Category Archives: Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

A Sutra a Day: Patanjali’s Best

Posted on February 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

Source: yoga.in via Allied on Pinterest

 

The first time I went to the Iyengar Institute in Poona, India, I was a babe in the woods in so many ways. It was my first visit to India and I can easily recreate so many emotions from that time, fear and excitement, feeling like I was from another planet and then feeling spiritually at home.

Prashant and Geeta Iyengar took the classes which had a mixture of Indian locals and foreigners from every land.

The teachers conducted the classes in English, Marathi and Hindi, and I was never sure, because they spoke so quickly, which language they’d slipped into. (Oh, of course Sanskrit was in the mix, too.)

Even when the instructions were being given in English, Geeta and Prashant had such an in-depth understanding of the postures, that much of the nuances of what they said went over my head.

Now, I get it when a newby comes to my classes and has a hard time connecting with my finely tuned directives. It takes patience and focus to hang in there and pick out the instructions that help build foundations, and trust the step-by-step process of learning something new. I get it because I’m still learning this yoga stuff, especially trying to figure out how the philosophy fits into my life.

This week in the study group I’m leading we are looking at some of Patanjali’s most important concepts – from Chapter I:12 abhyasavairagyabhyam tannirodhah – practice and detachment. Those two words answer the questions: How do we arrive at a state of yoga? What should we do and what should we not do?

The other sutra we’ll delve into is from Chapter I-33. As it’s a very long aphorism, I’ll just give the translation here which is from Kofi Busia’s beautiful book, The Gift, The Prayer, and the Offering. This Sutra explains what sort of practice we might adopt to arrive at the state of yoga.

The mind becomes purified by cultivating friendships with contented people, by being kind and compassionate to the sad and fearful, by being indifferent to the ill-intentioned, and by being accommodating to the well-meaning.

Can you imagine a world where this was a universal practice? It’s worth trying!

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A Sutra a Day: IV-29 – After Rain, Radiance

Posted on February 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

ElephantEars

 

Today is weather-perfection where we live on the magical mid-north coast… Mitchells Island, New South Wales.

I think you know what I mean by perfect conditions. (If you are snowed in in Vermont or Toronto, well, winter has it’s own beauty, doesn’t it?)

During the day today it’s been 24 degrees celsius, with a light breeze and mid-range humidity. Best of all, it rained last night, just enough so all the vegetation in our gardens spread its wings in the morning sunshine. When rain washes away dust and other impurities and the sun shines on that cleanliness, the droplets sparkle like diamonds.

Days like today are rare. Often we want warm, balmy weather when temperatures turn cold. Or, a cool change when summer temperatures hit the high 30′s. Do you remember that ditty?

As a rule, a man’s a fool, when it’s hot he wants it cool. When it’s cool, he wants it hot, always wanting what it’s not.

Of course, the evolved yogi is detached from such vacilations. B.K.S. Iyengar says:

When the stream of virtue pours in torrents and the consciousness is washed clean of bias, prejudice and ambition, the light of the soul dawns. This is… the fruit of the practice of yoga.

Prasankhyane ‘pyakusidasya sarvatha vivekakhyaterdharmameghah samadhih

There arises a state of mind full of clarity concerning all things at all times. It is like a rainfall of pure clarity.*

*Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar.

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Posted in gardening, Philosophy, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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A Sutra a Day: IV-28 – Valentine’s Every Day

Posted on February 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

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Illustration by Gretta Kool

By the time some of you read this post, you may already be in trouble. Did you remember that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and did you plan accordingly? Gifts of flowers, chocolates, sweet and sincere cards are expected by many people. Like all expectations, if you don’t meet them, you may be up a creek.

To put this love holiday in perspective, it’s an American import to Australia, much like Halloween. Many down-to-earth Aussies may prefer not to play the Valentine’s game and express romantic love at other times and in other ways.

What is love anyway?

I’ve been reading Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology and leading scholar in the ‘positivity’ field, who puts a new twist on love. Our idea that love is a stable quality makes it likely that love will become perfunctory. Rather, she suggests that love consists of ‘micro-moments of connection between people – even strangers. Coming to a new appreciation of what love is has the potential to transform our lives as we then extend it to all of humanity – including ourselves.’

