Discovering Yoga's Eight Limbs: More than Just Asanas

Ever thought about yoga beyond the physical asana? We're Jody Domerstad and Dan Boisits, and we're here to guide you on a journey of discovery, leading you to a deeper understanding of yoga's eight limbs as outlined in the Yoga Sutras. This comprehensive approach to healing explores not just the physical, but also the spiritual and mental aspects of yoga, offering profound opportunities for personal growth. We also delve into the value of diverse practices such as talk therapy, body work, and reading in fostering self-understanding and connection with the world around us.

In this thought-provoking discussion, we shift our focus onto Pratyahara, the fourth limb of yoga, which helps us redirect our attention away from external distractions and towards internal healing. We unpack the concept of interoception, a powerful tool that can help recognize and respond to internal signals. Discussing the pivotal role concentration plays in meditation, we also reflect on Samadhi, the ultimate stage of meditation that can evoke deep emotional responses. This enlightening journey offers you the opportunity to uncover the transformative potential of yoga within your own self. Join us, and let's explore together the healing power of yoga beyond the mat.

Transcript

Jody: 0:16

Greetings and welcome to Become One Living. My name is Jodi Domerstad.

Dan: 0:23

And I am Dan Boyzitz.

Jody: 0:25

My legal name is Jodi Boyzitz.

Dan: 0:27

So legally Jodi is Jodi Boyzitz.

Jody: 0:31

That I am, though, in the yoga world, it teaches us not to be identifying with names, so does it really matter who I am?

Dan: 0:41

No, Joe.

Jody: 0:42

Perfect Joe. Me and my husband are here today to talk about yoga and my experience of yoga. My belief about yoga is that yoga is a complete healing modality.

Dan: 1:04

That you have used throughout just about your entire adult life. You have used your entire adult life.

Jody: 1:16

I have. I say that it's a complete healing system, because in the West, here in the States, we just do asana.

Dan: 1:26

It's feeling watered down. And if you move your body a while, if you use yoga a while, you're doing asana, there's a great chance that after doing that for some time, you're going to wonder to yourself is there a little bit more to this?

Jody: 1:45

And the answer is yes, there is a lot more to this. There are two the yoga classes. Nowadays, most of them are set up. You go in music's on, you move shavasana, you leave Music and music during shavasana, and it leaves little or no room for awareness, pranayama, which is breathing, meditation, contemplation. So you move your body. What I'm curious? If our listeners know this. I'd be curious and I know you know this. Did you know that moving the body is one out of eight limbs?

Dan: 2:33

One out of eight.

Jody: 2:34

Yes, it's one out of eight principles. You can use the word principle or limb.

Dan: 2:39

I wonder if they know that, like limbs or pillars or main areas of study.

Jody: 2:48

I feel so drawn to this idea of holding yoga as a complete healing modality because it was designed as a system and if we use all of the limbs, we have an opportunity to investigate and explore our humanness, the full humanness, the thinking mind, the fearful mind.

Dan: 3:20

The feeling body. Yeah, I mean it's. You know, I've said it before, but if this was called scoopy-doopy the scoopy-doopy, that's what I'd be doing, because I have not experienced in my lifetime a certain something that offers as much as yoga offers, and it's a great way to grow, it's a great way to mature, it's a great way to learn how to be and it's a great way to learn how to be well.

Jody: 3:57

Yes.

Dan: 3:59

But it all begins with the eight limbs. And the niyamas and the niyamas.

Jody: 4:05

We today want to share this idea with our listeners here that we want you to know. The complete system of yoga started thousands of years ago and showed up in something called the yoga sutras.

Dan: 4:22

S-U-T-R-A, and we're compelled to share this because we witness transformation by way of the offerings that Jody shares through her teacher trainings. We witness people transform right in front of our eyes.

Jody: 4:41

By using.

Dan: 4:42

By using the eight limbs. Yeah, it doesn't happen just by asana.

Jody: 4:46

Yeah, so the Yoga Sutras go back thousands of years and in future podcasts we will dive into the Yoga Sutras, the Pavaragar Gita, all the sacred texts that people use to study yoga, but for today just want to share that the eight limbs comes from the Yoga Sutras and the eight limbs is a clear Framework for you to use and go back to over and over and over again in your life To study and learn about yourself in every aspect mentally, emotionally and physically.

