Intro to Abhyasa Vairagya from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras - Sutra 1.12

I teach a hybird online/in person class on Thursday mornings called Resting with the Sutras. In this class, I offer a dharma talk on a sutra each week, followed by a yin yoga asana practice and a guided yoga nidra. This is the dharma talk on sutra 1.12, which was from this week's lesson. On June 25th, we will start the next Resting with the Sutras series. You can sign up at this link! 

https://alexandramcrobert.thrivecart.com/resting-with-the-sutras-115-127/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

Okay. So yeah, let's come into a comfortable shape. So we have I don't know if I've shown you guys this before. It's actually missing the cover, but this is my my Yoga Sutras and chanting book that Anbita gave me when I was in Mumbai. I'll show it to the camera. And it just has every sutra listed in Sanskrit, but the cover has fallen off. And so it's kind of cool. It just has the Sanskrit, and these are what students use when they're chanting, when they're learning the sutras together. So I was looking at it this morning just to see where we're up to. And it's hard to believe that we're only on Sutra 1.12 because I feel like we've been doing this for a really long time. And yet we're just one we're like one quarter of the way through the first chapter, basically. Um, but it's a really interesting chunk, this very first chunk that we've gotten to because we've just been learning about the mind and how the mind works. And actually, there was a great question yesterday in one of my classes about like what's the difference between a spiral and a feeling. And I love this question because it really got me thinking around differentiating that, right? And like we have emotional reactions. Um, but yet what's the story that we're narrating us around ourselves around the emotion and the experience and the present moment? And that's kind of what these spirals are all about. So the very first four sutras that we did were yoga is now, yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. Then the seer abides in their true nature. And when we're not in practice, we identify with our thoughts. So that's the first chunk. My teacher, not my teacher, one of my friends, Simon, has said before that basically you could just read that and then finish the sutras if you know how to calm your mind. And the rest of us don't, which is why we're on like a 200 sutra study together. So that's the first four sutras. The next chunk of sutras, which was 1.5 to 1.11, was all about the types of thoughts we have. So we learned about that. They can be painful or painless. They are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep, and memory. And then the next chunk was about each of these types of thoughts, which are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep, and memory. So now we're finally in the next chunk. Um, and this is where it gets interesting because all we've learned so far is like the kind of basics about how our mind works. And now we're getting into how we can still the fluctuations of the mind. Like, how can we actually do this? And there's two things that we're building the foundation of this practice on, which we will continue to elaborate on over the next few classes. And they are practice and non-attachment. So practice is just the idea of like literally showing up and doing the things. And I love that this has aligned in my life right now because I'm in a moment where my practice is being uh tested because I've so I've had a pretty dedicated like one hour meditation practice for like quite a few months. I some of you guys know that I have a teacher that I meet with in India every morning and she's just taken two weeks off, just had a family emergency. And so this is now like pulling one of the one of the st one of the um uh stool legs out from under my stool and like testing me, like, can I be consistent about this practice without this this person to rely upon, right? And um but what we cur constantly come back to is that the if we're not in practice, then like none of this stuff is gonna work, right? So I can remember a time, and it's funny because I actually have my Kuwait my Kuwait mug this morning I'm drinking out of. But I think my time in Kuwait is the the perfect example of this because I was so solid about my practice for so many years. I was doing like one or two asana classes a day. I was like super dedicated, and then I got to Kuwait and my practice was just like pulled out from me because there was no yoga studio in my neighborhood. And then I remember I would get on Instagram and I would see these people that be like, Yoga is amazing, yoga changed my life, da-da-da-da. And it would just like piss me off. Um, and even though I was teaching yoga at that time, it would really anger me because I wasn't feeling the same things that they were feeling. The reason why I was feeling them was because I wasn't doing a practice, right? And so the the importance of actually doing the practice is like one of the first uh one of the first foundation blocks. And then the second is renunciation, and that's letting go of the outcome. And so we do our practice, but we have a detachment from what we'll get from it. So I recently had a time period where my practice really regressed, and that was because I got into this really dysregulated situation with my nervous system. I was going through this breakup, and I would get on my mat to do my practice in the morning, and I could I literally couldn't do it. So I would be, I would do 60 minutes of meditation, but I was like and anyway, we've we've now like reworked my practice, and I'm doing I'm doing a big chunk of asana and breath work before I meditate. So my meditation is now back to like 30 minutes, but that's okay because my body could not like sit for as long as it could previously. But what I see from that is that my practice has regressed and I'm having more trouble stilling the fluctuations of my mind, and that's okay. But the whole point is like we're continuously showing up for our practice, even when the results are not what we want them to be. Like even when we're not feeling well, even when we're not feeling grounded, even when things are shaky in our lives, we just keep showing up for the practice. So these are these two things, abhyasa and varagya. And the whole sutra reads to be abhyasa, varagyam, yam, tan, nirodaha. Nirodaha is the stealing of the fluctuations. Abyasa is practice, varagyam is the renunciation from the outcome. So that's what we're getting into for this chunk of sutras, and I believe it is um I'm just looking ahead at my my sutras. I think we're gonna go all the way to one point one six is about this section. I think there's a and then we get into samadhi. So there's a few more sutras which elaborate on this. So anyway, okay, that was a long intro, Dharma talk. Let's come into seated, and you can anchor in through your sit bones and lengthen up through the spine. I guess what is interesting or inspiring for me is when we can start to talk more about the practice. And I loved all the last sutras, but as I reflect on this one, this is where we're really getting into the practice, right? Because the last few sutras were just about understanding our mind, which is an important foundation, but now we're like we're at the standing, the transition point where we're like, okay, what do I do with all that? What do I do with all that, patanjali? Alright, let's start with let's start with the guru mantra since I started playing it automatically, and then we'll do the invocation to patanjali. Patanjali is one of the gurus, one of the removers of darkness. There's a U in each one of us. And I bow to this U.S.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Let's take three holes together, take a deep breath in.