How to achieve "control of the heart" in practicing yoga?

In order to realize the "control of the heart", Patanjali, the founder of yoga, put forward eight stages of yoga practice in the Yoga Sutra, which is called "eight sub branches". These are:

1. Yama: refers to the commandments that must be observed, including no killing, honesty, no stealing, no lewdness, no greed, etc. According to Yoga Sutra, before doing yoga, a person must have sufficient moral cultivation, otherwise, his heart will not be calm.

2. Niyama: the code of ethics to be observed, including

(1) Purity (the purity of body and food is "external purity"; the purity of inner filth is "internal purity")

(2) Contentment

(3) Asceticism (suffering from hunger, thirst, cold, heat, sitting, standing, etc., and abiding by the vows of fasting, touring, asceticism, etc.)

(4) Recitation (learning classics, reciting holy sounds)

(5) Worship God (believe in the great God in heaven and offer everything to God).

3. Asana: it refers to keeping the body stable, relaxed and relaxed. It includes lotus seat, hero seat, auspicious seat, Vajra seat, supreme good seat and so on.

4. Pranayama refers to the regulation and control of breathing. Yoga Sutra points out that when regulating breath, we should first pay attention to the three functions of breathing: the function of inhaling inward, the function of exhaling outward, and the function of storing Qi in the chest and abdomen.

In addition, we should pay attention to four things

(1) "Chu" refers to the range of breath in the chest and abdomen after breathing in, and where it reaches in the universe after breathing out.

(2) "Shi" refers to the time of breathing. In the process of exhalation and exhalation, we must keep the speed moderate, interval and rhythm appropriate.

(3) "Number" refers to the number of breaths. It is required that the outlet and inlet should be slow and light, and short and rough should be avoided.

(4) "Focus on one situation" refers to the problem of mind adjustment. When breathing, you should focus your mind on a certain point and not disperse it.

5. Pratyahar: it means to suppress all kinds of sensory organs, so that the activities of sensory organs are completely under the control of the heart.

6. Dharana: it is to make the heart focus on one part of the body, such as the navel, the tip of the nose, the tip of the tongue, etc.; it can also focus on an external object, such as the moon, the statue, etc.

7. Dhyan: also known as meditation, is to unify the mind that focuses on one place with the object that it focuses on, and to integrate the subjective and objective.

8. Samadhi: it is the true unity of the heart and the object of its concentration. Samadhi can be divided into two types: "samadhi with thoughts" and "samadhi without thoughts". The former refers to the state of thinking after reaching Samadhi. The latter refers to that all changes and functions of the mind have been broken, reaching the state of unity with the object of concentration, that is, the highest state of yoga

gmtlight is extracted from encyclopedia.