“When approaching  the Bāhya Aṅga
aspects inherent in Aṣṭāṅga Yoga,
we could start by looking at the social
and private indicators  of Yama and
Niyama from a personal starting point,
rather than a universal aspiration point.
This is a concept that can appear to be
contrary to more usual expectations
within the Yoga world whereby we are
often given a set of universal standardised
principles which we are urged to constantly
aspire to and strive towards realising.
A concept, by its very nature, prone to
triggering additional factors such as
personalised self-esteem conflicts, both
overly positive, as well as overly negative,
let alone being, self or other ‘Yoga Judged’,
as the bar that we are often presented
with is seemingly set extremely high.
This can be further blurred by the
issues of judgement from others formed
from inherent expectations based on a
personalised perception of how near to,
and especially how far from, we are to some
internalised judgement of a universal ‘goal’.
Rather than one based on an understanding
of the ‘others’ situation in terms of how far
we have moved from our starting point
relative to our inherent Karma, given our
early life patterns and social upbringing.
This shift of reference point of view was
commented on by Desikachar in 1976:
“Progress must be seen as the
distance from the starting point,
rather than the more usual reference of
the distance from the finishing point.”

• Paul’s Yoga Mālā – A Thread of Pearls from Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra
• Paul’s Yoga Sūtra Study Keywords – Collected & Collated into Chapters
• Paul’s Yoga Sūtra Study Questions – Collected & Collated into Chapters