I've heard it said that if you can fully understand the second sutra in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, then you don't need to read the rest of them. Everything you need to know is encapsulated in the words yogah citta vrtti nirodhah - "yoga is the cessations of movements in the consciousness".
I always know that I've done a good class when I have this dreamy, floating feeling afterwards. Before I started reading the Yoga Sutras, the best description of that feeling that I could find was in The Bell Jar, after Esther Greenwood's first successful shock treatment:
All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.
The bell jar, of course, is the metaphor that Sylvia Plath uses to describe her depression:
If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.
The first time I read the words above, I experienced that thrill you get when someone has so perfectly put into words a feeling that has haunted you for much of your life. Reading that gave my depression form, it gave it legitimacy. So much of The Bell Jar resonates with me, and I've spent many difficult, frightening nights sitting up in my living room, wrapped in a quilt and alternating between reading that book and Plath's journals. The Bell Jar is like a wise, witty old friend who dispenses advice, comfort and hope whenever I think that I'll spend the rest of my life cowed and miserable and hopeless.
There is a term in yoga (and Buddhism, and Hinduism) that describes the bell jar feeling, too: avidya. Avidya means ignorance or delusion, and basically avidya is what clouds our mind and causes us not to see things as they truly are, often leading to unhappiness in one form or another.
One of my teachers described yoga as a chipping away at the avidya - with every practice, and the mindfulness and equanimity that should go along with it - you lose a little bit more of your avidya, and you're able to see the world as it truly is. The bell jar lifts just a little, and you're able to breathe the fresh air.
And that's why I love yoga.
I always know that I've done a good class when I have this dreamy, floating feeling afterwards. Before I started reading the Yoga Sutras, the best description of that feeling that I could find was in The Bell Jar, after Esther Greenwood's first successful shock treatment:
All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.
The bell jar, of course, is the metaphor that Sylvia Plath uses to describe her depression:
If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.
The first time I read the words above, I experienced that thrill you get when someone has so perfectly put into words a feeling that has haunted you for much of your life. Reading that gave my depression form, it gave it legitimacy. So much of The Bell Jar resonates with me, and I've spent many difficult, frightening nights sitting up in my living room, wrapped in a quilt and alternating between reading that book and Plath's journals. The Bell Jar is like a wise, witty old friend who dispenses advice, comfort and hope whenever I think that I'll spend the rest of my life cowed and miserable and hopeless.
There is a term in yoga (and Buddhism, and Hinduism) that describes the bell jar feeling, too: avidya. Avidya means ignorance or delusion, and basically avidya is what clouds our mind and causes us not to see things as they truly are, often leading to unhappiness in one form or another.
One of my teachers described yoga as a chipping away at the avidya - with every practice, and the mindfulness and equanimity that should go along with it - you lose a little bit more of your avidya, and you're able to see the world as it truly is. The bell jar lifts just a little, and you're able to breathe the fresh air.
And that's why I love yoga.
