Ashtanga: The Eight Limbs of Trading
For over five millenia, yoga has sparked interest throughout the world in those searching for a cohesive approach to transformation.Translating as “to yoke”, “to unite,” or “to control,” yoga has been found to nurture a holistic state of well-being. True yoga arises with the use of meditation and purification techniques enabling us to experience the non-dualism between such perceived polarities as us and others; body and mind; pain and pleasure; knower and the known.
Yoga encourages intense and devotional study of our underlying consciousness, promising personal insights that will prove inspirational. The language expressed through ancient wisdom traditions has been subjected to a wide variety of interpretations. Although we may not choose to identify with themes expressed by yogic philosophy, we will, nonetheless, benefit from studying its recommendations on the study of Self. The truth we may glean from past endeavors to transmit the feelings, beliefs and prejudices past cultures identified with may or may not resonate with today’s humanistic and linguistic struggles to communicate the ineffable qualities of spirit. The stillness enlisted in the mind through meditation is only possible once our body is cleansed, ridding the body and mind from suffering caused by bondage to illness, disease, injury, or negative thought, feelings and emotions.
As a student of both Patañjali’s Ashtanga Yoga and the futures markets, I have observed the synchronicity between the two philosophies. Both methodologies place an emphasis on a gaining a holistic understanding of the reality we’ve created, the power we have within to sever the unnecessary distractions that keep us from our goals, and the awareness that reveals our unique, true and unlimited potential. The self-knowledge we strive to attain may be coloured with a different vocabulary, but it is the same non-dualistic state of consciousness that we seek within and without our bodies and minds. While the final culmination of yoga will transcend the success of trading, or any other endeavor related to our phenomenological world, the steps leading us toward samādhi may merge with a path that reveals the true nature of the markets.
