The Eight Limbs of Yoga: Part 4: Asana Explained | Beyond the Poses: Finding Steadiness & Ease

What if the yoga poses we struggle to perfect aren’t the goal at all? The third limb of Patanjali’s eight-limbed path of yoga—asana—offers a deeper purpose that goes far beyond physical shapes on the mat.

According to the Yoga Sutras, asana is defined with simplicity and wisdom: “sthira sukham asanam” — a posture that is steady and comfortable. This teaching reveals that the real aim of yoga postures is to prepare the body and mind for meditation, not to achieve increasingly difficult poses.

Instead of striving and forcing, Patanjali reminds us that true mastery comes from “relaxation of effort and meditation on the infinite.”

Key Takeaways from This Episode:

• The true meaning of asana in the Yoga Sutras and why it’s more than physical achievement.
• How modern yoga culture often prioritizes difficult postures, while ancient teachings emphasize steadiness and ease.
• Why forcing and straining in yoga can move us further from growth—and how softening brings deeper transformation.
• Personal insights from transitioning from combat sports to yoga and discovering a new approach to strength and awareness.
• How to apply “steady and comfortable posture” in daily life—at your desk, in the car, in the kitchen, or while playing with your kids.
• Practical tools for self-regulation using posture, awareness, and mindfulness throughout the day.

Yoga postures are not about perfection—they’re about presence. Whether you’re sitting in meditation, cooking dinner, or standing in line, embodying the principle of “sthira sukham asanam” can transform ordinary activities into opportunities for mindfulness and spiritual connection.

Ready to rethink your yoga practice and experience the deeper purpose of asana? 

Listen now—and join me next week as we explore pranayama, the powerful breathing practices of yoga’s fourth limb.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Asana Series
• 2:15 True Meaning of Asana Explained
• 5:15 Relaxation vs Straining in Practice
• 8:15 Body as Temple: Yoga and Christianity
• 10:30 Practicing Asana in Daily Life
• 15:45 Embodying Yoga Beyond the Mat
• 19:15 Episode Wrap and Next Week Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello everybody and welcome back to the daily practice with me, benita. Today's episode is the third in a nine-part series exploring the eight limbs of yoga as described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. So last week we explored the niyamas, or the observances towards itself, the previous week was the yamas, or the restraints towards others the ethical observances or restraints, and the first week was just an outline of the eight limbs. So feel free to go back to those episodes and listen to them first before diving into this one. If that's not what you feel like doing, feel free to listen to this one by itself. It's a perfectly fine standalone episode looking at asana or the postures Episode. Looking at asana or the postures, the third limb of Patanjali's yoga. Just a little brief housekeeping before we get into it. So you're listening to the daily practice with me, benita. This is a podcast that I publish each on YouTube at 7 am, and I do occasionally also post things on Twitter or X. You can find me there on the handle BSNBird or just search for Daily Practice with Benita and you should find me, and I am also working on the Patreon. So feel free to explore that page and that should be up and running very, very soon. So let's get started.

Speaker 1: 2:18

Asana this is often what people think about when they think about yoga is asana? They think about downward facing, dog or triangle pose or whatever it is. But that's really all just preparation for the asana of meditation, which is often padmas, which means lotus pose. So we do all these fancy stretches and poses and balancing and all that physical kind of acrobatics or calisthenics to purify and strengthen the body so that it can actually sit comfortably for an extended period of time for meditation. I have a simple guide on how to sit comfortably in meditation if you maybe haven't yet gone through the practice of asanas, of the yoga asanas that prepare the body to sit in lotus pose for an extended period of time for meditation or for pranayama, for breathing practice, which we'll talk about the following weeks. And really asana isn't just stretching or exercise. It is not about achieving any of these poses, whether it's a handstand, handstand back, backbend or this or that, but it's about actually cultivating a seat of steadiness and presence. So in the Yoga Sutras there's really only one sutra, one part, where asana is mentioned and it says yoga, sorry, sorry. In the yoga sutra 11, oh, sorry. The second part, 46, says sthira sukham asana. Asana is a posture that is steady and comfortable, or steady, comfortable seat, and there literally is no mention of any other postures. There are, of course, other yoga texts where they go into much detail about all the asanas and they have other purposes for healing, purifying, strengthening the body and also in some ways acting as an antenna to guide the energy flow, guide the energy of prana in a certain way. And they all have purposes beyond looking a certain way or to impress somebody. But really asana is just the seat for meditation. It is also written in that same part of the sutras Prayatna Saitilya Ananta Sama Patibhyam.

