Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Since there was not a prompt listed for this week I just decided to relate my out of class practice to what we have been talking about in class this past week. On the blog, it has what are called the 8 Limbs listed. The first is restraint. This encompasses things such as not lying or stealing. We do not ever really talk about these things during our class. Although, they seem to be basic things that every person should be restrained from, to begin with. The second is observance. This limb talks about things such as cleanliness and self-study, as well as other things. Of the things listed on the blog cleanliness is probably the one thing we do not touch on in class. Things like discipline and self-study we do touch on. Stevee has given out her email in order for us to contact her about a pamphlet that talks about the Tibetan 5 Rites so that we can practice them at home. She also talks to us about just practicing in general on our own. The third is posture or physical exercise. We do postures in every class, so this limb is the easiest to relate to my out of class practice. The fourth limb is breath control. Stevee does go over a few of the different breathing techniques with us. We usually do at least one of them in each practice. Number five is sublimation or withdraw from the senses. I don't really think this one relates too much to my class. At least not that I can think of. Number six is attention. This one we constantly have to use in my class. Due to the practice space, there are quite a few distractions, so Stevee is constantly telling us to pick a point in the room and focus on it and block everything else out. The seventh limb is concentration. Meditation or meditating on things isn't really something that we get to do much in our class. We don't have much time together so we usually spend most of it on postures or breath work. The final limb is meditation. As I said meditation isn't really a part of our weekly classes. Although Stevee does ask if any of us are taking a meditation class or meditating on our own, so we do talk about it we just don't really have the time needed to do that limb justice.