Dan: 5:29

It's truly an opportunity if you use these tools for For self-realization, for to become into yourself, to become aware completely of all that you are. And again, I don't know anywhere else that you can get this comprehensive package from, from.

Jody: 5:49

I don't know where this exists other than this system, and the complete system, the eight limbs, dan and I use them broadly, meaning this. The first limb is called the yamas, and the yamas is about you and your behavior in the world, how you treat the world, how you treat people. The next limb is called knee yamas. Listen, my friends, we will go through all these words over and over again. Just hear them and don't worry about what they mean.

Dan: 6:21

You don't have to write them down.

Jody: 6:23

Yeah, put the pens down. So these first two limbs, or principles, are about studying Self. For me, that then can be even going to talk therapy, right, you don't have to take it and narrow it and boil it down to. I have to study the Yoga scriptures. I have to do this. I have to do that. You have to study your behavior. You can change what you don't know. You can change what you can't see in yourself. Yoga has that aspect when it asks you how are you behaving in the world, how do you impact the world? And then, how do you take care of yourself and impact yourself?

Dan: 7:11

It's a great way to have like, it's almost like.

Jody: 7:17

It's a great way to I imagine them, some of them, as mirrors to yourself, so that you can really wake up and if you're not able to Witness your mirror or your own reflection, that's when you get guidance and support from someone which could be talk therapy, which could be body work, which could be studying the scriptures.

Dan: 7:42

I think that we all have. If we're searching, we all have something that brings us into a better relationship. Whether it's Surfing, whether it's practicing the piano, whether it's painting, whether it's reading, whether it's like watching movies, you get to know it so well that it becomes a learning tool and and a reflection. All these, all these great things, simultaneously super powerful.

Jody: 8:08

But you have to be paying attention so the first two limbs in the eight limb path is asking you pay attention to your behavior and pay attention to how you care for yourself.

Dan: 8:25

How do you care for yourself? How do you treat other people?

Jody: 8:28

Okay, now from there, the yoga sutras and the eight limbs say now you can do asana, because when you move your body, you get more information on what's happening in your body, but you also get information on how you treat your body and it's great because you learn in the yamas and the yamas about non-attachment.

Dan: 8:54

Right, it's right up front. You learn about non-attachment. So you cannot go to your asana class and look at somebody who's in your quote unquote spot and be like wait, you're in my spot.

Jody: 9:06

Really, because I've had people do that.

Dan: 9:08

Yeah, that's silly.

Jody: 9:10

That has actually happened, my friends. I owned a studio.

Dan: 9:14

I still do for years. You can't that. That's my spot.

Jody: 9:19

I'm with you. That's why that person needed yoga. That's why we need yoga. As a society, we cling to these things. That's why the eight limbs are beautiful, because they ask you what are you clinging to? What does that space do for you? You feel safe because when I ask people, why do you have a spot? When? When I keep asking and we boil it down, they're so uncomfortable some of them that that spot makes them feel safe.

Dan: 9:47

Well, that's a sweetness, that's a sweet spot. I suppose there's always a sweet spot to something that is becomes Outwardly a red flag for me, so so somebody could find a spot in. Yeah, I suppose, like your first time, walking into a yoga studio could be daunting.

Jody: 10:06

Yeah, people are scared, and I'm not saying it's a healthy thing for us to cling on to that one spot. What would be beautiful is the awareness. Using the limbs, you can become aware. Wow, I'm really stuck on that spot. I need that spot. I'm gonna fight that person for that spot. I know someone that got into a fight for their position.

Jody: 10:30

Yeah, yeah, and and that's that to me is that opportunity to dive into the yamas and the Neyama's, these Ideas of who am I in this world and now, who am I on this yoga mat? So then we move to Asana, which is the third limb, but it's the body, and sometimes, for me, walking is Asana. Would you agree?

Dan: 10:56

most definitely.

Jody: 10:58

Moving the body brings an awareness to your visceral organs.

Dan: 11:04

You get to build a relationship with the senses inside your body and you also get to understand injuries or limitations Through the body if you think about it in terms of evolution, the body was built to Help us be mobile, amble all the way from the, the oxyput Atlanta joint, right beneath the skull. The whole body beneath you, beneath your head, is built to move. So it's important. Asana is crucial. We're not counting it out.