Speaker 1: 5:24

Perfection in asana is achieved by relaxation of effort and meditation of the infinite. So asana practice should never be straining hard or well, it might be hard but but achieving steadiness and comfort, comfort in those postures, isn't done through competing either with oneself or others, but it's actually relaxing into it and settling into it. And I really experienced this first when I started my own posture practice at an Ashtanga yoga school in Australia and I had come from a background of Muay Thai, of Thai boxing and combat sports and obviously that's a very competitive field sport. So for me, seeing other people do stuff that was new to me, was foreign to me and felt like it should be easy, and I really noticed myself like pushing myself, straining, trying hard, hard, hard, hard, and really the postures just felt further and further away. And that's also how a lot of people might get injured in yoga, especially trying some of the more advanced poses and forcing it in yoga, especially trying some of the more advanced poses and forcing it. So yoga postures and yoga practice is really so much about relaxing into it, breathing, settling in, listening to your body, getting to know yourself and noticing. Why is this tricky today? Okay, what have I been doing that might cause tension here? Or how can I allow softness and relaxation in this pose? Have I been eating too much of certain kind of foods that are causing my body to be tense or bloated or whatever it is? So yoga practice is really about getting to know yourself and also accepting where you are each and every day, which might be further forward or backwards than the previous day.

Speaker 1: 7:45

So we can also find parallels once again to the Christian faith, where in Christianity for instance in 1 Corinthians 6.19, it is emphasized that body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So truly, both Christianity and Patanjali's yoga honor and emphasize the role of the body as a vehicle for spiritual practice. There's a key difference here, though. In Christianity, the focus is on honoring God through bodily discipline and purity, whereas in yoga, the asana, or truly all the limbs of Patanjali's yoga, prepare the body for meditation and union with the divine. But really it's not about body being an obstacle or like something against. It's a vessel for becoming closer to God, whether you see God as something that's inside or outside of yourself. And truly.

Speaker 1: 8:50

I've been reading actually interestingly the recent book relatively recent book by Jordan B Peterson called we who Wrestle With God, and really it is in Christian texts too. It is very much recognized that the divine resides within us. So that's the thing where I don't see necessarily a contradiction or any problem with practicing yoga and honoring the body and doing this kind of posture practice to become closer to God, whether it is like the God as perceived from the Christian perspective or something else. So, of course, yoga class is a great place to start If you want to practice yoga and practice yoga asana, and you go to your local, whether it's gym or yoga studio or whatever. Maybe there's a yoga in the park or on the beach or whatever. It is online including my short practice videos that I've been posting thus far. Those are great places to start practicing asana, practicing becoming home to your body, coming home, settling in and finding steadiness and comfort in your seat.

Speaker 1: 10:31

But then, really, once you start embodying the practice, asana can be practiced anytime. So it is really about becoming grounded, becoming still, becoming settled in any given situation and finding that, that softness, that relaxing into the present. How okay, even if you're let's say, you're at the bank and there's a line, you have to wait, you have to sit. Instead of like impatiently waiting or fidgeting or being on your phone or whatever, can you just exhale. You know, maybe you're going to be there for another 15 minutes, 20 minutes waiting for your turn. Can you make that into your asana practice where you're just finding a comfortable seat? If there's no seat, can you find a comfortable way to stand and be in your body for those moments? Or maybe that's in traffic, maybe you're on your way somewhere and there's, I don't know, maybe there's been an accident or for whatever reason, it's just the traffic is bad. Can you find comfort in your seat? Can you find stillness and peace when you're just arriving, in your body instead of waiting for something.

