Why is this podcast called 'The Fourth Niyama'?

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First, what is niyama? Niyamas are the rules of conduct that apply to individual discipline. 5 niyamas were outlined by Sage Patanjali in the book he wrote 2000 years back in Sanskrit called “Patanjali Yoga Sutras”. Saucha is the first niyama, and it means cleanliness, both external and internal. External cleanliness includes personal hygiene, while internal cleanliness is achieved by the practice of asana, cultivation of pure thoughts, free from greed and anger. Second niyama is santosa, it is contentment. Contentment which naturally arises in one who feels the lack of nothing. Tapah is the third niyama, it’s a determined effort under all circumstances to achieve a definite goal in life. Isvara pranidhana is the fifth niyama, it is translated as "surrender to a higher power","devotion to the divine”. A student of Yoga should cultivate humility, faith, and a sense of surrender to a higher, transcendent reality, which can be conceptualized as God, the universe, or a divine force.

 

Svadhyaya is the fourth niyama. This Sanskrit word consists of two parts: sva and adhyaya. Sva means self, adhyaya means study. Svadhyaya is the study of self, which leads to discovery of self. A student of Yoga should continuously observe themselves in their Yoga practice, reflect on it, re-examine their thoughts and actions, in order to grow, reduce the tendency to go wrong and retain the balance of mind. In the “Light on Yoga” BKS Iyengar said “The person practicing svadhyaya reads his own book of life, at the same time that he writes and revises it”. The Fourth Niyama podcast is a place where senior teachers of Iyengar Yoga reflect on their Yoga journey, share their learnings and discoveries from their practice. Here we also pay heartfelt homage to our beloved Guru BKS Iyengar, to whom we owe all our knowledge of Yoga practice today.