Allowing the equipoise
In the rich wisdom teachings of yoga, many rivers of knowledge run and flow deep. As with anything in life that permeates our culture, its history is vast and nuanced.
Having explored today in community class, the yoga sutra 2.46: ‘Sthira sukham asanam’, it feels nourishing and timely to share this more widely, with you. In the world of translation from the ancient and magical language of Sanskrit - this in essence means, ‘steadiness and ease in our posture’.
Sthira meaning steady/steadfastness like a wise and rooted tree, sukham meaning easeful, comfortable. Asana meaning seat or pose. We need the blend of both strength and softness to move our way through the kaleidoscope of human experience.
Perhaps it encapsulates the ultimate verve of Self love. Of embodying one’s own skin both sensuously and honestly.
How comfortable are you in your own skin?
In the various deep dives through my own yoga explorations, from being a student of it since early childhood, to being a teacher and facilitator of it for ten years, I know there are so many ways in. To access and indeed discover the higher tones and vibrations of our incredible inner landscapes. To blast through heavy layers of illusion that we are lost or broken or unloved.
The tantric teachings remind us that nothing is separate. This is not a whimsical pursuit. It asks that we truly embody and live from our own compass or truth, honesty and right relationship. Skilfulness in action can take many shapes. Just like our asana does. ‘She moves in mysterious ways…’.
The yoga sutras came into being through Patanjali. Dubbed often as the modern father of yoga. Whether he was a sole person or represented a group of scholars, is not fully known. The sutras are a number of aphorisms that, along with the 8 limbed yogic path, helped to systematise the yoga teachings to date, at that time. A weave of Hatha and Tantra.
What I also love about viewing the Sanskrit through a more modern gaze (i.e in the here and now), is how it aligns with somatic embodied movement.
Sthira sukham asanam - steadiness and ease are there for us to embody. So we bear witness to our patterns of propping - where we hold on too tight or jut our chins forward in anger, or shallow breathe into the mania of anxiety. Or indeed, where the collapse might seep in. The apathy, lethargy and depression. In cultivating greater and greater steadiness and ease, we naturally begin to move more into yielding. And have realisations and aha moments - that the issues are in the tissues! Body speaks - are we listening? Steadiness and ease are within you. Trust.
Allowing things to flow much more effortlessly too. Effortlessness takes practise! Ask any established athlete or performer. That sprint, that dancing leap and spin - takes hundreds, thousands of repetitions. We learn through repetition. So what we repeatedly do and think influences our lives. It takes practise to see through the patterns of unconscious beliefs that run our behaviours. Do you need to turn the tap on in your life - to flow more. Or does the tap need to ease off - too much hyper-vigilance. Adjust the flow according to your needs. How we might over exert or live in a constant state of anticipation. Or conversely feel so despondent that we feel like slug!
Very much too like the gunas - rajasic and tamasic being the energies of action and passivity respectively. The sattwa, or the satvic state, being the balance. It doesn’t make rajas and tamas wrong - it means we recognise that things carry a different energy, a different vibrational imprint and impression. Sometimes we might crave spicy food, sometimes it’s just a pot of cooling yoghurt!
More and more then, we can disentangle the heat, the raging inner fires, or the dampening, numbing depressions, into the state of balance. Harmonic resonance. The feeling of equipoise.
Everything influences everything, all of the time. Complete interdependence.
It is a daily practise. With no end point. We are always in the becoming. To walk with both purity of intention and clarity of motive, is skilful.
Remembering too that we are making it up as we go along.
So much love your way. Let yourself gently contemplate in your own life, how can you invite greater steadiness and ease into your own being? Be playful and curious in the inquiry. Your body longs to speak with you…..
Ciara
Ciara Jean Roberts