Speaker 1: 12:03

So there's like a lot of ways where we can start practicing asana in our daily lives and, as I've also talked about previously I believe also on this podcast where actually we can start using the awareness and the approach that we have to our posture practice in the yoga class or or in a yoga practice in, for instance, the gym. I really feel like I can. If, if I approach weightlifting as yoga, it really allows me to settle in and, yeah, I'm able to nurture that mind-body-soul connection when I'm lifting heavy things and really embodying the presence and being steady, stable, keeping the breath nice and controlled throughout my movements, then anything can become a yoga asana practice and I actually really recommend that I do this. At the end of my gym session, I'll do a small yoga asana sequence. I do my stretches at the end, but then I also, at the end of my gym workout, I will sit down, maybe for three minutes, five minutes, do a short pranayama and actually also do a shavasana at the end of my gym practice. So, sthira sukham, asana, stable, steady posture, all the work that we do at the gym. Or maybe you go running or biking or dancing or surfing or whatever is your physical practice, you can bring this awareness from yoga to it and incorporate at the end a short stretch, a relaxation, and really reaping the benefits of your practice as if it's a yoga practice. And those are really beautiful elements that we've learned from the yogic tradition is that stillness at the end, shavasana, and really allowing your nervous system to kind of integrate all that work that you've done, whether it's in a yoga class or, like I said, any other workout, and I really encourage you to try that and that will really, I think, elevate any, any kind of training or workouts that you do. Yeah, so, once again, even beyond working out or beyond the yoga practice as such, how can we bring asana, how can we bring sthira, sukham, asana, steadiness, ease, comfort of a posture into our daily life? So, if you're working in an office or at a desk job, try to. And actually the interesting thing is that we don't.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Once we really start embodying the yoga asana practice and when we start becoming more closer to our higher selves and that aligned, perfected self, then it just naturally happens. But we can also just cultivate it at your desk, sitting upright, shoulders, relaxed shoulders, jaw, neck, relaxed, sitting tall, and you will notice a difference, because that's the beauty of the yoga practice it actually teaches us also how the physical shape of our body impacts how the prana flows or if it's stuck. So so always remembering that, like things like slouching or folding forward, you know, forward folds are typically calming your closing off and you're soothing the nervous system, whereas backbends are energizing, opening, heart opening, and they increase alertness. So just becoming aware of those things I mean we naturally do these things if we're tired, like we try to like yawn, maybe stretch our arms, and that gives us more energy. So really becoming aware of these things through the practice of yoga asana will become will kind of how would I say it gives us tools for our daily life.

Speaker 1: 16:59

So if I need to feel a certain way, I can just do this thing with my body, take a few breaths and notice that your state changes. So whether you need focus, relaxation, kind of little cleaning of the body, so whatever it is that you need to feel in any given moment, you can actually just shift your body into a different shape and notice that your body will feel different. Your mind will feel more alert or more relaxed, depending on how you move your body. So I think maybe that's enough for today. So, really, yoga asana is not just about the shapes on the mat. It's about cultivating a strong, pure, flexible body that is able to sit in meditation for an extended period of time without aches, pains or discomfort. But beyond that, we can actually bring the awareness of the yoga asana practice into where we're working, where we're training, whatever we're doing. Also, you know, if you're cooking or playing with your kids or whatever it is that you do every day, that you can actually try to embody sthira sukham asana stable, steady posture in every part of your life.

Speaker 1: 18:34

So thank you so much for joining for this brief exploration into yoga asana, the third limb of Patanjeli's eight limbs of yoga. So next week is the time for pranayama, or the breathing exercises, and or life force expansion of yoga in yoga, and that's probably one of my favorite topics, so I'm really looking forward to sharing some of that with you. Um, in the meanwhile, if you found this content helpful, interesting, anything like that, please do leave a review. If you're listening on any platform where reviews are available, please do leave a comment. If you're listening on any platform where reviews are available, please do leave a comment. If you're listening on YouTube, like subscribe, and, of course, share with any family or friends that might find this kind of content of benefit. And yeah, I guess that's everything for today. Remember a good practice is the one you do. Thanks so much.