescription from the Divine for what ails us in body, mind and soul. In exploring the Eight Limbs of Yoga, the author delves into how relevant this ancient system is for our modern times and provides observations and, most importantly, practices to help you embody, live and benefit from this wisdom. The author provides both a modern perspective on the Sutras and a series of practices to bring them into your everyday life.

Review(s)

We are truly grateful for the wisdom and guidance that Bhava offers so willingly to all who seek it and for the opportunity to be a small part of bringing this book to fruition." - Jon and Wendy Brick.

BRAVA RAM, a formal foreign correspondent for Network News, overcame a broken back, failed back surgery and stage four cancer through Yoga and Ayurveda. He now devotes his life to guiding others and sharing these profound teachings with students and clients in the US and abroad. He is co-founder of Deep Yoga, a teaching school based on yoga and ayurveda, and the Deep Yoga School of Healing Arts (DYSHA).

He and his wife also lead retreats in America and India and work with private clients on healing and self-realization. Bhava is also a musician who performs kirtan and spiritual concerts. His first book, Deep Yoga: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times is a collection of essays and practices in Yoga and Ayurveda.

If we looked for the spiritual heart centre of humankind, it most likely would be found in India. For thousands of years, long before the written word, the sages of India journeyed deep into their souls for answers to the most profound questions of existence. "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" "What is my path?" And most importantly, "What is the power behind all things in the universe and my relationship with this cosmic being?" While many other cultures have engaged in similar self-inquiry throughout the ages, it is India that has brought this spiritual quest into its fullest blossom.

India's great sages spent their lives meditating in remote locations, often in caves in the towering Himalayan mountains, fully withdrawn from the distractions of the external world. As they gazed deeply within themselves, the insights and epiphanies they experienced were truly "downloaded from the universe." This profound spiritual wisdom became embodied in sound as sacred verses that were memorized, chanted repeatedly, and passed down from guru to disciple over many generations. These verses were called the Vedas. With the advent of the written word, the Vedas were preserved and are now the oldest sacred texts in existence.

Composed in Sanskrit, and consisting of thousands of verses, they date back four to five millennia. From this body of great spiritual wisdom arose the practice of Yoga, which means yoking or unification. It was devised as the methodology for bringing Vedic philosophy into our daily lives and actually experiencing it, because it is not what we know that is important, it is what we do with what we know This is the process of turning knowledge into wisdom and experiencing Self-realization. Yoga invites us to do far more than a series of postures on our sticky mats. It guides us into fully expressing ourselves with an open heart, living in harmony with Mother Nature, realizing who we truly are and ultimately experiencing liberation. Yoga teachings maintain that we are not the body, not the mind, not the ego nor the many roles we assume in life. We are incarnations of the Divine, and the light of God dwells within each and every one of us.

The yogic journey involves returning home to this true nature, which is the only place where we will find lasting healing, contentment, inner peace and the true meaning of our lives. In the West, we have come to know Yoga through the practice of Asanas, or yogic poses, that help strengthen, stretch and tone our bodies. Asana, however, is but one small aspect of the transformative science of Yoga. It is a beautiful practice, but if we embrace these poses alone we miss what Yoga as a whole is intended to do - to transform our consciousness from the ego to the eternal, shift our awareness from the external to the internal, and allow us to live as liberated beings in full harmony with nature and unified with the Divine.

One of the greatest ancient texts of Yoga is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Patanjali was a sage who lived in the 2nd Century BC, in what is now Pakistan. His city of Takshashila, which has long since crumbled to dust, is said to have been at the centre of global culture and an information highway of the times. Many enlightened people flocked to this thriving metropolis, which also was home to a great university where Patanjali is said to have been in residence.

By Patanjali's time, the Hindu deity Krishna was ancient history and the Buddha had come and gone a few centuries before. The Vedas and their archaic mantras had long fallen into obscurity, but many new teachings had come out of them through the Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita, of which Yoga was perhaps the crown jewel. Patanjali sought to render the teachings of Yoga in a few clear and concise axioms and so developed the Yoga Sutras.

Though there were already many important teachings on Yoga going back many centuries, Patanjali so well crafted his Sutras that over time they became the prime textbook of Yoga. The Sanskrit word sutra informs the English word "suture" and literally means a thread or a line. The Sutras are like sutures or threads, composed as terse aphorisms designed to stitch together the wisdom of Yoga. Over the centuries, great sages and gurus have expounded on these aphorisms in various commentaries, articulating and expanding the philosophical wisdom and pragmatic practices of what is known as Raja Yoga - the Royal Path.

There is much about Patanjali that remains unclear, as there is little detail about his life in recorded literature. He is traditionally regarded as an incarnation of the serpent god Ananta, the serpent upon which the Supreme Soul Lord Vishnu lies, and the name Patanjali itself also means a type of snake. He was also known as a master of the Sanskrit language and of Ayurveda - the medical system and sister science of Yoga -and wrote commentaries on important books in these fields. The exact history of Patanjali is not important, however, as he is but one of the many teachers in the greater Yoga tradition. It is his legacy of teachings that is the treasure. The Sutras have lasted throughout the ages, providing generations of seekers a roadmap for the journey of Yoga.