What samadhi means

Samadhi comes from sam (together) and ā-dhā (to place or hold), suggesting a "placing together" or merging. It is the eighth and final limb of Patanjali's ashtanga — the eight-limbed path laid out in the Yoga Sutras — and the culmination of the three limbs that precede it: dharana (concentration), dhyana (sustained meditation), and finally samadhi itself.

Where dharana is effortful focus and dhyana is unbroken attention, samadhi is described as the point where effort falls away entirely. The boundary between the one observing, the act of observing, and the object observed dissolves, and what remains is usually described not as a thought but as a state.

A state, not a single experience

The yogic tradition does not treat samadhi as one fixed event but as a spectrum, often divided into samprajnata samadhi (with an object still subtly present — absorption in a mantra, a flame, a bija sound) and asamprajnata samadhi (without any object at all — pure undivided awareness). Different lineages map further gradations within each.

This is part of why samadhi is positioned between dharma and moksha in this glossary's view of the spiritual path: it is the repeated, trainable experience that gradually wears away the sense of separateness moksha is the permanent resolution of.

Approaching samadhi on retreat

Most retreat settings work with the conditions that make samadhi more likely rather than promising the state itself: extended pranayama to settle the nervous system, the resonance of crystal bowls and sound healing to give attention something steady to rest on, and long stretches of dhyana practiced daily rather than once.

Kundalini work is sometimes described, in some lineages, as the energetic counterpart to this same process — the rising of latent energy through the nadis correlating with a meditator's movement toward absorption. Different traditions describe the mechanism differently, but the direction of travel, toward stillness and away from distraction, is consistent.