Written by Joseph Berridge, Founder of Joga Yoga, E-RYT since 2016
Meditation is not something you add to yoga. It is already part of it. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, meditation has a Sanskrit name, dhyana, and a fixed position: the seventh of the eight limbs of yoga. Yoga is the whole eight-limbed system. Meditation is one limb of it.
Is Yoga Meditation, or Is Meditation Part of Yoga?
Meditation is part of yoga. The confusion is recent and mostly Western.
Patanjali divides the eight limbs into two groups. The first five, yama, niyama, asana, pranayama and pratyahara, are called bahiranga, the outer limbs. The last three, dharana, dhyana and samadhi, are antaranga, the inner limbs. Most yoga classes in the US and Europe teach limb three and sometimes limb four, then stop. They cover the outer group and end right at the boundary of the inner one. Two generations of practitioners learned the word “yoga” as a word meaning postures, so when meditation comes up later it sounds like a different discipline from a different tradition.
Meditation exists outside yoga as well. Buddhist vipassana is a separate lineage with its own texts and its own goals. So meditation is broader than yoga, and yoga is broader than meditation. The two overlap at dhyana.
Where Meditation Sits in the Eight Limbs
Patanjali lists the limbs in sutra 2.29, and the order is the argument.
| # | Sanskrit | What it covers | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yama | How you treat other people | Outer |
| 2 | Niyama | How you treat yourself | Outer |
| 3 | Asana | A seat you can hold | Outer |
| 4 | Pranayama | Breath regulation | Outer |
| 5 | Pratyahara | Drawing the senses inward | Outer |
| 6 | Dharana | Holding attention on one thing | Inner |
| 7 | Dhyana | Attention that stops breaking | Inner |
| 8 | Samadhi | Absorption, no separation left | Inner |
Each limb makes the next one possible. You cannot draw the senses inward while the breath is ragged, and you cannot regulate the breath while the body cannot hold a position. In practice people move between limbs rather than finishing one before starting the next, but the dependencies are real. For the full path, see our guide to the eight limbs of yoga.
Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi Are Not the Same Thing
Most explanations go vague here, and the vagueness costs you. Patanjali defines the last three limbs in three short lines at the start of the third chapter.
Dharana is binding attention to one place. Sutra 3.1 puts it as holding the mind on a particular object. You pick something, the breath at the nostrils, a candle flame, a mantra, and you put your attention there. Then it wanders off. You bring it back. That returning is the practice. Dharana takes effort by definition.
Dhyana is what happens when the wandering stops. Sutra 3.2 describes it as an unbroken flow of attention toward that same object. Same object, same attention, but continuous. You are no longer fetching your mind back every few seconds. Dhyana is not a technique you perform. It is a state that arrives when dharana holds long enough.
Samadhi is the eighth limb, where the sense of being someone watching the object drops away. Taken together, the three are called samyama.
Almost everything sold as meditation is dharana. Guided meditations, breath counting, body scans, mantra repetition, all dharana. That is not a criticism. Dharana is the work, and dhyana either comes out of it or does not come at all. So if you sit for twenty minutes and spend the whole time catching your mind and dragging it back, you have not failed at meditation. You have done dharana correctly.
What the Yoga of Meditation Is Called
Two names come up, and they are not interchangeable.
Raja yoga, the royal path, is the usual name for Patanjali’s eight-limbed system as a whole, the yoga that works mainly on the mind. Dhyana is one stage inside it.
Dhyana yoga is the title of chapter six of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna sets out meditation as a path in its own right. The Gita’s version skips most of the ethical and postural scaffolding that Patanjali front-loads and goes at mental discipline directly.
If someone asks which yoga is the yoga of meditation, raja yoga is the safer answer for the full system and dhyana yoga for the Gita’s specific teaching. Both sit inside the wider yoga philosophy that the classical texts share.
Asana Exists So You Can Sit Still
Patanjali does not describe a single posture. Not one. Asana gets one definition, sthira sukham asanam in sutra 2.46, a seat that is steady and comfortable, and its job is to let you hold a position long enough to work the limbs above it.
The hundreds of postures came later, from the hatha texts and from twentieth-century teachers. They are useful. But the original job of asana was narrow: build a body that can sit for an hour without complaining.
