The word “āsana” is not limited to a physical posture: it opens a whole reflection on what yoga is. Behind the exercise of the body lies an age-old science of balance — the one Patañjali sums up in three words: the posture must be stable and comfortable.
Āsana: “the fact of sitting”
Āsanam first means the meditation posture. The verbal root ās- means “to sit”, and the suffix -ana, “the fact of doing”: literally, āsana is “the fact of sitting, of being seated”. As Sri T. Krishnamacharya said, yoga is India’s gift to the world: all the Western bodily disciplines — gymnastics, dance, therapies of body and soul — have borrowed something from it. Yet classical yoga remains little understood, surrounded by false ideas.
“It is this belief in a cosmic order, whose principles art was meant to render visible, that formed the basis of the theory of all the arts in ancient India.”
Alain Daniélou, Approche de l’hindouisme
Yoga is not limited to the body
For many, yoga is reduced to haṭha-yoga, that is, to postures. But to deepen it is not to add one more posture or one more hour of meditation: it is to widen the field of consciousness through the yoga of knowledge (jñāna), the relational field through the yoga of devotion (bhakti), the field of action through the yoga of action (karma). Yoga is not an esoteric discipline perfumed with incense: it is an exact science of the body, grounded in anatomy and physiology, observed and recorded for millennia.
A yoga diluted by globalisation
Known worldwide today, yoga has often been stripped of its traditional context — sometimes by great Indian masters themselves — to make it accessible to Westerners. Krishnamacharya had studied more than 3,000 postures; Iyengar describes 602 in Light on Yoga; Bikram counts 26; André Van Lysebeth’s “Rishikesh” series, 12. Yoga has undeniably become diluted.
The definition of yoga
The word “yoga” comes from the root yug: to link, to unite, to direct and concentrate one’s attention. It is a practice that gradually integrates, into the most material body, the subtle bodies, up to the soul — by means of postures (āsana), breath (prāṇāyāma), concentration (dhāraṇā), inner listening (pratyāhāra) and meditation (dhyāna).
What the Yoga Sūtra say
In the Yoga Sūtra (196 aphorisms), Patañjali offers a true map, a “GPS” on the road to samādhi. Remarkably, he uses the word “āsana” only three times. He does not speak of the dog or the crow posture, but of uprightness, of physical and mental balance, of the right inner attitude. The work has four chapters: Samādhi-pāda, Sādhana-pāda, Vibhūti-pāda and Kaivalya-pāda. Sūtra 2.29 sets out the eight limbs: yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi. The practice of postures is the third: they end bodily agitation, gather the scattered energies and improve overall health. Then comes the heart of the teaching on āsana, in three words:
Sthira sukham āsanam — “the posture must be steady, still and comfortable.”
Yoga Sūtra II, 46
Om Shanti,
Jean-Claude Garnier
In short
Āsana is not only a shape of the body: it is a right attitude, steady and comfortable — the doorway to a complete science of inner unity.
