Yoga and Meditation: How They Actually Relate

People often use the words as if they were interchangeable, or assume that yoga is the physical one and meditation is the sitting one. The actual relationship is more interesting, and knowing it makes both more useful.

The older framework

Classical accounts of yoga describe it as a system with several components, of which physical posture is one. The system described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, compiled somewhere around the early centuries of the common era, sets out eight limbs.

They cover ethical restraints, personal observances, posture, breath regulation, the withdrawal of attention from the senses, concentration, sustained absorption, and a final state usually left untranslated.

The important detail for this question: in that framework, posture is the third limb, and the last three are all stages of what English would call meditation. The physical practice is preparation. Its stated purpose is largely to make sitting still for a long time possible and comfortable.

It is also worth noting that the elaborate physical practice most people now recognise as yoga is considerably more recent than the Sutras, developed substantially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The older texts describe far fewer postures, most of them seated.

What meditation actually is

Not emptying the mind, which is the most common misunderstanding and the reason many people conclude they cannot do it.

Broadly, it is the deliberate training of attention. Most techniques involve choosing something to attend to (the breath, a sensation, a sound, a phrase) noticing when attention has wandered, and returning it. The noticing and returning is the practice. A session in which attention wandered a hundred times and returned a hundred times is a successful session.

Different traditions differ substantially in what they attend to and what they are for, and lumping them together as one activity loses a lot.

How they help each other

Posture makes sitting possible. This is the original argument and it holds. A body that can sit comfortably for twenty minutes without aching has removed the main practical obstacle.

Movement settles a restless mind. Sitting down to meditate after a day of activity is harder than sitting down after twenty minutes of movement and breathing. Many people find the sequence works far better in that order.

Breath practice bridges them. Slow breathing with extended exhalations shifts the nervous system toward settling, which makes attention easier to hold.

Attention training improves the physical practice. A posture practice done with genuine attention to sensation is a different activity from one done while planning your day, and it produces different results.

You can do either without the other

Worth saying plainly. Plenty of people practise postures purely for physical reasons and have no interest in the rest, and there is nothing deficient about that. Plenty of others meditate without ever doing a posture practice.

Neither is doing it wrong. The framework describes a complete system, but nobody is obliged to take all of it, and being honest about what you want from it is more useful than pretending to an interest you do not have.

A practical starting point

If you want to try the combination: twenty minutes of movement, five minutes of slow breathing with long exhalations, then five minutes of sitting and attending to the breath. Set a timer. Expect attention to wander constantly, and treat each return as the point rather than the failure.

Five minutes daily does more than thirty minutes occasionally, in the same way as the physical practice.

Where a teacher helps

Mostly with the sitting position, which is where most people give up. Discomfort after four minutes is almost always a setup problem (too low, no support, knees unsupported), and it is solved in one session. The rest of the instruction is fairly simple; it is the practice that is hard.

Sessions are live on video, thirty or sixty minutes.

Questions people ask

Is yoga a form of meditation?

In the classical framework, posture is one limb of a system whose final three limbs are stages of meditation. So the physical practice is traditionally preparation for it rather than a version of it, though a posture practice done with full attention has a great deal in common with one.

Do I have to meditate to do yoga?

No. Many people practise postures purely for physical reasons, and that is a legitimate use of it. The complete system exists; taking part of it is not a failure.

Is meditation about emptying the mind?

No, and that belief stops a lot of people. It is the training of attention: choosing something to attend to, noticing when the mind has wandered, and returning. The noticing and returning is the practice itself.

Should I move before I sit?

Most people find it much easier. Movement and slow breathing settle a restless body and mind, which removes the main obstacle to sitting still. Twenty minutes of movement then five minutes of sitting is a good starting structure.