Classical Yoga · compiled by Patanjali
Yoga Sutras 1.2
The definition the whole text rests on
योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः॥
Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.
What this verse points to
Four words in Sanskrit — yogash chitta vritti nirodhah — and every later sutra depends on them. Yoga is defined not by what you do with the body but by what stops happening in the mind.
Vritti means a turning or a whirl; nirodhah, its restraint or settling. The text is not asking for a blank mind. It is describing the end of being spun by its movements.
Sit with it
Watch one thought from arrival to disappearance without joining it. That single observation is the sutra in miniature.
About the Yoga Sutras
The Yoga Sutras are 196 terse aphorisms compiled by Patanjali, organised into four books: samadhi (absorption), sadhana (practice), vibhuti (attainments), and kaivalya (liberation). The style is deliberately compressed — each sutra is a memory-thread meant to be unpacked by a teacher — and the text is the foundational statement of the eight-limbed (ashtanga) path.
References to this text are given as book.sutra — here, 1.2.