Jody: 11:39

It's very, very important when we talk More in detail about Asana, we'll talk about the way we look at it and how you can make it functional so that you Live a better life with more ease and function to your body. Keep it as optimal as you can throughout your lifetime.

Dan: 11:59

Because when your body is in pain, you're preoccupied and you're probably not in as good A mood as you could be.

Jody: 12:10

I know what that feels like. The next limb is pranayama. That means breathing will get into that in another podcast. Why is breathing so important? Because of oxygen. It enlivens you and your cells and your breath informs your mind. If you can lengthen your breath and calm the breath down, it can calm down the mind. We call that body up. The breath also can alkaline the body. We'll talk about that. One of the most important things, I think, is when you breathe and your focus goes to your breath, it brings you right into this moment. So the breath not only can alter your state physiologically heart rate, slow down lungs, more expansive VO2 uptake, all these fun things we'll get into but it also brings you right into the present moment and it's a tool to support the movement.

Dan: 13:29

I like that. Yeah, just to back up, one second. I just had a thought was that you know, short breath supports anxiety, you know, and lengthening the breath calms the nervous system. And then when you can bring your steady breath into your movement, in congruence, in coordination together, then you're really cooking.

Jody: 13:55

Then the practice becomes a practice of therapeutic use, healing and transformation, because you just moved out of a limbic state fight or flight, or nervous energy or tension. You moved from tension and tightness to a down regulation, a calming, a slowing down, a healing space and you regulate your nervous system and what comes online is your fullest potential. Let's move on. What's after Pranayama?

Dan: 14:35

Pratyahara.

Jody: 14:36

Oh Pratyahara. Some say that Pratyahara means to withdraw your senses completely, meaning don't hear, don't see, don't smell, don't taste.

Dan: 14:51

Turn in.

Jody: 14:53

When we look at the word a little more and we will later on it means to turn away from something and turn towards something else, Turn away from the distractions and turn towards that in which can heal you, feed you, expand you.

Dan: 15:15

Yeah, amazing. So this reminds me of that little clip about like the Buddhist monk who came to Times Square for the first time and he looked up at all the signs and the neon signs, everything flashing, blinking, and he said they're trying to steal my mind. So Pratyahara is limiting or eliminating or diminishing the distractions outward so that you can turn in.

Jody: 15:45

Yeah. And so Pratyahara says Dan will say to me and I'm sure some of our listeners have experienced this, where you see me scrolling and just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And Dan will say to me I lost you, I lost you, lost me in distraction, lost me in time and space, I'm no longer there. And that over time, creates a habit and a pattern of looking outward. And the more we look outward for reinforcement, for validation, for too much information, we cut off our intuition and our interoception. Our understanding of self gets cut off, because now we're comparing ourselves to the outside world.

Dan: 16:39

Yeah, we're relinquishing, essentially trusting ourselves. All of the feedback that we get is really important to interoception, the proprioception, our eyes, smelling, you know, feeling, all of these things are so rich. But if we're sensitized we lose connection with ourselves.

Jody: 17:02

Dan, you said the word interoception and I just want to share with everyone what that means. Interoception is your ability to understand your inner signals.

Dan: 17:17

Yeah, recognizing all the essentials. So recognizing when your mouth tells you you're thirsty. Recognizing when you're bladder or your other elimination systems say you've got to eliminate. Recognizing the stomach, the sounds of the stomach.

Jody: 17:39

So when you're tired, if you don't go to sleep, you're ignoring the visceral response of your body talking to you. If you keep doing that which most people do they hold in urination I'll just hold it. I'll hold it. I got to get this done or I don't have to eat now, I can hold it, keep going. We push and push and push, closing off the signal with self. Over time we then distract and go outward to try to fix certain things when, if we just listen to our inner body speaking to us with the basic signals it's offering, we could alter and change our life very simply If we just ate when we were hungry, slept when we were tired and listened to the inside interoception. Going further is after Pratyahara, after saying I'm not going to be distracted with the outer world anymore.

Dan: 18:48

That creates space for Dharana.

Jody: 18:51

Which is.

Dan: 18:52

Concentration.

