Yoga Sutra I.50

 

Hari Om dear yoga students,

The Sanskrit word, samskara, translates as a subconscious impression.  Samskaras are deep seeded patterns that our mind continues to play over and over again.  It is the thoughts, impressions and memories that we have acquired over our lifetimes that create conditioned responses and eventually become our habits. When we feel stuck in our lives or continue to approach situations the same way over and over again, hoping for different results, it is often due to our samskaras.   Obsessions and compulsions have their root in the samskara of past conditions, but they can also produce positive tendencies, like committing to meditate or practice yoga everyday.

  As we step on our mat, do our pranayama or sit on our meditation cushion, we face ourselves from the inside.  The stillness within the movement of thoughts breaths or postures help to create space in between our impulses and actions.   The creative art of detaching from our negative patterns allows us to make those much needed changes in our lives.  However, more importantly it allows us to look at our emotional patterns more like the weather around us; we are in the weather but we are not the weather.    The weather changes but we remain the same.  This compassionate awareness reminds us of an even more important point:  That we all feel the same feelings.  The patterns you struggle with are , most likely, the same as others in your life. Ultimately, becoming aware of your own samskaras expands your circle of compassion so you can reach out to others from a place of knowing.  Yoga is all about clearing ourselves so we can go out and help others.  What we heal in ourselves, we heal in the world.

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