The limbs of āsana – Part 1: What is a posture?

Postures (āsana) are to Yoga what chips or French fries are to food: the whole world knows them, the whole world eats them, yet not many people know when they were first made or how to prepare them (let alone the fact that it was the Belgians who invented them, not the French, but that’s another story).

Yoga teachers understandably get confused sometimes because the same pose can be called different names depending on the teaching traditions. Most postures are called ‘āsana’ but some are called ‘pīṭham’, base (e.g., dvipādapīṭham, bridge pose), and others ‘mudrā’ (a seal of energy involving specific techniques, e.g., mahāmudrā).

So, what does āsana mean in Sanskrit, and what constitutes an āsana?

Sanskrit has two verbs for “being”, one is bhū, the other is ās, and āsana comes from ās. The verb bhū has the additional sense of “becoming” which implies transformation, whereas ās is for a general state of being, existing, but also inhabiting or sitting in.

So, since etymologically āsana points to how we are placed in a certain situation at a certain moment, we can call it being there wholly and completely with our body, thoughts and emotions pointing to the action. If I perform an action in particular circumstances today then again the day after in different circumstances, this action will be different and feel different to me. It goes without saying that we are not only talking about yoga practice here, but about life in general.

In a previous article about citta (the mind), I mentioned that the word āsana occurs merely three times in the 195 aphorisms of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra. The famous sūtra II.46 is one of them. Therein he describes āsana as “firm and comfortable.” These notions might initially strike us as opposites but in fact they complement one another, and here in Sanskrit they are combined grammatically into a compound, sthirasukha or sthira-sukha like a hyphenated word.

Sthira is fixation, firmness. There should be no trembling, no struggling, which implies that modifications in yoga postures could be needed in order for this quality to be present. But we should be careful not to fall into the trap of misinterpreting firmness as excessive force, fixation as rigidity.

This is where sukha comes in: to keep the breath smooth, to watch for signs of tension, to focus on being at ease in what we do while at the same time kindly observing the distractions if and when they occur. But we must be careful not to fall into the trap of confusing ‘at ease’ with ‘easy’, comfortable with too soft.

The appropriate dosage of sthira and sukha is paramount and rules their complementarity. A posture is steady because it is comfortable. It is comfortable because it is steady.

That is all fine in theory, but some people have a natural tendency to try too hard while others are in the habit of giving themselves too much slack, without even realising it. Finding the right balance is difficult, it takes discipline (tapas), self-reflection (svādhyāya), acceptance (īśvara-praṇidhāna). A yoga posture may be called an āsana when it is performed with equal dedication to the appropriate effort (prayatna) and to the release from a desperate attachment to anticipated results (śaithilya). Needless to say, the guidance of a competent mentor is essential.

It is then, and only then, that the infinite possibilities (ananta samāpatti) of āsana have the potential to reveal themselves and bring a level of introspection which paves the way for the pursuit of yoga’s highest state: equanimity even in the face of extremes (dvanda anabhigata)* and the disentanglement of the self from the Self.

In the absence of attention to these important qualities in everyday practice, postural exercises may not be called āsana but gymnastics.

Comfort in the effort, or effort with comfort: that is the key to being able to sit, a prerequisite for meditation. More on this next time in part two.

 * refer to sūtras YS II. 47, 48