Yoga and meditation: the difference, and yoga vs Vipassana

Yoga and meditation are not opposites. In Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, the classical text of yoga, meditation (dhyāna) is one of yoga's eight limbs, and posture (āsana) is another. Yoga as most classes teach it today concentrates on postures and breathing. Meditation is a much wider family of practices that train attention, from Patañjali's dhyāna to Buddhist Vipassana. In short:

• Is yoga meditation? In Patañjali's sense, largely yes: he defines yoga as a training of the mind, with meditation as one of its stages. A modern posture class is mainly physical.
• How do they differ? Yoga as usually taught works through the body and the breath. Meditation works with attention, usually while sitting still.
• How does yoga relate to Vipassana? Before his awakening the Buddha trained under two meditation teachers of his time, then left them. On S. N. Goenka's courses yoga is paused for the course, though his tradition calls it compatible with Vipassana.

This article describes each from its own sources and does not rank them. For the organisations whose names are often confused with Vipassana, see Osho, the Art of Living, Sadhguru and yoga.

What yoga means in the Yoga Sūtras

The Yoga Sūtras, attributed to Patañjali, is a short text of terse aphorisms in four chapters. Edwin Bryant of Rutgers University, writing in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, says most scholars date it to around the 1st or 2nd century CE, and that it is no later than the 5th century CE. Patañjali did not invent yoga, Bryant stresses: he organised practices that were already old.

The text defines its subject in the second sūtra (YS 1.2): yoga is citta-vṛtti-nirodha. James Haughton Woods, in his 1914 Harvard translation, renders it "Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of mind-stuff"; Bryant gives "the stilling of all states of the citta". Either way, the definition is about the mind, not the body.

The second chapter then lists eight aids to yoga, usually called the eight limbs (YS 2.29):

	Sanskrit	What it covers
1	yama	Abstentions: non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, celibacy, not owning more than you need
2	niyama	Observances: cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study and devotion to Īśvara (God)
3	āsana	Posture
4	prāṇāyāma	Breath control
5	pratyāhāra	Withdrawal of the senses from their objects
6	dhāraṇā	Concentration: fixing the mind on one place
7	dhyāna	Meditation
8	samādhi	Absorption

Bryant describes dhyāna as "the continuous flow of the same thought or image of the object of meditation, without being distracted by any other thought". The last three limbs, he adds, are not separate practices but "a continuation and deepening of the same practice". Translators differ: Woods calls dhyāna "contemplation" and samādhi "concentration".

The everyday Nepali and Hindi word for meditation, ध्यान, is the same word as Patañjali's seventh limb.

Where the postures fit

For a text now so closely linked with postures, the Yoga Sūtras says little about them. Bryant counts three sūtras on āsana, nine words in all, less than 1 per cent of the text. The first, YS 2.46, is "Stable-and-easy posture" in Woods's translation; the Sanskrit pairs sthira, firm, with sukha, comfortable. Bryant notes that āsana literally means "seat", and that the postures serve to train "the body not to be a source of distraction".

Breath control follows, which Woods translates (YS 2.49) as "a cutting off of the flow of inspiration and expiration".

Modern classes put the weight elsewhere. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) says that "although classical yoga also includes other elements", yoga as practised in the United States "typically emphasizes physical postures", together with breathing techniques and meditation. Bryant puts it more strongly: the view of yoga "as primarily or even exclusively āsana in the sense of bodily poses" is, he writes, "essentially a modern Western phenomenon".

Is yoga meditation?

It depends on which yoga. In Patañjali's text meditation is part of yoga, and Bryant writes that classical yoga "essentially consists of meditative practices", aimed at a state of consciousness free of active thought.

Some researchers count yoga as meditation. NCCIH notes that yoga, tai chi and qigong are sometimes called "meditative movement" practices, which "include both meditative elements and physical ones". When the psychologists Karin Matko and Peter Sedlmeier asked 100 experienced meditators to rate how similar 20 of the most popular techniques were, one of the seven groups that emerged was meditation with movement, which "includes techniques of Yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi, Osho meditation and other movement-based meditation traditions".

So a posture class can be a form of moving meditation, and a classical yogi's sitting practice is meditation in the plainest sense.

Yoga vs meditation: the main differences

"Meditation" is the wider word. NCCIH says it "refers to a variety of practices". Some keep attention on "a particular sensation, such as breathing, a sound, a visual image, or a mantra"; others practise mindfulness, attention to the present moment "without making judgments". Matko and Sedlmeier started from a list of 309 techniques before narrowing it to 20, and concluded that "there is no 'meditation' as such", only groups of techniques. Patañjali's dhyāna is one kind. Buddhist Vipassana, an insight practice, is another.

	Yoga, as most classes teach it	Meditation
Main work	Postures, with breathing techniques and some meditation	Attention: on the breath, a sound, an image, a mantra or the present moment
The body	Moves through a sequence of postures	Usually still and seated; walking and movement forms also exist
The breath	Often regulated on purpose (prāṇāyāma)	In many methods, something to watch
Classical source	Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, where meditation is the seventh limb	Many: Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sufi traditions, and secular programmes such as mindfulness-based stress reduction

Both are widely practised. In the US National Health Interview Survey for 2022, reported by NCCIH, 17.3 per cent of adults practised meditation and 15.8 per cent used yoga.

