Satya (truthfulness) is one of the core concepts in yogic philosophy. The word sat means “that which is” – one interpretation of satya therefore is, seeing things as they are, not as we wish them to be.
There is a tendency to focus on the speech aspect of truth: speaking the truth, being truthful in one’s exchanges and relationships. But how does the concept of satya relate to our experience in yoga practice? And how does what we learn on the mat translate into how to practice truthfulness in our lives?
- Truth about polarities
In every yoga posture, there is a balance of strength and softness. Standing poses generally require more muscular effort, less so with the seated postures. However, even in the fiercest Warrior One, we learn to relax the shoulders and open the chest to avoid building up tension.
Our muscular system is built in such a way that when we contract one muscle, its antagonist must relax, switch off, and stretch. For instance, to straighten the knee, the contraction of the quadriceps in the front of the thigh happens at the same time the hamstrings are stretching and lengthening.
To focus purely on one or the other is to ignore the truth of polarities, giving us a skewed view of what actually exists. Rather than focusing solely on stretching into the parts that seem “tight”, we can expand our awareness to areas of weakness that we can strengthen, and vice versa.
- Truth about transience
In the course of a yoga class, we move from posture to posture – some feel heavenly, others may feel more prickly than pleasurable.
Whichever way they fall, the physical and emotional reactions we have are temporary in nature. They’re like clouds in the sky, they arise for a little while, they abide and then they depart. If we focus on simply being aware of the reactions, rather than trying to change them, we can see these fluctuations occurring in our mind.
The next time you find yourself in a tight spot, on or off the mat, for a few moments just watch any emotions as they surface, and simply notice the process of how they arise, abide and ultimately depart.
- Truth about how you feel
Our brain processes things so quickly that it takes a conscious effort and practice to be able to differentiate simple observations that we receive from the senses of the physical body, and our own mental judgments and analyses.
Take for instance our experience of practicing one of the more challenging standing balance postures, say warrior 3. While wobbling and struggling to maintain balance, muscles burning and sweat running into your eyes, it’s easy to have unkind, judgmental thoughts – be it towards yourself (“I’m such a weakling – this is what happens when you skip yoga for 3 weeks!”), towards the teacher (“Yes, you can ‘simply float the back leg’, Miss Skinny Pants!”), or even towards the pose, in a flat out, “I hate this pose most of all!” Poor pose.
We can take a lesson from the teachings of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), developed by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960s as a way to retrain ourselves from habits of thinking and speaking which lead to violence – both physical and psychological. We can train ourselves to differentiate between judgments and observations.
Back to our Warrior 3 – *groans* – the simple observation to make would be, “I’m struggling in this pose,” or even “This pose doesn’t meet my desire to feel competent at yoga.” We can then direct our energies appropriately – how do I help myself towards not struggling? I can’t change the pose, but can I change my own mental rules about how I should feel – that feeling incompetent sometimes is perfectly okay?
We can start practicing truthfulness on the mat – and perhaps these subtle but profound shifts in the way we frame our experiences will make a difference in our lives off the mat, too.