The Word That Opens the Yoga Sutras (And Why It Might Be the Only Moment You'll Ever Get)

In a previous I introduced you to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 🙏🏽. A classic text on traditional non-physical poses yoga that has been doing the rounds in yoga teacher trainings for decades.

Just a heads up 👉🏽 Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras isn't a checklist for the modern day student or yoga teacher trainee. It's really a mirror for the mind and in doing that helps us understand what the mind is from the yogic perspective (simply memories and imagination). The book appears to be written for seekers of the path from centuries past. It does however remain useful and enlightening if you want to understand yoga beyond the modern day yoga poses. But it shouldn't be mistaken as a gospel of yoga. Or indeed something you as a teacher trainer or yoga teacher must be doing or applying to your own life. Someone many years ago asked me what chapter of the book I was on. I replied I wasn't on any chapter. In fact at the time I had very little interest in it. My answer horrified her. She said she was living her life according to the teachings of Patanjali. My eyes rolled so fast she never saw them move 👀. It just isn't that type of text. I see it more as a biography of a seeker where we can draw inspiration. And that is all.

The author, the sage Patanjali, begins his Yoga Sutras with a single, curious word 👉🏽 "now".

"NOW the discipline of yoga." Some translations say "Now the instruction in union."

When I first read that, I had to put down my skinny latte. Was I missing something? Why start a book with the word "now"? Was there a prequel I had missed? Had I skipped an introduction? 😵‍💫

Over years of reading yoga philosophy and getting my head around the broader culture, a slow and organic understanding of that word has grown. The "now" is not referring to a missing chapter. It is pointing to a moment of readiness that many of us may recognise from our own lives.

There are times when life breaks us open (or apart). We lose someone. We face a crisis. We feel broken, lost, somehow incomplete. In those moments people often turn toward something. Not always favourable. But some people turn to something greater. For many, that something is God.

When Patanjali says now, he is describing the time for a similar turning, but the direction is inward instead of outward, towards the skies, towards God. When we are broken, a strange void opens up within. That void or space is the closest opportunity many of us will have to reconnect with who we actually are. So that emptiness isn't a loss but a chance to discover and grow.

As Parvati says to Shiva when she is on the cusp of her self discovery, it is as if she is in a void. She has fallen into a great space. An eternal emptiness that pulsates with life. That emptiness was the potential of her own being. Eternal, without beginning and end.

So when Patanjali says NOW, he is saying: now that you are feeling this void, aware of the loss you feel, now you are ready for the discipline that is yoga. Now you are ready for the truth of what life is. Patanjali, in a roundabout way, says that precisely because something has fallen away or there is a feeling of loss, the discipline of yoga can begin.

Remember, yoga at its root simply means to bring two things together. In the early stages of practice that means reconnecting with the body we have been ignoring. We feel the feet on the ground, the breath moving in and out, the small sensations we usually overlook. Later the practice organically goes further. The idea is to leave the body behind for a while and rest in the awareness of breathing itself.

I sometimes wonder how many people walk into a yoga class without realising they were looking for exactly this reconnection. The decision can feel almost subconscious. Something in them knows it is time to reconnect with their bodies so they can understand the void in themselves. Without introspection, without understanding what that void is, we get further and further disconnected from ourselves and life itself. It's a bit like turning up to therapy without knowing what you're there to talk about, except the couch is a yoga mat.

It is as if Patanjali is a psychotherapist and he is talking to his patient. He says now you are ready to explore the depths of your own being. You didn't come before because you couldn't understand how you felt. And now you are here. Now you are ready.

Yoga in many respects is nothing more than a therapy to understand yourself. Patanjali is saying that you and I are many loose pieces (work, relationships, worries, routines) and yoga becomes the quiet glue that holds it all together. In that case, the discipline Patanjali speaks of is the steady practice that keeps the pieces from falling apart, bringing the scattered parts of yourself into a more settled whole.

So the next time your life feels like it's coming apart, don't mistake it for the wrong moment to start. Patanjali would say it's the only moment there ever is. 

Namaskar

Zahir Akram

Exercise Physiologist and lifelong seeker.

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