Is this so far from Patanjali’s wisdom? Maybe not. He advises us to eliminate the kleshas (afflictions), especially avidya (ignorance of our true nature).

Our true nature is open, unlimited, free, conscious, self-luminous, and self-evident.  This is our moment by moment experience, although we may not be aware of it. – From  - The Transparency of Things by Rupert Spira

Patanjali’s designed a how-to book on meditation so we can become fully-expressed, authentic human beings. Barbara Fredrickson’s book comes at it differently, but nevertheless her book is an aid to strengthen our capacity to more truly connect to ourselves and others, on-goingly and not just on Valentine’s Day.

Hanamesam kleshavaduktam

The removal of these (pratyayas) is prescribed like the destruction of the kleshas.*

*Four Chapters on Freedom, commentary on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Satyananda Paramahamsa.

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Posted in community, Dhyana, Philosophy, pleasure, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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A Sutra a Day: IV-27 – Those Pesky Psychic Grooves (grinding out the same old tune)

Posted on February 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

Source: herblog.com via Rosie on Pinterest

 

Have you run across the idea that your yoga mat can act as your therapist? I know on one level that sounds facetious, but think about it. You put yourself on your mat routinely and, each time you do, it’s an opportunity for you to watch your behaviour.

What are your responses as you practice. How do you react when you find a pose too hard? Or, if you’re in a class, what happens when your teacher pulls you back or asks you to use a prop? By themselves, the postures are meaningless and props are just neutral. It’s your reactivity that is of interest and your approach to yoga can reveal your patterns, or what is called in Sanskrit, your samskara. 

Yoga philosophy says that we’re born with certain karmic mental and emotional tendencies – samskara – that influence our lives until we learn to control them through conscious awareness.

The way you approach yoga, and any reactivity you have, probably originated long before you started practising; but your mat can be where you witness what you’re up to.

For me, when I’m on the mat, my go-to gears in the past have been somewhat pushy and show-offy. The good thing about ageing is that it has put limits on those modus operendi because: 1) it takes too much energy to go on pushing through, and 2) there are youngsters out there who can rings around my ekapadrajakapotasanas and adho mukha vrksasanas.

Samskara are just habits – not necessarily good or bad. But if your behaviour on the mat isn’t serving you or ultimately satisfying, it’s likely time for a change.

Tacchidresu pratyayantarani samskarebhyah

Any gaps in discriminating awareness allow distracting thoughts to emerge from the store of latent impressions.*

*The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali, translation and commentary by Chip Hartranft.

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Posted in Humour, Philosophy, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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A Sutra a Day: IV-26 – The Force of Freedom

Posted on February 11, 2013 | 1 Comment

eve 2000

Is wanting a bad thing? Should we be without desires? If we covet something we don’t have, aren’t we incomplete in some way?

For many years, my greatest longing was for a perfect relationship with a perfect man. You must know how badly that turned out! When I was able to be with a partner (Daniel) and accept him the way he was, things went better.

When I took up yoga, I was drawn to something in it – I couldn’t have told you what. Nevertheless, I kept being pulled forward. Maybe I was acquisitive of advanced postures, renown, money…. Mostly I was seeking, looking for myself, I was lost but not admitting it.

Sri Swami Satchidananda says in The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali that desire won’t help you attain what you want. You’ll put in much effort up to a certain point, and then what will make the most difference is allowing all effort to fall away.

Here’s what the Swami says:

Until we reach this stage, there is no harm in having certain good wants [as in wanting to do well in yoga] to help us stay away from the so-called undesirable wants. Then, when you are able to eliminate the undesirable ones, it is easy to eliminate the good ones also.

At which point, you are finally free. No longer seeking, you can rest in your true nature.

Tada vivekanimnam kaivalyapragbharam cittam

And their clarity takes them to their only concern: to reach and remain in a state of freedom.*

*Patanjali’s Yogasutras, commentary and translation by T.K.V. Desikachar.

