Is Yoga Just a Journey Back to Yourself ? ✨

Before we start, if you haven't seen my latest reel (and my latest attempt at being funny), here's the link 👈🏽. I'm slightly disturbed by how many people told me this look actually suited me 😵‍💫👳🏾‍♂️.

Last Monday I was talking about trauma, and how Eastern philosophy has, in different ways, referred to something similar as our innate darkness. Some of it inherited, some projected, some the sum of our life experience. And in everything we do, we reflect it.

Which is why Robert Sapolsky (the zebra 🦓 guy I talk about in teacher training) says there is no such thing as free will. So much of our biology is inherited, and the decisions we make and the things we do only seem conscious. In fact, they're largely unconscious. Our biology, our experiences and our environment set the wheels in motion for everything we are and everything we do. Which sits surprisingly close to some earlier yogic philosophy.

But the word trauma itself is interesting, because there is no direct Sanskrit word, as far as I can find, that quite matches what we know today as trauma. It could be that in the East, something like trauma simply wasn't spoken about in the way we speak about it today. It was often (and still is) suppressed. But when the ancient yogis and Eastern philosophers touched on suffering and the darker parts of human nature, it often feels as though they spoke about it through stories. Stories of demons, of whispers in your ear, of something constantly trying to lead you astray. Whether those stories were meant literally or symbolically, I've always felt they point towards something much deeper.

I don't see it as something outside of us.

The stories of Shiva, Devi and Kali, and the fascinatingly complex mythology of the Eastern mind, show us something else. Or perhaps, this is simply how I've come to understand them. That our darkness is not external but innate, a crucial player in the person we become, but only if we understand that it is not against us. It isn't to be feared. It isn't to be repressed and forgotten. It is something to transcend - through love.

I've always seen the story of Parvati (top middle) and Kali (on the right) as a reminder that we don't conquer life by suppressing our fears or our darkness. At first, Kali appears as something separate, something terrifying. But in time, I've come to see the story as suggesting that the truest part of who we are is often hidden inside the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. We have to unravel those parts of ourselves to discover the deepest part of our being.

I've often wondered whether the reason Parvati was so adamant that Shiva share the mystery of yoga with humanity was because she understood that division is the root of so much human misery. Someone divided within themselves remains in a hell of their own making. Heaven can only be experienced when we are no longer split between who we want to be and who we really are. Man divided is misery. Man integrated is bliss.

Hence the name given was yoga. Union. To bring two things together. To integrate. We should be seen as a whole, not two things fighting for the same space. For me, Parvati's story is one of embracing the darkness of her own nature, and what she finds on the other side is a deeper understanding of who she is, was, and was always meant to be. She doesn't escape herself. She transcends herself.

That's why, and I know it's a sensitive subject for many, I see yoga as an ongoing process of self-discovery. It's not as much about flexibility as you think. It's about what you're learning and discovering about yourself, daily.

One day you start to see flowers bloom. The seeds of those flowers were planted in your first class. You just need to keep showing up. At home or at the studio. Keep doing the work.

This is why I always say you can learn so much about the answer to a question from the person asking it. When Parvati says to Shiva, "Oh Shiva, what is your reality?", I've spent the last fifteen years still unpacking that question. Not so much the answer, but trying to understand the depth and the psychology of the person asking something so profound.

I feel like in a modern context, if Parvati asked Shiva that question today, "What is your reality?", Shiva might reply:

"It is what you make it, my love. But because your life has been a little harder than most, you are still a little divided. You are on the right path though, and soon you will discover yourself as you are. Beautiful and brave. And the realisation will be that you had to crawl through the darkest parts of yourself to find it."

We don't touch on trauma in our foundation teacher training. We certainly do in our advanced training, but not because we're trying to understand trauma in the way trauma-informed yoga is often promoted online.

We study it so we can develop a deeper understanding of people and just how complex each person is. You don't become an expert on trauma from doing a course. All a course can really do is expose you to different experiences and different ways trauma can show up in people's lives.

More often than not, the answer isn't to treat people differently. It's simply to make whatever space you teach in feel welcoming to everyone, knowing that every person who walks through the door is battling with something.

Each person is on their own journey of self-discovery.

As teachers, all we really do is step back rather than forward. We aren't here to heal people off the back of a course. We create the right environment so people can heal themselves.

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Namaskar - Eternal Seeker

Zahir Akram

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