Understanding the eight steps to stillness

Walk into most yoga classes and you will find mats, stretching, and deep breathing. These are lovely practices, but they are only a small part of what yoga truly is.

At Ananda Marga’s centre on Crieffe Road, practitioners are taught something older and more complete. It is called Rájádhirájá Yoga, which translates literally from Sanskrit as the “King of Kings’ Yoga”. It is an all-round, comprehensive, and classical spiritual system designed for the balanced evolution of the body, mind, and soul toward self-realisation and cosmic bliss, an eight-limbed system that welcomes the body as one gentle step on a much longer journey toward clarity of mind.

Ananda Marga was founded in 1955 by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, known affectionately to followers as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti. Its foundation is Tantra, not the popularly misunderstood version of the word, but its original and beautiful meaning: the expansion of the mind, freeing it from the darkness of ignorance and limitation. This expansion is not reached through posture alone. It is built patiently, step by step, through eight interlocking practices known as the Ashtanga, or eight limbs.

The first two limbs come before any physical movement at all, and they are often the most nourishing place to begin. Yama lays out five simple codes for how a person treats the world around them: non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, right use of energy, and non-hoarding. Niyama turns that same gentle discipline inward through cleanliness, contentment, self-sacrifice, study, and surrender to something greater than the self. Together, they form the warm, steady ground on which everything else is built. Yoga, in this tradition, begins with how one lives, not with how one stretches.

Only then comes Asana, a prescribed set of 42 postures. These are not designed for athletic performance. They gently balance the body’s endocrine glands, keep the spine supple, and prepare the nervous system for the quiet work of meditation. Pranayama, controlled breathing, follows, regulating vital energy and settling the mind like still water. Pratyahara invites the senses to rest, drawing them away from the pull of noise and distraction. Dharana narrows that stillness into a single, gentle point of focus. Dhyana is meditation itself, the heart of practice. And Samadhi, complete absorption into Cosmic Consciousness, is the warm horizon practitioners walk toward.

It is a map from everyday kindness to the deepest states of inner peace, where every step matters, not only the ones that look graceful on a mat.

Unlike styles of yoga focused purely on aerobic fitness or structural alignment, Rájádhirájá Yoga functions heavily as a biocentric system targeting the endocrine and nervous systems:

• Hormonal homeostasis: Postures target specific physical plexuses and endocrine glands (such as the thyroid, pituitary, and adrenal glands) to stabilise hormonal output. This directly calms emotional fluctuations, anxiety, and mental agitation.

• The power of Kumbhaka: Many asanas utilise Kumbhaka (holding the breath either inside or outside) combined with deliberate muscular contractions. This triggers the autonomic nervous system to find a state of balance between its sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) branches.

• Mental ideation: Postures are performed with conscious concentration or dynamic mantras. Applying an elevated thought profile while holding a posture transforms a physical stretch into a profound mental exercise.

A LIVING PRACTICE

These eight-limbed approaches offer something for every stage of life. For students, the early limbs gently build self-discipline and contentment, long before exam season brings its familiar pressure, habits of mind that steady a person well beyond the classroom. For working adults, breathing and concentration practices are gifts that need no equipment and no special setting, only a few quiet minutes reclaimed from a busy day. And for a people with such deep spiritual roots, expressed through faith, through Rastafari, through cherished folk tradition, the idea of ethics and meditation as one continuous practice can feel like coming home.

“Stillness is not something to chase after a crisis,” says Dada Gitishudananda. “It is a discipline we build into daily life, one limb at a time, with patience and warmth for ourselves.”

The centre warmly welcomes newcomers to its sessions and continues its quiet service to those in need, a reminder that, in this tradition, service to others is itself part of the path.

Learning a system this ancient reminds us that peace of mind is cultivated through practice, not left to chance. For Jamaicans seeking something steadier to hold onto, yoga offers a gentle, structured way back to it.

Article courtesy of Ananda Marga Jamaica. To find out more about free yoga sessions, school programmes, the monthly Zoom talk, or to book a session with yoga guru Dada Gitishudananda, call 876-524-7811, email avtgiiti@gmail.com, or visit the centre at 12 Crieffe Road, Kingston.