Ashtanga Butterfly

There are eight limbs of yoga according to the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali (Ashtanga means eight limbs.). I have represented the eight limbs of yoga with a butterfly image.


Ashtanga Yoga – Eight Limbs of Yoga

First limb – Yama – Moral discipline that regulates our survival instincts

Second limb – Niyama – Self-restraint that regulates our personal lives

Third limb – Asana – Posture that regulates physiology

Fourth limb – Pranayama – Breath control that regulates subtle energy

Fifth limb – Pratyahara – Sense-withdrawal, looking inward

Sixth limb – Dharana – One-pointed concentration

Seventh limb – Dhyana – Meditation, consciousness expanded

Eighth limb – Samadhi – Ecstasy, bliss

Just as the limbs on the butterfly connect into the same body (yoga), all eight limbs of yoga affect a person simultaneously. You can’t really disconnect a person from their natural aspects or limbs. So yoga is operating in our lives whether we’re aware of it or not.

You’ll notice that I gave Ashtanga Butterfly strong legs, and feet connected to the ground. The reason being that a newly discovered spiritual practice can leave someone ungrounded, so remember your feet. Remembering your actual feet is important in practice, but also the metaphorical feet, like relationships, personal history, home environment, and finances--all the things that connect you to a healthy, every-day life. There was a time when instead of connecting me healthfully to myself, my yoga practice served as a means of escape. When I got hooked by yoga it was because it was connecting me with bliss, the likes of which I had not encountered before. And, all I wanted was MORE! I approached my yoga practice like an addict wanting a fix. It gave me a way to escape painful feelings. These days I find myself doing things to ensure a more balanced practice and life. One thing I am consciously doing is remembering my history, because that is what brought me to this moment in life where I can appreciate connection and bliss, and sadness and endings.

I also gave Ashtanga Butterfly antennae projecting upward. This is in honor of the search for the unknown, finding connection, and learning to go deeper into oneself. Part of the practice of yoga for me is listening deeply, aiming to live closer to my truth.

Both aspects are important: connecting to the individual life that brought us here to this moment (symbolized by the feet), as well as listening deeply and being available to give definition to something new in oneself (symbolized in my drawing by butterfly antennae). The gatekeeper for this possibility is the mind, which can be seduced either toward earthly pleasures or toward heavenly bliss. The mind’s job is to direct our energies towards balance. What this balance looks like is my feet are on the earth and I am open to and watching intently the great mystery of life’s journey.

Read a later post about Getting High with Yoga

More than Thought

“Lack of true knowledge is the source of all pains and sorrows...”
-from B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, II.4

This “lack of true knowledge” or Avidya refers to spiritual ignorance which is inherent in the human predicament. I say that this ignorance is inherent because our eyes seem to be made to look outward and our ears and other senses also seem to be set up to pick up external vibrations. But, yoga teaches that we can also turn our senses inward to perceive greater depths, or spiritual vistas.

Spiritual wisdom traditions from around the world indicate that we are more than what we see and more than what we think, so why is it hard to experience this? The slant of our materialist culture, according to science, says that we cannot prove the existence of anything beyond the physical world, and beyond what we can measure with mechanical instruments. So I think part of the reason it has been hard for me to accept my spirituality is because I was taught to believe otherwise.

As a woman, I was taught to believe that I was a sex-object, a machine that also must be fed and eliminate waste, and a computer who’s job was to accumulate data as well as follow the rules of society. But guess what? I am more than that. I am more than what I was taught in school. I am more than what others have told me about myself. I am more than the food I have eaten or how many times I went to the bathroom. I am more than how much money I have or what clothes I wear. I am more than “American”. I am more than my sexuality.

What is this more? What more could I possibly be?

I have discovered from my experience practicing yoga and from others who also practice (no matter what spiritual tradition or religious commitments a person has) that yoga helps people get in touch with their spirituality. A person’s spirituality is the other side of the coin from the material aspects of life, and a way to experience this sense of vastness is through a spiritual practice like yoga.

In the absence of practice there is a strong likelihood that I might get totally sucked into the material side of life, and when that happens I am also likely to start drowning in pains and sorrows. This is the nature of Avidya, or spiritual ignorance.
Said another way: when I am caught-up in the web of materialism, without a sense of connection with something greater or more, my life is stuck. But, when I give myself the chance to look inward, and yoga is a great place for this, I can see beyond my little web of thought. I have greater strength and know that I am greater than the contents of my mind, and more than my physical body. In the practice of yoga postures the body is my instrument, tuned into the infinite. And I am happier.