 

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Posted in Philosophy, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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Dusting Off the Word According to Patanjali

Posted on February 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

 

Yesterday I kicked off the first of six sessions in which 9 of us will look at at least 10 of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. The form is a study group with me as the leader.

I loved the class, and I hope the others did too. It’s a privilege to give time to considering the big questions, like what is yoga? We do it daily or once a week but might not give much thought to the what and why we’re doing it.

One of the things I was able to experience was a fresh look at Sutra I:2 (thought of as the most important sutra) through the eyes of those who are newer to yoga – and also discover what it meant to them. I had a great insight… that this particular aphorism sums up the whole of the 156 sutra.

So, in the spirit of perhaps refreshing your definition of yoga, I’ll give you a few interpretations of the crystal-clear, pared down genius of the Old Sage. I’d be curious to hear which of these your mind and heart resonate with….

Yoga citti vrtti nirodhah.

Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness. – Chip Hartranft

Yoga is the cessation of movements in the consciousness. – B.K.S. Iyengar

Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness. – Georg Feuerstein

The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga. – Sri Swami Satchidananda

Wholeness consists of a complete grasp and command over the process of being and becoming aware. – Kofi Busia

Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively towards an object and sustain that direction without any distractions. – T.K.V. Desikachar

Yoga is the uniting of consciousness in the heart. – Nischala Joy Devi

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A Sutra a Day: IV-25 – Finding Your Way Home

Posted on February 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

 

Over the years I’ve developed a deep love and appreciation for yoga. Sometimes I joke and say that it’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had.

In the beginning I did yoga to help me lose weight after a pregnancy and to keep fit. I discovered I was good at doing the asanas so that gave me an ego boost and led me to do yoga teacher training. Teaching led to starting up yoga centres, to travelling, writing about yoga, and to training yoga teachers.

Eventually, because of health problems, I used yoga to manage my well-being, to recover and rehabilitate.

Along the way, asana practice became a little less compelling and other facets of yoga drew me: relaxation, yoga nidra, pranayama, meditation, philosophy study, the ethics of yoga.

One day it dawned on me, that it was important to think in terms of what I brought to yoga, rather than what it could do for me. I’m a slow learner.

I like how writer Lyn A. Anderson, Ph.D. describes yoga as a sort of GPS for discovering your soul:

Karma yoga teaches us that if the lessons we need to learn have been truly learned, change has been made, a space opens and we then have a greater opportunity to manifest free will and with free will, we become the master of our own destiny. The soul has found its GPS, a system that provides time and location information under any condition here on earth, with an unobstructed view.

Visesadarsina atmabhavabhavananivrttih

A person of extraordinary clarity is one who is free from the desire to know the nature of the Perceiver.

*Patanjali’s Yogasutras, translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar.

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Posted in Dhyana, Healing, Health, Philosophy, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Yoga teaching 

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A Sutra a Day: IV-24 – The Best Part of Ourselves

Posted on February 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

IMG_0091

In the early part of my life, I alternated between being a very good girl and a bit of a hell-raiser. I do have a few regrets, but I did manage to create some vivid memories along the way, as well as some great accomplishments.

I would say that the thing that tempered my tempestuous side was partly the discovery of yoga, but even more so becoming part of a wholesome community.

There has been a kind of evolution in my involvement with various communities. One of them was Werner Erhard and Associates and the Landmark Forum, and concurrently with those programs, the B.K.S. Iyengar teachers’ community, of which I was one. In the nineties I participated in the Human Awareness Institute workshops, with which I still keep an appreciative connection. The support of the HAI community is integral to learning and growing within the context of these workshops.

Along the way, I began fostering my own yoga communities in conjunction with the two Sydney yoga centres I owned. It was terribly hard for me to leave these people when we moved to the country three years ago.

Here on Mitchells Island, on the mid-north coast of NSW, I’ve found some beautiful groups to join, one of them our community choir – Wingsong. And, I’ve grown a yoga community right in our own backyard – The Yoga Shed.

I believe that being part of a healthy community is vital if you want to get on in your life. Why? Because when you are down, there will be others who can help bear you up. Then, at some point, you will pay it forward and reap the special benefits that come from giving and serving.

