Saturday 11 July 2020

Time for Niyamas

The five niyamas, personal practices that relate to our inner world, include:

Saucha: purity

Santosha: contentment

Tapas:  self-discipline, training your senses

Svadhyaya: self-study, inner exploration

Ishvara Pranidhana: surrender 

Saucha: includes outer purity of body as well as inner purity of mind. Saucha in yoga is on many levels, and deepens as an understanding and evolution of self increases.

Shaucha, or holistic purity of the body, is considered essential for health, happiness and general well-being. External purity is achieved through daily ablutions, while internal purity is cultivated through physical exercises, including asana (postures) and pranayama (breathing techniques). Along with daily ablutions to cleanse one's body, the concept of Shaucha suggests clean surrounding, along with fresh and clean food to purify the body. Lack of Saucha, such as letting toxins build in body are a source of impurity.

Shaucha goes beyond purity of body, and includes purity of speech and mind. Anger, hate, prejudice, greed, pride, fear, negative thoughts are a source of impurity of mind. The impurities of the intellect are cleansed through the process of self-examination, or knowledge of self. The mind is purified through mindfulness and meditation on one's intent, feelings, actions and its causes.

Santosha: contentment, accepting one's circumstances, an attitude of contentment, one of understanding and accepting oneself and one's environment and circumstances as they are, a spiritual state necessary for optimism and effort to change the future.

Yoga Darshana defines contentment as the inner state where, "exists a joyful and satisfied mind regardless of one's environment, whether one meets with pleasure or pain, profit or loss, fame or contempt, success or failure, sympathy or hatred.

In broader terms, Santosha is rooted in the desire to avoid anything negative to self, to others, to all living beings and to nature. It is not the state of abandonment or being without any needs, rather the state of neither taking too much nor taking less than what one needs, one of contended optimism. It is the habit of being able to accept circumstances one finds self in, without being upset, of accepting oneself, and of equanimity with others who are balancing their own needs as they share what they have. Santosha is also abstaining from taking and consuming something to excess, even if its appearance makes it tempting.

Tapas: includes self-discipline, meditation, simple and austere living or any means of inner self-purification. It is a means for perfection of the body and the organs through the lessening of impurities" and a foundation for a yogi’s pursuit of perfection.

Svadhyaya: One form of Svadhyaya is mantra meditation, where certain sound constructs with meaning are recited, anchoring the mind to one thought. This practice helps draw the mind away from outward-going tendencies, silencing the crowding of thoughts, and ultimately towards inward feeling of resonance. It can alternately be any music, sermon, chant, inspirational book that absorbs the person to a state of absorption, trance, unifying oneness.

Svadhyaya is practiced as a self-reflection process, where one silently meditates, in Asana, on one's own behaviors, motivations and plans. Svadhyaya is, in a sense, for one's spirit and mind a process equivalent to watching one's body in a non-distorting mirror. This self-study, in Yoga, is not merely contemplation of one's own motives and behaviors, but also of one's circumstances and the environment one is in, assessing where one is in one's life, what is one's life direction, if and how desirable changes may lead to a more fulfilling Self.

Ishvara Pranidhana: The practice of Ishvara Pranidhana means that if we are able to completely surrender our individual ego identities to God (our own higher self) we will attain the identity of God. If we can dedicate our lives to serving the God that dwells within all other beings, human and non-human alike, we will move beyond all feelings of separateness. If we can say without reservation, “I give You myself: my body, my mind and my heart, to do with as You best see fit,” then we will be freed from the stress, anxiety, self-doubt and negative karma that arises from our reliance upon our egos to determine which actions we take in our lives.

Ishvara Pranidhana will help to cure the afflictions of the mind that cause pain and suffering, as it is designed to redirect our energy away from our selfish desires and personal dramas, and towards the ultimate pursuit of Oneness. So important and powerful is this practice, that Patanjali gives instructions for it on four separate occasions in the Yoga Sutras. And while it is the simplest and most direct method to attain yoga, it is not necessarily an easy practice, or even an attractive option to some.