Jody: 18:54

Concentration must be practiced before you can meditate. Concentration is about coming back to something over and over again, which we're not designed to do. By the way, Our human mind is wired to scan for possible threats. The prehistoric brain is wired to try to keep us alive. The very thing it's not going to be really happy about is concentrating. So people try to concentrate and they think I stink at this. I can't stop my thoughts. I'm a horrible yogi, whatever that means. But in essence, we're created to be almost hyper-vigilant. It is up to us to practice the opposite over time, to keep coming back and fixing on the breath or the body.

Dan: 20:08

I would suspect that most people setting out on their own meditation practice will, unbeknownst to themselves, not get past initial obstacles because of their lack of ability to concentrate. So, for example, you shared with me the other day you extended your meditation practice and you had this sweet moment where it took about 45 to 50 minutes, where you finally were really present. It is a great deep understanding of where meditation can take you. It reminds me of the couple of people that I know. Let's do this meditation practice. Let's do a 40-day challenge. We are going to do a meditation for a 40-day challenge. We can do this, we can do this. We got this, they did the 40 days and they were done. Then one looked at the other and then one said, okay, so now what do we do? You totally missed the point of going in and really observing or connecting with or catching even the clarity that comes in if you're truly getting your meditation on.

Jody: 21:40

I have been smiling and giggling this whole time, my friends, because Dan failed to tell you how long I've extended my meditation practice to. Would you like to tell them how long?

Dan: 21:53

Two hours.

Jody: 21:57

Yes, I have been meditating for two hours a day. It's only been seven days, maybe 10 days and it takes my mind One day was 45 minutes to calm down, Another day was it felt like 20. And what I do is I sit, I let my mind just go, I let it go and after a little while my breath comes online, I start to calm down and I pick a place to focus and I breathe in to my throat or my nose or my belly, and I breathe out and after a while, Diana, I disappear. And there's been a few times in the past 10 days where this sense of samadhi occurs. That's the last limb and what that means is the sum of everything. It doesn't mean that I've left my body and I'm hanging out with the dude or dudette. It doesn't mean I'm not present. It means the physical body dissolves and I was nothing. There was nothing there. And what came to me after a while was what if you were nothing?

Jody: 23:24

What if you were no one. It brings up such deep emotion. I can go right back to that place where I realized I am nothing and all these little things that happen in life. I get so worked up over and I give meaning to things that have no meaning. But as I sit with myself in stillness, the remembrance rises up and I'm awake from the inside and the outer world dissolves and no one or nothing exists and, as woo-woo as that sounds, that is a deep state of peace. That's what lies within us. I never had that before. I never met that before. That's why we're sharing this with you.

Jody: 24:27

Forty years of my life were chaos, filled with complex trauma, life-threatening diseases, near-death experiences, abuse, addiction. I never imagined that I could feel such a deep peace in my body and in life, and it's from the Eight Limbs. When I only did the physical. I only got physical when I only tried to control my mind. I actually have a very intellectual part that figured out what I was trying to do and I lost Right, because we can think a good game. But when I started to say, jodi, you want to be loving but you're angry, when I started to see the polarity in that from the yamas and the niyamas, I decided how am I going to change that? Who can help me with this? What do I have to do? So, please, when you look at yoga, may you not see just the yoga practice of physical asana, and maybe asana brings you to the practice. That's lovely. That's what it did for me and you, right, dan.

Jody: 25:54

But as I started to move and move and go deeper and deeper, I realized that I wanted to know who I was without suffering. And that opportunity is there. If you engage and use the eight limbs as a framework to keep coming back to and back to over and over again. May you experience a deep peace and not try to meditate for two hours. Don't do that. That's another podcast in and of itself why I'm choosing to do that. These practices have been around for thousands of years. They knew, we started to study them, and Dan and I will share neuroscience and some studies they've done to prove these things with you, but most of the time we're going to share from our experience. If you have any questions, you can email us, right, dan?

Dan: 27:12

Absolutely.

Jody: 27:13

At BecomeOneLivingcom. Do you have anything else you want to say before we wrap up?

Dan: 27:24

So much, we've got plenty of time.

Jody: 27:31

So much, okay, thank you all, my friends, for joining us today and listening. Yeah, thank you.

Dan: 27:41

It's fun to be able to share our lives and share what's been really helpful in living a full, calm life.

Jody: 27:58

That's another podcast. Okay, my friends, our life is calm. I'm still here trying to figure that out. Okay, thank you so much, and we'll see you soon, see you soon.