Going deeper in your yoga practice - Svādhyāya

To offer more yogic knowledge, in conjunction with Lisa at Yoga Loft Carrickfergus, we have asked our teachers to write short articles about the yamas and niyamas. 
They are the first two limbs of the eightfold path of yoga described by Patanjali in the yoga sutras. These are fundamental concepts offering ethical and moral guidelines to yogis.

svādhyāya, by Lucie Chenet Rea

Sutra 2.32: śauca-santoṣa-tapaḥ-svādhyāya-īśvara-praṇidhānani niyamāh
Purity, contentment, discipline, self-study, and devotion are the five personal observances (niyamas).

Sutra 2.44: svādhyāyād iṣṭadevatā-samprayogaḥ
Through self-study, one attains communion with their desired deity or chosen aspect of divinity..
 

Svādhyāya is sometimes translated to “self-study” or “introspection”. In Sanskrit, “svā” means “one’s own self” and “adhyāya” means “studying” or “reciting”.

Traditionally, this niyama also refers to the study of sacred texts as an active part of self-reflection, a mirror to reflect on our inner life. 

This niyama is probably the one I would bring up into conversation when people tell me that they can’t practice yoga because they can’t touch their toes.
In case you don’t know that yet, touching your toes as a means to an end is not really yoga.

But self-reflection absolutely is.
So what if we all ignored the bendy and trendy and practiced by looking inwards?

Despite me being highly sarcastic about being bendy, Svādhyāya is actually what brings a lot of people to yoga these days.
It is a sense of curiosity towards one-self, the knowing that there is more than we think within ourselves and that yoga might be one of the many pathways to find a better connection to our inner lives.

If we come back to the etymology of the Sanskrit term, Svādhyāya means to “read one’s self”. We can then picture ourselves like a book written in an unknown language that we open and learn to decipher whilst practicing.

Why do I react this way? Why do I feel this way? Why am I having these thoughts? What does this all tell me about what might be hurting me and what might be helping me to achieve my higher sense of Self? These are all questions we could reading in this book and asking ourselves.

The beauty of Svādhyāya is that it can be practiced anywhere and at any given time. Self-reflection can take place on a mat, during mantra chanting, meditation or asana practice but it not something you can buy, it is not something that only exists in yoga studios, it is a way of life that you can chose to follow.

In my eyes, self-reflection is one of the crucial elements of what makes yoga, yoga.
It is what makes the practice so powerful, so deep, so life-changing and also so very challenging.

Because of our human nature, we constantly struggle with ego, trauma and feelings. We seek comfort, appraisal and quick results.
So, when told that yoga is non-performative and non-bendy, but actually happens within by one’s own will to learn and reflect, the ego can rebel or chose to give up the practice all together.

And to me, that is why yoga is such a rebellious, counter-culture, anti-capitalist way of life when practiced with depth and intention.

It is not an object that we can put a price on. It is deeply introspective and specific to each of us. It is rich, beautiful, hard and for our busy, over-stimulated minds, can sometimes feel quite boring.
It is the (slow and fastidious) work of the self towards the Self.

It requires us to be fully present and open to change, deconstruction, and sometimes destruction of certain things that we have been considering as our own but which might actually be standing in the way to Ishvara Pranidhana, the fifth niyama that we will post about next week.

In the meantime, have a lovely week and happy Svādhyāha!

Lucie

Thank you Lucie!
We will endeavour to share more about these topics here regularly to build a mini accessible yogic knowledge online library :)

You can find Lucie's profile here if you want to keep on exploring our website.