Foundations · Reading
Yuj: to yoke, to join
Yog comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, to yoke: the practice joins what feels separate.
Awaiting subject reviewWritten from our source material and not yet checked by a teacher of this practice. Read it as reference, and learn the practice from someone who teaches it.
Philosophy
The word Yog carries its meaning inside it. The root yuj means to yoke, to harness, to join. A yoke does not erase the two animals it joins; it lets them move together.
Practice works the same way. In asana, the breath and the movement are yoked. In meditation, the attention is yoked to one object. And the tradition's deepest sense of the word is the joining of the individual self with what it was never truly separate from.
Patanjali's definition, in the second sutra, is more exact. Yog is the stilling of the movements of the mind. When they are still, the third sutra says, the seer rests in its own nature.
Terms
- Yuj
- To yoke, to join, to harness.
- Drashta
- The seer, the witnessing awareness.
Further reading
- Yoga Sutras 1.2–1.3
Ideas behind it
Sources and tradition
- YOG Union App Content Map, 2 November 2026, p. 3, written sample card
- Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, 1.2–1.3