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Cakras, the five vāyus and the three nāḍīs as one lens: the subtle body drawn where it touches the elements, the sheaths and the tattva spine.
This lens lights 28 points on the shared cross-section rather than replacing it. Every record below names its source, and carries one of three tags: classical where a named text can be cited, later addition where an idea is modern and is said to be modern, and sources differ where the tradition itself disagrees.
Niyama is the second limb — five observances governing how a person conducts themselves toward themselves: cleanliness, contentment, discipline, self-study, and surrender to what is beyond them.
The five are śauca, santoṣa, tapas, svādhyāya and īśvarapraṇidhāna, at Yoga Sūtra II.32. The last three are singled out earlier in the text, at II.1, as kriyā yoga — yoga in action — which suggests they carry a different weight from the other two rather than sitting flat alongside them.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.1, II.32, I.24 (īśvara); commentarial dispute on īśvara's status
Pratyāhāra is the fifth limb — the senses disengaging from their objects, not by being shut but by following the mind inward when the mind ceases to pursue them. It is the hinge between the outer limbs and the inner three.
Patañjali defines it at II.54: when the senses are disjoined from their objects they take on, as it were, the nature of the mind itself. The stated consequence at II.55 is mastery of the senses. It is the last of the outer limbs, and the three that follow — concentration, meditation, absorption — are treated as a single continuous process rather than as separate practices.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.54–55; Sāṃkhya Kārikā (indriyas)
Yama is the first limb — five restraints governing how a person behaves toward everything outside themselves: non-harming, truthfulness, not stealing, continence, and not grasping. The scheme begins here rather than with posture or breath, which is itself the argument.
The five are ahiṃsā, satya, asteya, brahmacarya and aparigraha, given at Yoga Sūtra II.30. Patañjali calls them the mahāvrata, the great vow, and states that they hold irrespective of birth, place, time or circumstance — an unusually absolute formulation in a text otherwise given to conditions.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.29–30 (aṅga, mahāvrata); staircase reading: commentarial and modern
Āsana is the third limb, and in Patañjali it means a seat — a position that is steady and comfortable, held for the purpose of sitting still. It is the limb most people meet first and the one the text says least about.
Patañjali devotes three sūtras to it, II.46–48: sthira-sukham āsanam, that the posture be steady and pleasant; that it is achieved by relaxing effort and dwelling on the infinite; and that the pairs of opposites then cease to disturb. No posture is named. The haṭha texts that name postures come a thousand years later and belong to a different project.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.46–48; Haṭhayogapradīpikā; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā; twentieth-century development: Krishnamacharya and Indian physical culture
Apāna-vāyu is the wind that moves downward and outward, seated below the navel — elimination, exhalation, and everything the body expels or releases. It is prāṇa's counterpart and, in the haṭha account, its opponent.
It governs the pelvic region and is assigned excretion, urination, menstruation and birth. In Āyurveda it is the vāta subtype whose seat is the colon, which makes it the one most often discussed clinically. Its direction is the defining feature: everything attributed to it goes down and out.
Source: Caraka Saṃhitā (apāna); Haṭhayogapradīpikā Ch. 3 (mudrās, reversal of apāna)
Iḍā is the channel running on the left, associated with the Moon, coolness and the receptive. It is one of two that wind around the central channel, and the pair is what the practice is trying to get past.
Described as beginning at the base of the spine and terminating at the left nostril, crossing the central channel at each centre. Its qualities are lunar and cooling, and the classical accounts pair it with the parasympathetic-sounding functions — rest, reception, nourishment — though that pairing is a modern gloss rather than a classical statement.
Source: Haṭhayogapradīpikā; Śiva Saṃhitā (nāḍī counts); autonomic identification: twentieth-century
Piṅgalā is the channel running on the right, associated with the Sun, heat and the active. It is iḍā's counterpart, and the two are described as alternating in dominance through the day.
It mirrors iḍā, beginning at the base and terminating at the right nostril, crossing the central channel at each centre. Its qualities are solar and heating. The alternation between the two is connected in the haṭha literature to the alternation of nostril dominance, which is treated as observable and used as a practical index.
Source: Haṭhayogapradīpikā (svara / nostril alternation); interpretive framework distinguished from observation
Prāṇa-vāyu is the wind that moves inward and upward, seated in the chest — the intake of everything a body takes in, breath first among them. It gives its name to the whole set, which is a source of persistent confusion.
It governs the region of the heart and lungs, and the classical accounts assign it inhalation, swallowing and the reception of the senses. It is the first of five, the others being apāna, samāna, udāna and vyāna, and the set appears in the Upaniṣads, in Āyurveda and in the haṭha texts with the same names throughout.
Source: Taittirīya Upaniṣad II; Caraka Saṃhitā (vāta subtypes); Haṭhayogapradīpikā Ch. 2
Prāṇāyāma is the fourth limb — the regulation of breath, and specifically of its cessation. The word is usually rendered breath control, though the compound points at extension or restraint rather than management.