The risks differ too. NCCIH calls yoga "generally considered a safe form of physical activity for healthy people when performed properly, under the guidance of a qualified instructor". Meditation is usually considered low-risk, but NCCIH cites a 2020 review in which about 8 per cent of participants had a negative effect, most often anxiety or depression. Intensive retreats are a separate case, covered in difficult experiences on meditation retreats. If you have a health condition, speak to a doctor and to the teacher or course organisers before starting either.

How yoga relates to Vipassana

Vipassanā is a Pali word usually translated as insight. In S. N. Goenka's tradition, dhamma.org says, the process "starts with the observation of the natural breath to concentrate the mind"; the student then "learns to observe the changing nature of body and mind". What is Vipassana? explains the word and the traditions that teach it.

The Buddha's two teachers

In the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (MN 26), the Buddha tells the story of his own search. He went first to Āḷāra Kālāma, who taught "the dimension of nothingness", and then to Uddaka son of Rāma, whose teaching reached "the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception". He attained each state quickly, and each teacher offered him a leading place in his community. He left both with the same verdict: "This teaching doesn't lead to disillusionment, dispassion, cessation, peace, insight, awakening, and extinguishment." He went on to Uruvelā, near today's Bodh Gaya. A second account, MN 36, adds the austerities that followed; see the Buddha and the origins of Vipassana.

The sutta does not call these teachers yogis, and the Yoga Sūtras were composed later, on most scholars' dating several centuries later, so the Buddha did not learn Patañjali's eight limbs. Bryant describes the India before Patañjali as having many "interconnected and cross-fertilizing variants of meditational Yoga", Buddhist and Jain as well as Hindu, drawing on a shared pool of terms and practices.

The same states reappear at the end of MN 26. There the Buddha describes a mendicant who passes through the four absorptions (jhāna) and the formless dimensions, up to the dimension of nothingness and the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, the states his teachers taught. Beyond them comes cessation, and the sutta adds: "having seen with wisdom, their defilements come to an end." In this account the states are stages on the way, and what ends the defilements is seeing with wisdom (paññā). Samatha and Vipassana follows how calm and insight relate in the Buddhist traditions.

The same sutta uses the word yoga in another sense. The goal he set out to find is anuttaraṃ yogakkhemaṃ, which Bhikkhu Sujato translates "the supreme sanctuary from the yoke".

Shared words, different aims

Bryant notes that scholars "have long pointed out a commonality of vocabulary, and concepts" between the Yoga Sūtras and Buddhist texts. Two examples:

• In MN 26 the future Buddha reflects that he, too, has faith, energy, mindfulness, immersion and wisdom. YS 1.20, in Woods's translation, names the same five: belief, energy, mindfulness, concentration and insight.
• YS 1.33 recommends cultivating friendliness towards the happy, compassion towards those in distress, joy towards the virtuous and equanimity (Woods has "indifference") towards the unvirtuous. Friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity are the four qualities the Pali texts call the brahmavihāras.

The aims differ. In the Yoga Sūtras, once the mind is stilled, "the Seer [that is, the Self] abides in himself" (YS 1.3, Woods). Buddhist teaching holds that nothing experienced is rightly taken as a self, anattā, and dhamma.org describes Vipassana as experiencing "the absence of a permanent self". Bryant notes that the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sūtras contains Patañjali's "response to the Buddhist challenge".

The breath shows the difference in practice. Prāṇāyāma regulates the breath on purpose, while a Goenka course begins by observing the breath as it is. Anapana describes breath awareness as each tradition teaches it.

Yoga on a Vipassana course

On a course in Goenka's tradition, yoga is set aside for the length of the course. dhamma.org's Code of Discipline asks that "all other meditation techniques, healing and spiritual practices" be suspended, and that "exercise programs and any strenuous exercise" stop too; students may walk in designated areas during breaks. Dhamma Giri's version of the code names yoga: physical yoga is "compatible with Vipassana" but is suspended because "proper secluded facilities are not available at the course site". Retreats that treat yoga differently, such as Suan Mokkh in Thailand, are covered in yoga during a Goenka course; the FAQ answers common questions about the rules, and the 10-day course describes each day.

The application form asks new students about "any previous experience with meditation techniques, therapies or healing practices", and asks old students whether they have practised any other meditation techniques since their last course. If your yoga includes breathing or meditation practices, say so there and ask the centre if anything is unclear.

Doing both

So the question is one of timing: yoga in daily life, none on the course. Old students in Goenka's tradition are also asked to keep sitting at home, as keeping up the practice describes. For those home sittings, Clean Pomodoro, a free Vipassana meditation and Pomodoro timer for iPhone and Android, has timers for Vipassana and ānāpāna sittings that run in silence and end with a gentle cue; its sounds are for study, work and rest, not for the sitting.

To find a course, the Vipassana centre directory lists centres country by country, with links to each centre's own schedule.