Which means the seat matters more than the poses.
| Seat | What it asks of you |
|---|---|
| Sukhasana (easy cross-legged) | Works for most people if the hips sit higher than the knees. Use a cushion or a folded blanket. |
| Siddhasana (accomplished pose) | One heel toward the perineum, the other in front. Stable, but needs open hips. |
| Padmasana (full lotus) | Very stable once it is available to you. Do not force it. Knee injuries from forced lotus are common and slow to heal. |
| Vajrasana (kneeling) | Good if cross-legged positions bother your knees. Put a block or bolster between heels and hips. |
| A chair | Feet flat, sitting bones on the front half of the seat, spine upright and unsupported. No tradition penalizes you for this. |
Whichever you pick, the test is the same. Can you stay in it for twenty minutes without needing to move? If not, the position is wrong for your body today, or you need more height underneath you. Our asana guide covers the postures that build toward a comfortable seat.
How to Start, in Four Steps
Sit somewhere you will not be interrupted, in one of the positions above, hips higher than knees.
Settle the breath before you try to settle the mind. Ten slow rounds of normal nasal breathing is enough. If you want a technique, nadi shodhana, alternate nostril breathing, is the standard preparation and it does the job. Our pranayama guide covers the rest.
Pick one object and stay with it. The breath at the nostrils works. So does a mantra. Changing object mid-session restarts the clock.
Sit ten minutes daily before you sit thirty minutes once a week. Consistency beats duration at this stage, and the reason is mechanical. Dhyana needs dharana to hold, and dharana gets stronger with repetition rather than with length.
What the Research Actually Shows
Yoga and meditation content tends to promise a lot. The evidence is more modest than most of it suggests.
The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health, puts it this way: yoga may help with anxiety symptoms across a range of populations, but there is little evidence of benefit for people with diagnosed anxiety disorders. A 2021 review of yoga for diagnosed anxiety disorders found some promising results and could not reach a conclusion, because not enough rigorous studies have been done. An NCCIH-supported 2021 trial of Kundalini yoga for generalized anxiety disorder, with 226 participants of whom 155 completed, found it improved symptoms but worked less well than cognitive behavioral therapy. For post-traumatic stress disorder, a 2018 evaluation of seven studies covering 284 participants found only low-quality evidence of a possible benefit.
So meditation and yoga are reasonable additions to your life and poor substitutes for treatment.
Most articles also skip the safety picture. NCCIH notes that few studies have examined meditation and mindfulness for potentially harmful effects, so definite safety statements are not possible, and that there have been rare reports of relaxation techniques causing or worsening symptoms in people with epilepsy, certain psychiatric conditions, or a history of trauma or abuse. If any of that describes you, sit with a teacher who knows your history rather than with an app.
Common Questions
Is yoga a type of meditation?
No. It runs the other way. Meditation, dhyana, is one of the eight limbs that make up yoga. Calling yoga a type of meditation reverses the relationship.
What is meditation called in yoga?
Dhyana. The stage before it is dharana, concentration, and the stage after it is samadhi, absorption. All three together are samyama.
Can you meditate during a yoga class?
You can reach a meditative state during asana or savasana, and many people do. Whether that counts as dhyana in Patanjali’s strict sense is a fair argument among teachers. Either way, savasana was designed as more than a rest at the end, and treating it as a nap wastes the most useful ten minutes of the class.
Do you need to do yoga poses before you meditate?
Not required, but it helps. Postures and breathwork exist partly to make sitting bearable. If you can already sit comfortably for twenty minutes, you can skip straight to the seat.
Which is better, yoga or meditation?
The question assumes they compete. If you mean posture practice versus seated meditation, pick based on what your body and mind need. Physical practice suits a restless nervous system that cannot yet sit. Seated practice suits a body that already can.
How long before meditation gets easier?
There is no reliable number, and anyone giving you one is guessing. What is predictable is the mechanism: the mind wanders less as dharana strengthens, and dharana strengthens with daily repetition.
Learn the Limbs Most Classes Skip
Meditation is the part of yoga that most classes never reach. Our teacher trainings in Canggu, Bali cover yoga philosophy, asana, pranayama, meditation and teaching methodology together, because teaching one limb without the others produces teachers who can only teach one limb.
Apply for teacher training →Already in Bali and want to sit with a teacher first? See our daily classes in Canggu or our guide to meditation in Canggu.