The right community will challenge you and help you get your mind and heart straight. In such a group, you are part of something that’s bigger than yourself and the connections in the group are there to remind you that there is something called the greater good. The possibilities of community are endless but might include  inspiration, motivation, camaraderie, caring, and, because groups can be confronting and provocative, a gentle polishing of the rough diamonds that some of us are.

Like a sculptor who chisels away at the parts of his marble that are not the statue he knows is there, community,when it works, can bring out the best in all of us.

Tadasankhyeyavasanabhiscitramapi parartham samhatyakaritvat

Even though the mind has accumulated various impressions of different types it is always at the disposal of the Perceiver. This is because the mind cannot function without the power of the Perceiver.*

*Patanjali’s Yogasutras, translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar.

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Posted in community, Healing, Philosophy, Wisdom, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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A Sutra a Day: IV-23 – Tackling Patanjali

Posted on February 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

14189972-woman-practicing-yoga-meditation-she-is-in-a-quiet-place-with-the-moon-and-clouds-in-japanese-style-

From this Saturday when I begin running a 6-week course on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, I will be very much a beginning yoga teacher again.

The Sutra are a topic which I’ve never taught before so I am fraught with doubts about my ability to give the students the true value of the Old Sage’s teaching. Will I be coherent? Will I have enough of a grasp to convey salient points? Will I be able to make the subject interesting enough?

I decided that I would only feature some of the Sutra in this course, the ones that I’ve found useful and that have become part of the fabric of the way I teach. This seems like an honest approach, and it’s the way I teach my asana classes – from my bones.

Today’s Sutra is an example of one that at this time I find way over my head. But nevertheless, I grapple with it because that’s what I did years ago with those Sutra which I eventually learned to comprehend – mainly those of Chapters I and II.

An old Patanjali scholar, Shyam Ghosh, explains Sutra IV-23 like this:

The mind is like a mirror: it reflects whatever is close to it [either the Self or objects]…. However, reflection in the mirror is clear only when the mirror is perfectly clean…. When the purity of the Self is fully and truly reflected in the mind, the two merge and become one.*

*The Original Yoga – as expounded in Siva-Samhita, Gheranda-Samhita and Patanjala Yoga Sutra.

Drastrdrsyoparaktam cittam sarvrtham

Thus the mind serves a dual purpose. It serves the Perceiver by presenting the external to it. It also reflects the Perceiver to itself for its own enlightenment.**

**Patanjali’s Yogasutras, translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar.

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A Sutra a Day: IV-22 – Inner/Outer Work

Posted on February 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

 

A friend who is staying with us for a few days is a meditator of decades, going back to his early teachers, Muktananda and Osho (when he was Rajneesh). Now Peter is a meditation teacher in his own right and is here in Australia from the States to run a course called Spiritual Awakenings.

Today he was describing to me how he has for many years found comfort in the quiet and deepest part of his soul, in preference to the ‘outside’ world, which he has viewed as illusory.

I was interested in his comments in view of the journey I’ve made in studying Patanjali’s Sutra over the last month. I was particularly fascinated because of a shift that Peter has made in favour of engaging more at this time with the outer world.

What he described to me was a process he’s been in that has him be in the space of not-knowing, not-assuming, and not-resisting. In a sense what has happened for him, I think, is a dissolution of the duality of inner and outer.

The reality we normally experience in daily life is illusory, but it’s not something from which to escape. Rather, we can engage with life from a deeper place than from our thoughts, sentiments and emotions.

The outer world can be so mesmerising, whether we are attracted or repulsed by it, or hang out in an emotion somewhere in between. Patanjali encourages us to cultivate an inner life so we can have a viewing platform from which to see how much we want to involve ourselves in worldly affairs. But most of all, going within lets us find our home in the clear light of the spiritual experience.

Citerapratisankramayastadakarapattau svabbhuddisamvedanam

When the mind is not turned outward, it reflects consciousness itself.*

*The Essence of Yoga – Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translation and commentary by Bernard Bouanchaud..

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Posted in Dharana, Dhyana, Philosophy, Samadhi, Wisdom, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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