My 20+ year long relationship with yoga and pranayama (breathwork) is showing up more and more often in session. This makes sense. My teacher used to say that you practice for 10 years and then maybe you teach and that’s what I did. Maybe the psychotherapy equivalent of this is to practice for 20 years and then maybe integrate into the sacred work of therapy.

Before kids, I spent several months each year in a small town in India practicing with my teacher from 4:30-6:30am and then the rest of the day was my own. I used to call it my version of summer camp. Some days I’d occupy my day by walking to the Hare Krishna temple because they had the best bookstore and there I bought one of the best books on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali I’ve ever found.

If you don’t yet know the Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of yoga, I really want to share the second sutra because it’s beautiful and comforting and beautiful. It says “Yoga is restraining the mind-stuff (Chitta) from taking various forms (Vrittis)”. The description from Raja Yoga (the best translation I’ve seen) says “the real person is behind the mind; the mind is the instrument in his hands.. It is only when you stand behind the mind that it becomes intelligent…thus you understand what is meant by Chitta. It is the mind-stuff, and Vrittis are the waves and ripples rising in it when external causes impinge on it. These Vrittis are our universe”.

Stand behind the mind to become truly intelligent - gorgeous, right? The sun is shining, the snow is glistening, I have time alone to think, my dog paws me for attention, I am warm with my blanket…when I stand behind the waves and ripples of thought, when I get behind my own mind, when I move beyond interpretation to actual experience, it is a glorious moment.