EIGHT PERENNIAL PRACTICES DISTINGUISH YOGA FROM OTHER WISDOM TRADITIONS.

A posture-centered concept of yoga is a modern and misinformed idea about what yoga really is and does. Venerating postural practice cuts into yoga’s totality and potential so severely that it can, and often does, reinforce egoic conditioning and a sense of separateness - the opposite of what holistic yoga practice actually is and does. With the rise of the fitness industry the 1980’s and 1990’s, posture fundamentalism started dominating mainstream yoga practice, particularly in United States - with emphasis on idolized alignment, perfected sequencing, and all variations and manifestations body-based pretentiousness. This kind of posture zealotry and body-based obsessiveness - and the ego-driven power play that goes along with it - created a blindness to yoga’s inherent bigness.

It’s true that practicing asana can feel like an embodied prayer. Mindful movement through asana practice can create openings in our body-minds that support the arising of a unitive experience and help us transcend the illusory notion of separateness. However, yoga is so much more than postural practice. Thankfully, at this particular point in yoga’s evolution, we are collectively moving away from understanding yoga as only physical postures and a moving toward holistic integration of the perennial practices.

Yoga is all the perennial practices. All the perennial practices are one Yoga.

The eight perennial practices that have collectively distinguished yoga from other wisdom traditions for the last few thousand years are:

yamas

observing collective ethics

niyamas

observing personal integrity

asana

experiencing and influencing gross energy

pranayama

experiencing and influencing subtle energy

pratyahara

withdrawing the senses inward

dharana

concentrating on fundamental realities

dhyana

meditating on every-thingness and no-thingness

samadhi

spontaneous merging of finite and infinite

All these practices invite us to move out of our conditioned, habitual body-mind cycles and protection-seeking ego patterns and move into a clear and loving recognition of “what is.” A “what is” that includes increasing sensitivity to not only our physical, mental, and emotional experience, but also to the indivisible interconnectedness of everyone and everything. These practices help us realize the inherent sacredness in all.

Taken together, these practices create a progressive path, each naturally flowing from the previous practice and incrementally emphasizing more subtle awareness of what is. Observing collective and personal ethics through the yamas and niyamas sensitizes us to the whole of life and its fundamental mutuality, without which the fruits of the other practices cannot be fully realized. Asana practice attunes us to gross sensations of our physical body and prepares us for more nuanced energetic awareness of pranayama practice. Pranayama practice hones our ability to experience and influence subtle energy which readies us for more refined awareness of even subtler energy experiencing as we withdrawal our senses inward in pratyahara practice.

Multi-form practice of the yamas, niyamas, asana, pranayama, and pratyahara grows our receptiveness to the sublimity of concentration in dharana and etherealness of meditation in dhyana. Our increased ability to repose in the subtlest states of concentration and meditation opens us to the most subtle and immersive experience of all - samadhi.

While these practices can sequentially unfold, they also develop simultaneously and overlap each other. Each practice nurtures the others. As an interconnected web of influence they are each an integral composite part of the whole of yoga. Engagement with multiple aspects simultaneously increases the potential for development in all the perennial practices and a radical loosening of our identification with our body-mind selves.

Yoga is samadhi-centric. The seven other perennial practices of yoga revolve around samadhi and hold the potential to move us toward the samadhi center where we experience ourselves and all of life as a dynamic continuum of consciousness beyond the distinction of subject and object. They help to create favorable conditions for samadhi to spontaneously arise. The samadhi core is where consciousness experiences itself in an ever-changing field of possibility uncaged by the body-mind.

The perennial practices surrounding samadhi group themselves in a couple interesting configurations. One pattern they create are concentric layers where yamas, niyamas, asana, and pranayama form an outer layer of practices that explore the most dense aspects of energy, while pratyahara, dharana, and dhyana form an inner layer of practice that explore the most subtle aspects of energy. In this nested circular structure, the outer ring of practices develop greater awareness through the most physical levels of experience – our relationship with our surrounding environment and the physicality of our bodies, while the inner ring of practices develop greater awareness through the most subtle levels of experience – the thoughts and feelings of our minds and hearts.

Another way the perennial practices organize themselves around samadhi is through a top-bottom split of practices. In this pattern, asana, pranayama, and pratyahara are grouped in the bottom-half as bhukti-centered practices that foster sensory pleasure. Yamas, niyamas, dharana, and dhyana are grouped in top-half as mukti-centered practices that prompt awakened insight and liberations from suffering.

It can be helpful to notice our personal practice patterns – where we place the greatest and least amount of our attention and where we might find better balance.