Sacred Texts · Classical Yoga · India · c.400 CE

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

196 terse aphorisms that define what yoga actually is — the stilling of the mind's fluctuations — and lay out an eight-limbed path toward it in which physical posture is a single, minor step, not the destination modern practice has made of it.

The modern postural yoga practised in studios worldwide today bears only a loose relationship to Patanjali's actual text. In the Yoga Sutras, "asana" (posture) means simply a steady, comfortable seated position suitable for meditation — one limb among eight, and far from the most emphasised. The elaborate physical postures now associated with the word "yoga" are a considerably later development, drawing on different, much more recent sources.

Section 01

What Are the Yoga Sutras?

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are the foundational text of classical Yoga — one of the six orthodox (astika) schools of Hindu philosophy — traditionally attributed to a sage named Patanjali, though modern scholarship generally dates the text's compilation to around the 4th century CE, likely synthesising and systematising older, previously oral yogic teachings rather than presenting entirely original material.

The text opens with its own definition of its subject in its second aphorism: yogas citta vritti nirodhah — "yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind." Everything that follows across the text's 196 sutras elaborates on how this stilling is achieved and what results from it. The philosophy underlying the Sutras draws on Samkhya, one of Hinduism's oldest philosophical systems, which distinguishes Purusha (pure, witnessing consciousness) from Prakriti (matter, including the mind itself) — yoga, in this framework, is the process by which consciousness comes to recognise itself as fundamentally separate from the mental fluctuations it had mistaken itself for.

The text is organised into four chapters (padas): Samadhi Pada, on the nature of meditative absorption; Sadhana Pada, on the practical path (containing the famous eight limbs); Vibhuti Pada, on the extraordinary powers (siddhis) said to arise from advanced practice; and Kaivalya Pada, on final liberation — the complete isolation of consciousness from matter.

Section 02

The Eight Limbs

1. Yama
Ethical Restraints
Non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, moderation and non-possessiveness — the foundational ethical commitments a practitioner observes toward others.
2. Niyama
Personal Observances
Purity, contentment, discipline, self-study and surrender to a higher principle — the personal disciplines a practitioner cultivates within themselves.
3. Asana
Posture
In Patanjali's own text, simply a steady and comfortable seated position — the physical stability required to sit through extended meditation without distraction from bodily discomfort.
4. Pranayama
Breath Control
Regulation of the breath, understood to directly influence and steady the fluctuations of the mind that yoga as a whole is working to still.
5. Pratyahara
Withdrawal of the Senses
Turning attention inward, away from external sensory stimulation, as the necessary bridge between the outward-facing limbs and the inward-facing ones that follow.
6. Dharana
Concentration
Sustained focus of attention on a single point or object, the disciplined precursor to deeper meditative absorption.
7. Dhyana
Meditation
Sustained, uninterrupted concentration flowing continuously toward its object, one stage beyond the more effortful focus of Dharana.
8. Samadhi
Absorption
Complete meditative absorption in which the distinction between meditator, meditation and object of meditation dissolves — the culmination the entire eight-limbed path builds toward.
Section 03

A History of the Text

Pre-existing tradition
Oral Yogic Teaching
Yogic practices and concepts circulate for centuries before Patanjali's text, transmitted orally within various teaching lineages, providing the raw material the Sutras would later systematise.
c.400 CE
Likely Compilation
Most modern scholars place the text's compilation in something close to its surviving form around this period, synthesising existing yogic and Samkhya philosophical material into a single systematic text.
4th–5th century CE
Vyasa's Commentary
The scholar Vyasa produces the Yoga Bhashya, the oldest and most authoritative surviving commentary on the Sutras, essential for interpreting the text's extremely terse aphoristic style.
19th–20th century
Western Rediscovery
The text becomes increasingly known outside India as yoga philosophy attracts Western scholarly and spiritual interest, well before the later 20th-century boom in postural yoga practice.
20th century
The Rise of Postural Yoga
Figures including Krishnamacharya and his students develop the elaborate physical postural systems that would become globally known simply as "yoga," drawing on a range of sources considerably beyond Patanjali's own eight-limbed framework.
Section 04

The Legacy

The Yoga Sutras' influence extends across nearly every subsequent tradition of Indian meditative and contemplative practice, and its Samkhya-based dualist framework — consciousness as fundamentally distinct from the mind's activity — remains a foundational reference point for understanding classical Hindu philosophy of mind, studied alongside Vedanta's very different non-dualist conclusions covered elsewhere in this collection.

The vast global popularity of modern postural yoga has, somewhat paradoxically, made Patanjali's own text simultaneously more famous and less accurately understood than at almost any point in its history — millions of people practise something called "yoga" today with little awareness that the text which gave the practice its philosophical foundation treats physical posture as a single, minor supporting element within a much larger eight-limbed path toward stilling the mind entirely.

Essential Reading
Edwin Bryant's The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali offers an accessible translation with extensive traditional commentary. B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali provides a practitioner's perspective connecting the text to later postural practice.
The Honest History
Modern postural yoga is a genuinely later development, substantially shaped by 20th-century figures and, in some documented cases, by exposure to European gymnastics and physical culture movements — not a direct, unbroken continuation of Patanjali's own eight-limbed system.
Connections
The Yoga Sutras connect to Hinduism (the broader religious tradition it belongs to), Tantra (a parallel and sometimes overlapping practice tradition), and the Bhagavad Gita (another major Hindu text addressing the disciplines of yoga, from a devotional rather than classical philosophical angle).