Musings: Thoughts on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra I.1 – Julie Tamarkin

Musings THOUGHTS ON PATANJALI’S YOGA SUTRA I.1

BY JULIE TAMARKIN

There is an old New Yorker cartoon that depicts a holy man at a crossroads looking at a sign. In one direction, the sign points to the meaning of life; in the opposite direction, the sign points to cheese and crackers. The man is not moving. He is scratching his chin, trying to decide which way to go. I recognize this hesitation. I want to evolve as a human being, and I cling to my old habits and comforts.

The Yoga Sutras inspire, guide, motivate, and delight me. They also challenge me, and they can make me feel ignorant, weak, inadequate, and ashamed. At times, I read the sutras and am fueled to steer straight toward uplifting transformation. At other times, when the sutras make clear how far I have to go, I want to turn back and run for a snack, a distraction, a way to dull my discomfort.

But there is one sutra that always stirs my soul and makes me feel that anything is possible. It’s the very first one: atha yoganusasanum: “Now we turn to Yoga.”

Just like Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita, I am on the front lines of my own confusion, ignorance, fear, and despair. And like Arjuna, I am armed. I have a body, senses, a mind, an intellect, and consciousness. And, thanks to Patanjali, Guruji, Geetaji, and many wonderful Iyengar Yoga teachers, I have the methods of yoga.

Sutra I.1 is my wake up call. It tells me that no matter how far I am from the ideal, no matter how discouraged I feel, and no matter how strongly I want to take a break and nibble a snack, this very moment is full of possibilities for my evolution.

I can wake up to what I’m doing and be truly alive in my body. I can work where I am; I can use whatever props I’ve got on hand. In this moment, in every moment, I can lift myself up, clean myself off, and move toward the original state of oneness. Practice guides me to search inside for the right action, to discover where I am clenching too tightly, where I am collapsing, and where I can’t figure out what I am doing.

I am not trying to nail the pose like a gymnast trying to stick the landing. And I am not trying to race toward the goal. I am trying to discover the state of my present condition and realize what I am actually doing. Where do I dump my weight rather than press and extend? Where do I tense up instead of allowing energy to flow through the pose? And where am I disconnected from myself instead of integrated?

When I look inside and replace a harmful habit with a healthy action, I connect to my own aliveness, an idea that Geeta focused on during the 2014 Yoganusasanum intensive in Pune. When I wake up to my present moment aliveness, I come home to my body and my potential. I can initiate a constructive change, let go of feeling overwhelmed by my distance from the goal, shed old prejudices and patterns, shine a light into my blind spots, and take a step along the path toward oneness.

This practice nourishes me in ways that cheese and crackers never will.

Julie Tamarkin (Introductory II) teaches in Cleveland, OH.