Self-study or self-awareness is one of the biggest changes that I have made in my life because of my yoga practice. It has taught me how to recognize patterns and triggers in my life that can lead to stress and anxiety. It also has given me tools to help me cope with life’s up and downs and all the emotions that go with it. It’s not always easy to sit with your feelings or to allow what needs to rise to the surface to come up. In truth, it’s easier to numb myself with adult beverages, a reality show, social media, shopping, the busyness of work, etc. than to face my own reality sometimes. But what you resist, persists. Dang, I wish this quote wasn’t true, but it is! When you begin to peel back the layers of who you are to get to your true Self, this is Svadhyaya.
What is Svadhyaya?
Svadhyaya, is one of the Niyamas, or ethical yogic principles. Translated from Sanskrit it means self-study or self-awareness. Yoga practices help remove obstacles that prevent you from freedom or spiritual progression. Yoga Sutra 1.29 states: From this practice, the awareness turns inward, and the distracting obstacles vanish.
What Distracts Us?
You have an ego and you need it to survive. Your ego, or small ‘s’ self is your physical body and who you are daily. It is made for survival, follows the path of least resistance so you can get out of danger in a hurry, and deals with your wants. The self or ego also will judge, criticize, and bring up your fears and doubts. The big ‘S’ self is who you truly are or part of the Divine that is within you. If you get out of balance, ego begins to take the lead. You see things through your own “lens”. In yoga, Vrittis are individual, conscious and subconscious, thoughts that form conceptions in our minds. Your mind can admit and delete information and create bias based on your perceived “lens” of the world. These perceptions become your reality. When the ego leads, your reality creates separateness. Separateness distracts you into forgetting who you truly are, that you have the Divine nature already inside you.
“Inwardly we often touch the light and then lose it, falling back into separateness, despair, or unconsciousness. This may happen many times in the repeated cycles of opening and letting go, of death and rebirth, that mark our spiritual path. Yet it is this very process of death and rebirth that leads us to freedom.”
-Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
Becoming the Witness
Becoming the witness is stepping outside of yourself and seeing from a bird’s eye view. You shift away from the ego mindset to your true Self or identity. As the witness, you view how you act and respond. You witness repeating patterns of behavior and thought processes. You see the different masks or personas you wear in your life. As you explore and become self-aware, you realize why you wear the masks and find out who you truly are at your core. Your masks and behavioral patterns come from your conditioning, past experiences, and your reactions to others behavior, where you grew up and currently live, your gender, your ancestors, your social group and your family.
Svadhyaya asks you to look deeper and recognize how you get trapped in old patterns of doubt, fear, and anger and then simply see it as it truly is. To truly see it as just a pattern often releases the pattern. Not all habits and patterns need to be released. Remember you need your ego and the habits and patterns that are beneficial to you. With patterns and habits that cause harm or no longer serve you, you can be free to feel into the feeling and allow it to move through you. This allows you to move toward freedom. The freedom to be who you truly are without the masks or your perceived view the world.
Self-study is NOT Linear
There is a reason they call yoga a practice. It is ongoing throughout your life. What you want and need will change day to day and through different seasons of your life. What I wanted in my 20’s is very different from what I want and need in my 40’s. So, you can continue to use Svadhyaya to keep asking, “How am I doing today?” or “What do I need today?”
Numbing
Yogis believe you suffer because you forget who you truly are. When you want to avoid pain and difficulties in life, you default to old patterns and habits. You can use denial and numbing to run away from loss, disappointment, and life changes. Also, you can avoid your secret hopes, dreams, and happiness. You can numb with scrolling on social, watching tv, drinking, eating, exercise, spiritual bypassing, etc. Svadhyaya invites you to move toward these feelings instead of away from them with an open, curious mind.
You must explore the darkness inside you as well as the light. The more layers you peel back, the more you can shift from ego (our masks) to your true Self or identity, the less you will suffer in your life. Sometimes you may discover that the feelings are too big or too deeply engrained and outside help like counseling or therapy will be needed to release you from your old stories.
Reflection is a Gift
How often has someone done or said something that you can’t stand or drove you crazy and it really triggers an emotion in you? Maybe anger or frustration. As you become more agitated by this emotion, you realize something familiar about this person and their behavior. You notice you feel this way because you have acted or said something like this before and it caused you to feel ashamed or embarrassed. I feel like this happens a lot with parents and their children. When two of them are alike in many ways, it’s a bigger trigger. Deborah Adele in the book, The Yamas & Niyamas, writes, “We cannot hate or love something about another person or the world unless it is already inside us first.” People that you meet in your life will reflect to you what you need to recognize in yourself, but they can also reflect back what you want to see. These people are lessons for you. They give you an opportunity to question and explore the reasoning behind the trigger and to learn more about yourself.
