A peek at one Sutra

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are an amazing resource for yoga. I am astounded at how profound and relevant they are to my life, and those around me even though they were written thousands of years ago. Recently we had an assignment to begin to apply a certain Sutra (I.33) to our daily lives. It says:

"The clarification of the mind comes from cultivating friendliness with happiness, compassion with pain, joy with virtue and neutrality with non-virtue"

What does that mean? Well, it applies mostly to our relationships with other - and of course the relationship with ourselves. But we can look at this and apply it to how we interact with our family, loved ones, even strangers. It may seem so simple at first and even easy to apply - of course I am happy when my best friend is happy, of course I feel compassion towards others pain, who doesn't want to see others doing charitable work and so on, but how many times have we felt the pangs of jealousy over someone's fortune? We see a stranger win the lottery and think, "why don't I ever win anything," a coworker gets a big promotion and you wonder why you didn't, or your partner has an amazing day, but yours sucked so you have a hard time feeling happy for him, has this ever happened? What about someone's pain? When you find out someone is ill with a threatening disease, you feel so much compassion, but do you feel that way on all levels of pain? Do you ever look at someone in pain and think "get over it!" What about when someone is virtuous? They donate there time and money and get all this recognition (well, you may think, that is why they did it!). And how about when someone commits a non-virtuous act? Someone cuts you off on the highway and you swear at them, people lie and steal and cheat and you curse them in your head, but where does that get you? What if you could bring a little neutrality to a situation like that? Do you know what their situation is like, maybe an addiction? There are so many instances that this sutra comes into play every single day of our lives.

Even the awareness of it has been an eye-opener for me. I see the reactions that I have to people and situations now. I can't change what my initial reaction is, but I can work to bring another emotion in if necessary. I can't say it works all the time, but I imagine what it is like when I am cultivating pure friendliness for someone's well-deserved vacation instead of feeling slightly jealous because I haven't gone been out of the country in years. The awareness also helps me to realize just how much time and energy I spend stewing on things. I've wasted hours and lost sleep over how I feel about others. No wonder it says that cultivating these attitudes can bring "clarification of the mind." That is the purpose of yoga, to purify the mind. Right now it is cluttered holding on to emotions like jealousy, anger, resentment over things that aren't necessary!

Yoga and sewing

This is my new sewing machine that I got a few weeks ago. I've been testing the waters and have already made a pair of leggings, a dress and now I am on to a very complicated purse.

While I was mid-way through the dress, I realized that sewing is a really good practice for me. I never had a lot of patience, or super-fine attention to details, but when sewing, you need those qualities turned on. I've noticed that, through yoga, I have more patience with myself, which is where I needed it most, but also with other situations and people. I was a never a person that read all the directions, I thought most of the time I can figure it out myself and directions wasted precious time - until you mess something up and have to re-do everything. With sewing, they recommend to read all directions before even starting, and I am actually trying that now. It gives me an idea of what the big picture is and what I will need to prepare for. There are also so many preparatory steps, the boring stuff! Washing, ironing, cutting and more cutting, pinning - it takes up more time that sewing! I found that difficult at first, but I am learning to enjoy those steps as part of the whole process as much as the actual sewing parts.

Sewing is like a mini-dharana practice, which is concentrating the mind, a single focus (dharana is one of the 8 Limbs of Yoga). With each step in a sewing project I am completely absorbed into it, trying not to remember the one before (that maybe I didn't do as well as I wanted) and not looking ahead to see what I am going to do next. For me, a shiny new beginner at sewing, it is about diligently going through the necessary steps, taking care that I complete the task at hand before moving on. I take frequent brakes so as not to rush through (since of course I just want the end product asap), but sewing is the process of creating something. I am creating something that I could have easily purchased, but without the fun journey of getting there.