By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Pain is part of life. This is why most of your energy goes into pain avoidance or pleasure seeking. Fortunately, yoga excels at both!
The physical practices of yoga are incredibly pleasurable, though you may go through a learning curve before you discover this.
Especially when you are in-person classes, your teacher can adapt the pose to your body’s readiness as well as give you a prop or adjustment that melts through your accumulated tensions. Svaroopa® yoga excels at this. Regular practice of yogic breathing and the poses protects you from future pain in a magical way.
Yoga’s meditative practices focus on getting you past your mental and emotional pains. Using the enlivened mantra of this tradition cuts through your inner turbulence and carries you deeply within. You find your deeper essence, what yoga calls “your own Self.” Once you’ve experienced the inner infinity of your own Self, you have a different perspective on life and its events. It’s easy to agree with the book title, that it’s all small stuff.
That’s the gist of this sutra, a concise teaching with a great promise:
Future pain can and should be avoided.
Heyam duhkham anaagatam.
— Yoga Sutras 2.16
My elders expected to be in pain as they aged. When I tried to give them a few yogic tricks that would diminish or relieve their pain, they said, “No thanks, honey. I’m old. I’m supposed to hurt.” The sage Patanjali disagrees. He not only promises that you can avoid pain, but that you should. Good news!
How do you avoid pain? While yoga poses and breathing practices help you with your body, meditation is the key. This is Patanjali’s focus, getting you past your mind so you experience the greater reality within. All the yogic sages throughout time have focused on meditation as well as how to bring your own Self with you into life.
Instead, our sense of self gets locked into worldly definitions. When I was in my twenties, my parents said it was time for me to get my boxes out of their garage. I had completely forgotten about those old possessions, childhood treasures. One box was full of stuffed animals. As I unpacked them, I was shocked to see how meaningless they were. Yet they had meant everything to me when I was 12. What happened? I outgrew them.
So many things have come and gone in your life. You’ve already learned how to move on. Patanjali says you can use this ability now, right in the midst of whatever you are currently going through. Recognize that the ticking clock is moving on. It’s time to outgrow your old needs and dependencies. It’s time to grow into a new you.
It’s meditation that makes this easy because you experience the greatness of your own essence. When you tune into your own Self, the profound depth of pure Beingness supports you from the inside. Now, whatever is happening on the outside, you take it in stride.
You are more than these events seem to make of you. You are more than others understand you to be. You are so much more.
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