A Gift of Compassion
As you become more self-aware, listen to what you say to yourself, what you say about someone else, and about your life, you will begin to learn how your thoughts have shaped the different masks you wear and how you have created your own life story. Usually if you criticize or judge yourself, you will criticize and judge others. All these stories or masks, are parts of yourself you love, don’t love, can’t see or can’t yet accept. The more we get to know ourselves, the more compassionate and empathetic we can be to others. The more you study your own heartbreak and pain, the more you can recognize the same pain in someone else. You start to understand that we are all connected.
Svadhyaya on the Mat
Your yoga mat is a microcosm for your life. At the beginning of your practice, you start to tune in. Ask yourself, “How am I feeling today?” As you drop more into your body, you may notice where your breath and/or tension is in your body. Is your breathing shallow in the chest or deep and relaxed in the belly? Are you clenching your jaw or your brow? As you begin to move through your physical practice, you can continue to explore with a curious, non-judgmental mind. Do you use force to get into a pose? Maybe you always take the full expression of the pose. Have you tried the modification? Do you lay in child’s pose for half the class? Do you refuse to use props? Are you comparing yourself to the person next to you? What thoughts or feelings are coming up for you?
You can use your asana practice to help develop your self-study muscle as well as your physical body muscles. Tapas, or self-discipline, can get you to your mat or to your meditation seat to create the opportunity to have a beginner’s mindset and be curious for what shows up on your mat and translates to how you show up in your life. For example, in chair pose as the heat starts to build in the legs, do you encourage yourself to keep going or do you tear yourself down? In life when things become challenging, do you exhibit that same behavior toward yourself?
Bridging the Gap
Recently I was listening to my teacher, Brett Larkin of Uplifted Yoga, and she was discussing what she calls “Bridging the Gap” in your yoga practice. She talked about as you explore and become more self-aware in your yoga practice what you like to do isn’t always what you need to do. For example, in my own practice, I love vinyasa/hatha style classes to help me move my energy through my body. But because my personality is “go, go, go” and more about doing than being, what I need most of the time to help put me in balance is Yin and meditation. The long holds of Yin and the stillness of meditation allow me to just “be” in a pose or with my breath which ultimate leads me to explore what feelings, thoughts and sensations come up that I would normally numb out with “doing” and busyness.
In meditation, you slow down and become quieter. There is no where to hide from your thoughts. In exploring your thoughts in stillness, you can learn more about yourself and your patterns which will help you in other areas of your life. “Bridging the Gap” means to start your practice with what you like and then transitioning into what you need to create more balance. For me that could mean to start with a Vinyasa Flow practice and then transition into a long meditation where I sit in stillness.
I want to leave you with this quote from Gary Kraftsow in his book, Yoga for Wellness.
“As we progress in our practice, we can shift our focus away from the physical and/or mental limitations toward our higher potential; away from weakness toward strength; away from pain toward well-being; away from anxiety, anger, and depression toward relaxation, contentment, and joy. We can feel better about ourselves, stabilize, and elevate our moods, develop clearer perception, increase mental energy and alertness, have a greater sense of physical well-being, and find a sense of direction and a deeper purpose in our life.”-
-Gary Kraftsow
Is Svadhyaya easy? No! Is it worth it? Yes. I mean, who doesn’t want to feel like this quote?!
Much love & health,
Carrie
If this yogic principle of self-study or self-awareness resonated with you, be sure to check out my upcoming 21 day online course-Release, Reconnect, & Renew. I created this course to provide you with different ‘yogic tools’ to help bring you back into a more balanced life. You will explore asana (physical yoga sequences), pranayama (breathing techniques), journaling, and meditation practices throughout the 21 days. Click here to learn more and be sure to sign up to be the first to hear when it is released for PRESALE!
Resources:
Deborah Adele-The Yamas & Niyamas
Jack Kornfield-A Path with Heart
Jaganath Carrera-Inside the Yoga Sutras: A Complete Sourcebook for the Study and Practice of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Thank you for sharing this article with me. It helped me a lot and I love it.
Awsesome! So glad it resonated with you.