Week Four - Svādhyaya, A Deeper Self
Hello everyone,
Thank you so much to those who made it to yoga with me last Sunday in Greystones :) I hope you are all having a gorgeous midterm break and getting ready for the big day of mischief, mystery, and divilment that's coming this Friday - Spooky Samhain! I write to you from my mother's cosy office on Inis Mór, where I am wrapped up under a wool blanket in good company with about two hundred books and a little WALL-E robot figurine cheering me on. I am home for the whole week (yay!) and soaking up the salt water winds - taking every excuse I possibly can to nap. Life is good!
We will be practicing our weekly yoga in Thrive this Sunday as always - a Hatha flow at 5pm and a cosy Yin at 6:30pm. Please let me know if you'd like to grab a spot for either!
As we are in our fourth week of the current term, our theme for this week's Hatha and Yin practices will be svādhyaya; the fourth niyama of Patanjali's yoga. If you're only now reading up on our philosophy theme for this yoga term (which is a completely optional contemplative add on to the yoga practices!), the five niyamas are a yogic list of positive personal duties that can help to empower and purify our relationship to ourselves, so that we might experience less suffering. While it might feel esoteric to follow the words of an ancient sage yogi in this day and age, the niyamas are actually pretty straight-forward and easy to follow guidelines for improving your mental health in a holistic way. They are also an essential part of yoga and traditionally are considered to be as important - if not more important - than any physical posture or breathing practice we may do on the mat.
So far this term we've looked at the niyamas of saucha (cleanliness), santosha (contentment), and tapas (austerity/discipline). This week we will consider svādhyaya; which is all about self study. Many of us in modern life understand the concept of self-study, or self-reflection, well enough. Your mind might think of things like journalling, writing down your dreams, trying to figure out if you're an extrovert or an introvert, or what number you might be on the enneagram...or maybe you go deeper into psychoanalysis and contemplate all the reasons why you are the way you are. It is worthy work. However, Svādhyaya in the context of the niyamas is actually an instruction to read the scriptures and texts of yoga as a way to study your true self, beyond the psyche...which is a bit different.
The yogis believed in transcending the mind, not analysing it. Therefore, practices of Svādhyaya often include recitations from sacred texts and the repetition of a mantra (mantra japa). Really, it's about meditation. When the mind is given a simple repetitive task in meditation to do over and over, it's less likely to be distracted by thoughts or emotions, and in that clear-minded state self-awareness becomes possible. Alternatively, when the mind is active and alive in its nature, there can be very little room for self awareness. In the yogic sense, this form of self-study is only the mind obsessing over the mind.
Have you ever seen something spectacular in the natural world, and felt a pause in the activity of your mind? For a short moment, maybe just the length of an exhale, you felt a stillness in your thoughts...and with it, a deep sense of connection. That feeling is the 'self' that Svādhyaya wants you to study. Spending time in nature is a fantastic way to do it, if you ask me. Or studying your sensations in a physical yoga practice - paying attention to what is real, what is true for you in the moment. But there is also some guidance within Svādhyaya to recommend that you find and study inspirational writing and teachings as a way to understand this deeper version of yourself. You can read it in poetry, explore it in books and scriptures, you might even discover it woven into certain music lyrics and old stories. Svādhyaya is about studying your own awareness, and anything that points you in the direction of understanding it better. It's about getting inspired and searching for things that light you up, that make you feel alive, that make you feel whole…but, it is also a study. A gentle process. A nudge for you to keep searching for that feeling of presence and connection, and a whisper that says the answer is all around you, in all living things.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
You must learn one thing
The world was meant to be free in
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong
David Whyte
le grá,
Macha
