Since the 200hr TT began about 6 weeks ago, all of my teaching has centered around the material being covered week to week. It’s been a primary driver of inspiration and content and I’ve found that as both a student and a teacher, it has really deepened my understandings of these foundational elements to the yoga practice. I’ve found that they’re sinking in and permeating a little more than the last time I looked over these things and definitely further than when I was in any of the TT’s I’ve taken. It’s pretty cool to continuously learn from material you’ve already learned and notice that it makes far more sense and even different sense. I feel like yoga (and life) is a lot of that- repeated lessons, stories, archetypes- redundancies all over the place resulting in things “clicking” more every time.
One of the major philosophy and history topics starting this week is The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It’s often referred to, themed around or taught out of in yoga classes. In yoga TT’s it is given a good portion of time to be deeply introduced and illuminated.
In my opinion, you don’t have to know every bit of yoga history and philosophy. The Sutras don’t have to be memorized and engrained in order to practice yoga, be a good yogi or be a great teacher. And you definitely don’t need all that for the yoga practice to work.
But is that stuff significant? Are The Yoga Sutras an incredibly important part of yoga’s lineage? Totally. And if you have heard of Patanjali and The Sutras and know what I’m referring to at all, then you also know that it’s a lot. The complexity and density of this material just doesn’t absorb during first ingestion and getting it through to students is a challenge. Just the idea of writing out the concepts for my teachings beyond the classroom is daunting. It’s extra teaching and not just sprinkled into or contextually attached to the practice. And I’m definitely no scholar on this subject matter. But I have found it useful. And thanks to the scope of lens of the Non-Dual Tantric yoga philosophy which I teach, practice and study myself, this Dual Classical text can still serve us.
The practice this week is being pulled from this text, so I thought I’d honor it with the humble introduction I would have appreciated before becoming a teacher and the kind that now as a teacher I’m not always able to give fully or articulately while teaching every single class dedicated to The Sutras.
| so |Who’s Patanjali and what are The Yoga Sutras?
Very simply:
Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras-
(sutra can be translated to mean “string” or “thread” but more commonly refers to discourse or a collection of aphorisms )
The Yoga Sutras is a doctrinal text that was written over 1,000 years ago containing 195/196 sutras (aphorisms) which became known as a theoretical, systematic & practical manual of spiritual philosophy which was known at the time as yoga- not quite exactly the same as what we know yoga to mean today or in the way we refer to or understand it. This was the first time the historical yoga teachings had been organized and synthesized from older traditions. Prior to this, teachings were usually offered orally, so accessibility of all of this synthesized yoga teaching and knowledge and wisdom was a pretty big deal at that time. This made spiritual exploration accessible. Whoa. The Sutras grew to become one of the foundational texts in the yoga world and is a staple text in most, if not all, yoga teacher trainings.
When practice is dedicated to this subject, how? It was so long ago…
My intention is to unpack some particle of this in a digestible way for us to be able to apply on and off the mat, based on things that feel the most sunken in and resonate. Offering lessons from The Sutras that I feel I understand well enough to share confidently so students can connect more deeply to what it is that we’re doing on our mats and take us into an even more intentional place.
In truth, yes, this was a very long time ago and the text has been translated over and over again by scholars, teachers and specialists of different kinds which leaves a lot of room for debate as to what Patanjali meant, what the translations of things are and how everything is viewed. Some students and teachers treat this text as a sort of bible and there are some who don’t think it’s relevant anymore. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the way that I was taught, but personally I continue to believe that there is so much substantial, enriching material to be found within, no matter how many times I skim through it, study it, or am taught about it in different ways. This is where we as practitioners and teachers can definitely turn our heads and potentially broaden our understanding of the practice we know and love so deeply and/or pull from its deep-rooted wisdom. It has been a truly great learning tool and to this day continues to enlighten how I practice, teach and perceive things. A full written text that encompasses a full system, a guideline, a philosophical viewpoint and history of yoga from before yoga became yoga as we know it today? That’s invaluable. It may be old and not necessarily aligned with what I believe spiritually, but it furthers my practice. And with an open attitude, all ideas have the ability to guide us. At least that’s how I see it.
If something stands out and strikes a chord, challenges our perception, draws us closer to what we are doing and brings a bigger way to play with what we know and how we practice, why not invite that wisdom into the yoga class and offer that experience to students? It might get us closer to where we are looking to go. In fact, it might even take us straight there.