Patañjali defines it at II.49 as the cutting off of the movement of inhalation and exhalation, once āsana is established, and describes it as measured by place, time and number. The stated result at II.52 is that the covering over the light of knowledge is thinned — a cognitive claim rather than a physiological one.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.49–52; Haṭhayogapradīpikā Ch. 2; Amṛtasiddhi
Samāna-vāyu is the wind of the middle, seated at the navel — the one that balances the inward and outward movements and is associated with digestion. It sits where the fire sits, and the two are read together.
It governs the region between the heart and the navel, and is assigned the separation of nutrient from waste. Its association with agni is direct: the classical accounts describe it as fanning the digestive fire, which places it at the same location as maṇipūra in the subtle body and jāṭharāgni in the Āyurvedic scheme.
Source: Caraka Saṃhitā (samāna, agni); Haṭhayogapradīpikā; Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa (maṇipūra)
Suṣumnā is the central channel, running through the spine, and the whole of haṭha practice is described as an effort to open it. It is normally said to be closed, with prāṇa flowing in the side channels instead.
The classical accounts place it from the base to the crown, with iḍā and piṅgalā crossing it at each centre. When breath is stilled in both side channels, prāṇa is said to enter suṣumnā, and this is what the retention practices, the bandhas and the mudrās are for. The Haṭhayogapradīpikā states the goal in these terms directly.
Source: Haṭhayogapradīpikā; Amṛtasiddhi (bindu, no kuṇḍalinī, no chakras)
Udāna-vāyu is the wind that moves upward from the throat — speech, effort, and in the classical accounts the movement of consciousness at death. It is the wind most associated with what leaves.
Seated above the throat, it is assigned speech, exhalation upward, physical effort and enthusiasm. The Upaniṣadic literature connects it to the passage out of the body at death, and the haṭha texts to the rising of energy through the central channel.
Source: Upaniṣadic prāṇa material; Caraka Saṃhitā (udāna); Haṭhayogapradīpikā
Vyāna-vāyu is the wind that pervades — not seated in one region but distributed through the whole body, governing circulation and the coordination of movement. It is the only one of the five without a place.
It is assigned circulation, the movement of the limbs, and the distribution of what the other winds bring in. Because it has no seat, the classical accounts describe it through function alone, and its disturbance is read as affecting coordination rather than any single region.
Source: Caraka Saṃhitā (vyāna); Upaniṣadic prāṇa material
Anāhata is at the heart — 'unstruck', named for a sound that is heard without anything being struck to produce it. It is read for air, touch, breath and the capacity to be affected by another person without being destabilised by it.
Its element is air, its bīja YAṂ, its petal count twelve. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa associates it with touch and with the hands. Prāṇa vāyu governs its region. The name points to nāda, the inner sound, which the Haṭhayogapradīpikā regards in its fourth chapter as a practice in its own right rather than as a chakra attribute.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa; Haṭhayogapradīpikā Ch. 4 (nāda); Amṛtasiddhi (bindu)
Maṇipūra is at the navel — 'the city of jewels'. It is the fire centre, read for will, digestion, assertion and the heat that turns intention into action. It is the point where several systems converge most convincingly.
Its element is fire, its bīja RAṂ, its petal count ten. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa associates it with sight and with the feet. Samāna vāyu, the equalising wind, governs its region, and the haṭha texts treat the navel region as the seat of the digestive fire — which is where the correspondence with Āyurveda's agni becomes more than verbal.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa; Haṭhayogapradīpikā; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā; Caraka Saṃhitā (agni)
Mūlādhāra is the base of the subtle spine, at the perineum — the root support. It is read for grounding, survival and the sense of having somewhere to stand, and it is where the coiled potential the tradition calls kuṇḍalinī is described as resting.
Its element is earth, its bīja LAṂ, its petal count four. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa, the sixteenth-century text that most Western descriptions ultimately derive from, places it below the sacrum and associates it with the sense of smell and the organ of elimination. Apāna vāyu, the downward wind, governs its region.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa (16th c.); Avalon 1919; Leadbeater 1927; Hills 1977; Amṛtasiddhi (no chakras)
Sahasrāra is at the crown — the thousand-petalled lotus. The texts describe it less as a centre than as what lies beyond the series of centres: the point at which the ascent is complete and the framework of ascent no longer applies.
It has no bīja and no element in the classical descriptions, which is the formal marker of its difference from the six below it. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa regards it as the abode of Śiva, with kuṇḍalinī's arrival there described as union rather than as arrival at a further station. It is where the six-versus-seven question is decided by the text itself.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa; Leadbeater 1927; Hills 1977
Svādhiṣṭhāna sits above the root, at the level of the genitals — 'her own abode'. It is read for fluidity, appetite, pleasure and the capacity to want things, and for whatever a person does with those wants.
Its element is water, its bīja VAṂ, its petal count six. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa associates it with taste and with the reproductive organ. In the doṣa correspondence commonly drawn, it is linked with kapha's watery quality — a pairing this site records as a modern resonance rather than a classical statement.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa; chakra-doṣa mapping: modern synthesis, no classical source
Viśuddha is at the throat — 'especially pure'. It is read for ether, sound, speech and discrimination: the point at which something interior becomes articulate, and can therefore be examined.
