Letting Go.

A yoga teacher I enjoy taking from, Julie Marx, instructs her students frequently to “undo” in her classes. This instruction always makes me smile and feel more at ease during the practice of asana and I appreciate the permission to surrender to the inner self in a moment of reflection at what can be undone in the posture. Many times, this is to release tension in the face or the neck or perhaps to do less of one action to benefit more deeply from the aggregate of actions that make-up a single pose. When I first heard Julie instruct this way, it gave me pause to reflect on what could be undone in my specific posture and then on what I could be doing less of in my day-to-day practice of yoga off of the mat. Letting-go or non-attachment is fundamental to the practice of yoga.

Sutra 1.12 of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras reads: “These mental modifications [chitta vritti] are restrained by practice and non-attachment.”[1] Remembering that according to Sutra 1.2, “the restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga,”[2] we can understand yoga to be practice and non-attachment, abhyasa and vairagyabhyam, to contain and diminish the mental chatter that we all have. The remaining of Patanjali’s sutras goes into more detail as to how this can be achieved. The Bhagavad Gita also lays out means of achieving the “undoing” that is yoga:

You have a right to your actions,
But never to your actions’ fruits.
Act for the actions’ sake.
And do not be attached to inaction.

Self-possessed, resolute, act
without any thought of results,
open to success or failure.
This equanimity is yoga.

Action is far inferior
to the yoga of insight, Arjuna.
Pitiful are those who, acting,
are attached to their actions’ fruits.[3]

In this passage, Krishna instructs Arjuna to live without seeking specific goals. Living for the sake of each moment, each action, is the goal. I find these words very beautiful and instructive for how one can live a yogic life. Letting go, undoing, renunciation are each and all means of practicing yoga. Just as it is important when practicing asana or instructing asana to remind oneself or one’s students to let go a little bit in each posture, it is important for each of us to undo a little bit in our lives so that we find ourselves doing less, contemplating more.

This practice of letting go may be uncomfortable for many of us as we are so used to tying ourselves to goals and expectations. We stick to tight deadlines and challenge ourselves to always be doing. The more time we have, the more we do. I am very guilty of this. I feel the need to constantly fill in the blanks in my schedule, even if filling in that blank is setting aside time to sit and read for an hour: the block of time must not go to waste!

As I attempt to step outside of my comfort zone and undo some of my expectations for my actions, I challenge you to as well. Step away from yourself for a moment and consider what can be undone. Try to let go of one thing and be OK with whatever outcome may thus arise. We are so used to attaching ourselves to people, things, institutions, situations, self-descriptors, that it is very unsettling to step away from those attachments and be true to the true inner self that each of us actually is. We are not these bodies and these jobs, we are so much more and yet less than that. An attempt to live in this way is a giant leap forward to quieting the mind, which is yoga.

Let go of who you know yourself to be.

Namaste.

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[1] Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Bhagavad Gita. Translation by Stephen Mitchell, 2.47 – 2.49. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.