Sutra Slacking

Given my last blog entry is dated from September, it appears from the outside I’ve been slacking on my yoga sutra commitment.  If you recall, in 2012 I set out to pick a sutra every couple of weeks (read Celebrate Now, sutra 1.1), meditate on it and blog about it.  I fully admit this was a challenging task, yet for whatever reason I decided back in September to double the challenge by learning The Yoga Sutras in Sanskrit.

Of course learning the sutras in Sanskrit requires first I learn Sanskrit, an extremely rich and ancient language.  Let’s break it down further, learning a new language requires I learn a new alphabet that has its own characters and sounds.  As Pierre Couvillion says, learning Sanskrit is like “gymnastics for the tongue”.

Sanskrit is a very energetic/vibrational language that not only involves speaking it but very much involves feeling it.   Just from the few practice sessions I’ve done so far, I’ve felt lighter and more at ease in my body.  It sounds crazy but it’s been a pretty powerful experience.  In addition to simply speaking the alphabet and moving the tongue in a certain way, learning Sanskrit requires a level of breath work, meditative focus and patience.  And as the source language for everything yoga –including asana, chanting, mantras and philosophical yoga texts such as The Yoga Sutras and The Bhagavad Gita –learning Sanskrit has really put my yoga commitment to the test and has taken my yoga sutra studies to a new level.

So have I been sutra slacking or just slightly sutra side-tracked?  You decide.  Good news is I’m still around – still yoga-ing, studying yoga, loving yoga and sharing yoga as much as I can in and around the DC/Arlington area.