Niyama

Niyama combines ni, a prefix suggesting 'inward' or 'down,' with the root yam, 'to hold' or 'restrain.' Where yama reins in outward conduct, niyama turns the same disciplining energy inward — an observance one adopts and keeps, a discipline for the self rather than a rule for others.

As the second limb, the niyamas are five personal observances: śauca (cleanliness or purity), santoṣa (contentment), tapas (disciplined effort or austerity), svādhyāya (self-study and study of sacred texts) and īśvarapraṇidhāna (surrender to a higher reality or the divine). They cultivate the inner conditions for practice.

Patañjali sets out the five niyamas in the second chapter of the Yoga Sūtras, at sūtra 2.32. He devotes later sūtras to the fruits of each — noting, for instance, that contentment brings unsurpassed happiness — treating them as practices with observable effects on the mind.

In practice the niyamas shape your inner life: keeping body and surroundings clean, meeting circumstances with contentment rather than grasping, sustaining steady effort, studying yourself and the texts honestly, and loosening the grip of ego through surrender. They are cultivated continuously, not performed once.

Tapas is often mistranslated as harsh self-punishment; it more accurately means the willing heat of sustained discipline. And īśvarapraṇidhāna need not imply a particular theology — many practitioners read it as surrender to a reality larger than the self, however they understand that.