In regards to my life and spiritual path I tend to be fairly open minded and accepting of the diverse array of traditions, perspectives and practices. I have been influenced by everything from the Bhadavad Gita to The Bible, and if I feel there is truth in something and don’t necessarily discriminate against the packaging.
With this said, there are a few texts, traditions and practices that have resonated most potently for me and at the top of that list would be The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, one of the original scriptures regarding yoga written about 2500 years ago. We don’t necessarily know who Patanjali was, if it was an individual or a collective, but we have about 200 sutras about life, self, truth, energy, awareness and consciousness, and that have stood the test of time.
Within these sutras, yoga is defined and elaborated upon. Patanjali paints a detailed landscape of the spiritual path and the nature of our consciousness which includes is systemization of the yogic path which we know as ‘Ashtanga Yoga’ or ‘8 Limbed Yoga’. The limbs of Ashtanga Yoga include all that we think of as yoga, the physical postures, the breathing practices, meditations and mantras, but our culture often bypasses the first two limbs, without which the others become quite irrelevant.
The first limb is Yama, translated as