The word “sutra” literally means a thread. In English, if you fall and hurt yourself and have to get stitches, the stitches are called “sutures.” It’s the same concept. It’s a thread that is weaving together — in sutures, it is weaving together our flesh; and in sutras, it is weaving together our lives. This is what the Yoga Sutras are about.

There’s no sutra, even if we went through every sutra, that says, “Here’s how flat your palms have to be on the ground,” or, “Here’s how long you have to stand on your head,” or, “Here’s what your leg must look like in this posture.” Sure, we have other texts on that, we have a wealth of studies on the asanas. But the Yoga Sutras, that which truly weaves us together, are something much deeper than just the physical postures of our body.

It’s said that after God (in the form of Lord Vishnu) had incarnated as Dhanvantari — the God of health, the God who gave us Ayurveda — and made everyone healthy, there was still unhealth in peoples’ minds, there was unhealth in peoples’ hearts. So, Lord Vishnu was again beseeched to incarnate on Earth in a form that would give us not just what Ayurveda gave us for health of the body, but something that would bring us health of the mind, the heart, and the spirit. So Lord Vishnu incarnated as the Sage Patanjali, who gave us the Yoga Sutras. That’s the foundation of how these Sutras came in.