Its element is ether, its bīja HAṂ, its petal count sixteen. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa associates it with hearing and with the mouth. Udāna vāyu, the upward wind, governs its region. It is the centre most directly implicated in khecarī mudrā, the practice of turning the tongue back into the nasopharynx, which the haṭha texts describe at length.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa; Haṭhayogapradīpikā (khecarī); Sāṃkhya Kārikā (tattva order)
Ājñā is between the brows — 'command'. It is read as the seat of the witness: the point from which thought is observed rather than inhabited. It is described as the meeting place of the three principal channels.
Its bīja is OṂ and its petal count two, which is unusually few and is read as the meeting of iḍā and piṅgalā with suṣumnā at the point called triveṇī. It is the highest of the six centres in the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa's scheme; sahasrāra above it is treated as beyond the series rather than as the seventh member of it.
Source: Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa (six centres); varying counts across the tantric corpus
Abhiniveśa is the fifth affliction — the clinging to continued existence, which Patañjali says is carried even by the wise. It is the one affliction the text describes as arising from its own momentum rather than from experience.
Defined at II.9 as self-sustaining and present even in the learned. The classical commentators read the qualification as pointing to something not acquired within a single life, since a person who has not died cannot have learnt to fear it — which is how the sūtra becomes evidence for prior existence.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.9; commentarial reading as evidence of prior existence
Asmitā is the second affliction — the identification of the seer with the instrument of seeing, so that awareness takes itself to be the faculty it looks through. It is the manufacture of a particular somebody.
Defined at II.6 as the apparent identity of the power of seeing with the power of the instrument. It corresponds closely to ahaṃkāra in the Sāṃkhya scheme, though Patañjali uses the different term, and it is what makes the remaining three afflictions possible by supplying somebody for them to happen to.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.6; Sāṃkhya Kārikā (ahaṃkāra as tattva)
Avidyā is the first affliction and the ground of the other four — taking the impermanent for the permanent, the impure for the pure, suffering for pleasure, and what is not the self for the self. It is not a lack of information.
Patañjali defines it at II.5 and states at II.4 that it is the field in which the other four kleśas grow, whether dormant, weakened, interrupted or active. The five together — avidyā, asmitā, rāga, dveṣa, abhiniveśa — are given at II.3 as the causes of affliction.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.3–5; Advaita (avidyā as superimposition); Buddhist (avidyā as first nidāna)
Dhyāna is the seventh limb — the attention, once bound, flowing toward its object without interruption. Where concentration is the act of holding, meditation is what holding becomes when it no longer requires effort.
Patañjali defines it at III.2 as an uninterrupted flow of cognition toward the object of concentration. The difference from dhāraṇā is continuity: the same act, no longer intermittent. Nothing new is introduced at this stage, which is why the three inner limbs are treated as one.
Source: Yoga Sūtra III.2; comparative: Buddhist dhyāna / chán / zen
Dhāraṇā is the sixth limb — binding the attention to a single place and holding it there. It is the first of the three inner limbs, and the point at which the practice stops being about the body at all.
Patañjali defines it at III.1 as the binding of the mind to a place. The place may be internal or external; the text is indifferent to which. It is the first of the three that together are called saṃyama, and the Vibhūti Pāda's discussion of attainments proceeds by applying saṃyama to one object after another.
Source: Yoga Sūtra III.1–4 (saṃyama); I.17–18 (samprajñāta / asamprajñāta)
Dveṣa is the fourth affliction — the push away from what has been unpleasant before. It is rāga's mirror and has the same structure: the present is met through a memory rather than encountered.
Defined at II.8 as that which dwells on suffering. Patañjali pairs it with rāga deliberately, and the pairing matters: the two are one mechanism with two signs, which is why the system does not recommend replacing aversion with attraction. Patañjali states them together at II.7–8 rather than in separate sūtras, and the commentators read the pairing as deliberate.
Source: Yoga Sūtra I.2, II.7–8
Rāga is the third affliction — the pull toward what has been pleasant before. It is defined by memory rather than by the object: attraction follows pleasure that has already happened.
Defined at II.7 as that which dwells on pleasure. Its structure is what makes it an affliction in the system's terms — it binds present attention to past experience, so that what is actually present is met through what is remembered rather than as it is.
Source: Yoga Sūtra II.7; Trika (rāga as kañcuka)
Samādhi is the eighth limb — absorption so complete that the act of knowing and the thing known are no longer distinguishable. It is the end of the sequence and, in Patañjali's account, not the end of the matter.
Defined at III.3 as the state in which the object alone shines forth and the cognition is as if empty of its own nature. Patañjali distinguishes several kinds across the first pāda, and the decisive division is between samādhi with an object and samādhi without one, the latter leading toward kaivalya.
Source: Yoga Sūtra III.3, III.37, IV (kaivalya); Advaita (non-dual liberation)
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