It is achieved by relaxing effort and letting attention settle on the boundless.

The verse

Prayatna-śaithilya-ananta-samāpattibhyām — "by the relaxation of effort and by absorption in the infinite." Having defined asana in the previous sutra as the union of steadiness and ease, Patanjali now explains the two means by which that condition is reached. The sutra names two things joined by the dual case ending: prayatna-shaithilya, the loosening or slackening of effort, and ananta-samapatti, a settling or coinciding of attention with the boundless or infinite.

Prayatna-shaithilya: releasing effort

Prayatna means deliberate exertion, the kind of active striving used to hold a shape in place. Shaithilya means loosening or slackening. Put together, the phrase does not recommend collapsing or going limp; it recommends releasing whatever effort is no longer necessary once a stable alignment has been found. The commentarial tradition treats this as a subtle, ongoing adjustment rather than a single act — one keeps finding small pockets of unnecessary gripping (in the jaw, the shoulders, the hands) and letting them go, again and again, while the structural alignment that gives steadiness is maintained.

Ananta-samapatti: resting on the boundless

The second element, ananta-samapatti, is often read alongside Patanjali's use of ananta elsewhere as an epithet for the infinite or for Shesha, the cosmic serpent said in tradition to support the world with perfect ease despite its vastness — an image the commentarial literature sometimes invokes to illustrate steadiness that is not achieved through strain. Samapatti denotes a coinciding or settling of the mind onto its object, a term Patanjali uses elsewhere for more advanced meditative absorption. Its appearance here, applied to something as apparently basic as sitting, signals that even the physical seat is meant to be approached with the mind's attention resting on something expansive, rather than narrowed down onto bodily tension or discomfort.

The paradox at the center

Together, the two halves of the sutra describe a paradox that recurs throughout the text: stability is not manufactured by force. It arises from releasing unnecessary effort while attention widens rather than contracts. This is consistent with how the eight limbs are generally structured — outer restraint and observance (yama and niyama) create the conditions for an inner settling, rather than an escalating series of physical demands.

What this changes in practice

If 2.46 gives the test — steady and comfortable — this verse gives the method. In practical terms, it suggests two moves rather than one. First, once you have found a workable alignment for sitting, actively scan for effort that is not doing useful work: a locked jaw, raised shoulders, gripped hands, over-tensed abdominal muscles. Soften each of these deliberately. Second, rather than staying focused on the sensations of the body itself, let attention rest on something spacious — the breath moving through an open field of awareness, the sense of the room around you, or simply a wide, unfocused field of attention rather than a narrow beam pointed at discomfort.

A short concrete practice

Take your seat and hold it for five minutes. For the first two minutes, do a slow body scan from feet to crown, and at each area, ask "is this effort necessary to stay upright and stable, or is it habitual gripping?" Release what is not necessary. For the remaining three minutes, deliberately widen your attention — instead of watching the breath at a single point like the nostrils, let awareness spread to include the whole body breathing, and beyond that, to the sounds and space around you. Notice whether this widening of attention itself seems to reduce the felt urgency of any residual discomfort in the posture. This is the interplay the sutra describes: effort released, attention widened, and steadiness arising as a byproduct rather than a goal pursued directly.

Carrying it beyond the seat

Teachers sometimes extend this principle beyond formal sitting, using it to examine other areas of tension — at a desk, standing in a line, holding a phone — asking the same two questions about unnecessary effort and the direction of attention. The verse itself, however, is specifically about the meditative seat, and it is worth returning it there rather than letting it dissolve into an unanchored motivational slogan.

How translators frame it

Translators differ slightly in emphasis here. Some render ananta concretely, connecting it to the traditional image of the serpent Shesha bearing the world with unstrained ease, and use that image to explain how vastness and steadiness can coincide. Others, including Bryant in his discussion of this sutra, note the parallel with the word samapatti used later in the text for more refined states of meditative absorption, suggesting that Patanjali is quietly pointing ahead — even sitting itself is already a form of the meditative coinciding of mind and object that the later chapters develop in greater depth. Both readings agree on the essential point: the mind is asked to rest on something wide rather than something small, and the posture becomes steady as a consequence.

Turning it into generic relaxation advice

The most frequent misreading strips this sutra of its specific context and repeats it as a general life motto — "release effort and things will work out," applied to any endeavor at all. That is not what the verse says. It is addressed to a precise technical problem: how does a meditative seated posture achieve the steadiness and ease defined in the previous sutra? The relaxation of effort described here is paired specifically with a settling of attention onto the boundless, not offered as a stand-alone principle for daily life in general.

Treating it as passive collapse

A second misreading treats shaithilya, the loosening of effort, as an instruction to go slack or to stop maintaining any structural alignment at all. The commentarial tradition does not support this; the loosening applies to unnecessary tension, not to the alignment that gives the posture its steadiness in the first place. Dropping all effort would undercut the sthira half of the previous sutra's definition, not fulfill it.

The corrective

Read together with 2.46, this verse describes a specific, technical balance between releasing tension and widening attention, in service of a meditative seat — not a broad philosophy of effortlessness detached from that setting.