Part A

1. Patanjalis system in the Yoga Sutra is called Astanga yoga.

2. The 8 limbs of Patanjalis Yoga are as listed below:

8 limbs of Patanjalis Yoga

1Yamathe restraints

2Niyamathe observances

3Asanathe physical postures

4Pranayamabreath control

5Pratyaharawithdrawal from the senses

6Dharanaconcentration

7Dhyanameditation

8Samadhibliss, ecstasy

3. The Yamas and Niyamas are listed below:

Yamas

1Ahimsanon-violence, non-harming

2Satyahonesty

3Asteyanon-covetousness, non-stealing

4Bramacharyacontinence, moderation

5Aparigrahanon-hoarding, non-possessiveness, non-indulgence, non-acquisitiveness

Niyamas

1Sauchapurity and cleanliness

2Santosacontentment

3Tapasausterity

4Svadhyayaself study

5Isvara Pranidhanaself-surrender, dedication to a divine being

Part BMy Reflection on the Yamas

1AhimsaAhimsa is an ultimate respect for Life. When we recognize the divine in ourselves and in others, it is just not possible to inflict pain in another without feeling the pain ourselves. People often justify their acts of violence as necessary in order to guard their interest. The person with an expanded sense of self will naturally lose the urge in violating another.

Sometimes, we do not consciously set out to hurt the people we love. But in our frustration with other things in life, we could have channeled a little bit of the anger towards the people closest to us. Ahimsa is a reminder not to callously hurt the people who care about me.

2SatyaThere is beauty in a coherent life, where we recognize things as they are without judging. Sometimes, people lie to themselves and others because subconsciously, they cannot accept certain qualities within themselves. Sometimes, people lie to get their way and further their interest. Every lie is a deviation from the one single truth. There is power in coherence.

We need to be true to ourselves, and we need to trust that the people around us are mature enough to handle the truth. There is really no need to lie.

3AsteyaAt the heart of Asteya is the idea of fair energy exchanges. We respect the time and effort of another human being and reciprocate in a fair manner. Money is a currency of energy, so being fair means we pay for the services and goods that we receive with the money that we have earned from our work. A fair exchange is one that leaves both parties satisfied at the end of it.

A number of my friends are photographers and writers and they tend to be taken advantage of by acquaintances who would ask for free services from them. It was through their stories that I understood that money is a currency of energy and there is really no use in hoarding it. A healthy community is one where energy is flowing freely.

4BramacharyaBramacharya asks us to be responsible and mindful of where we put our energy in. This yama reminds us to direct our energy to build, rather than dissipating our energy away on things that do not serve our purpose.

At one point I was overextending myself and engaged with activities every day of the week. Some of the activities I was continuing out of inertia I used to enjoy them, but not so much now. It was difficult to end a routine for fear of the gap that it leaves in my life, but time is a limited resource and I had to free time up to pursue the next stage of growth.

5AparigrahaWe live in a material world and there are things we need to function in this world. However, we need to take care not to grow overly attached to the material world. Our possessions should serve us and not the other way around. At the end of the day, the things that we truly own are our body, our minds and our souls. These are the things that we should be investing our energy in.

My Reflection on the Niyamas

1SauchaOur physical appearance is a manifestation of our inner state, so is the space that we keep around us. By disciplining ourselves to keep our bodies and our living spaces clean and neat, we set the conditions for our minds to cut through the clutter. Through a zen-like state of simplicity and stillness, it is easier for us to perceive our soul and to receive its guidance.

I have a tendency to hoard and allow clutter to build up in my life. I do a spring cleaning when I want to start a new project. The act of discarding things that no longer serve me to make space for the new stage in life is symbolic. I guess if I constantly keep my living quarters clutter free, I will always feel this space in my mind. It is not my natural tendency to throw things away, but I will make an effort to.

2SantosaIn a yoga class I attend, the teacher always end class by asking us to give thanks to 3 gems in our lives. The first is to give thanks for our health, the fact that we can turn up for practice and not beleaguered with disease. The second is to give thanks for being blessed with resources, to allow us the time to practice and afford classes in a nice studio. The third is to give thanks for our minds, that we realize the importance of our practice and are here instead of partying at a club.

When we count our blessings, we are filled with a sense of contentment and gratitude.

3TapasTapas means to burn in Sanskrit, and it brings to mind the idea of passion in our lives. The people I know who are following their passion in life seem to have this quality. Their sense of purpose and enthusiasm for life can be felt and are often inspiring to others. After the fire is ignited in us, the flame would naturally die if we do not tend to it. Discipline is needed to feed and stoke the fire to keep it going.

I attended a course in DIY deep tissue massage which had a profound impact in my life. After the course, I could have treated it as a great experience and returned to my normal life. However, I chose to nourish this new found interest. I bought anatomy books to study on my own, I started on a journey to understand my own body experientially, and this yoga teacher course is a part of the journey.

4SvadhyayaWhen we were in school, we had to follow a prescribed education and had little time left to explore our interests. My real education began after I left school, because that is the time when I had all the time in the world to read up on the things that interest me. One subject led to the next, I started discovering more about my interests and my calling. I developed a sense of purpose as I learnt more about myself and became more focused in my endeavours.

5Isvara PranidhanaI had always been searching for God Ive come to realize that there are some people who just have a spiritual yearning in them. I could not reconcile the idea of God with human-like qualities and for a while proclaimed myself to be an atheist. Being an atheist felt lonely. I discovered in my readings later that it is possible to be spiritual without being religious. To be spiritual is to celebrate and affirm life, to have a reverence for the beauty around us, and to believe that we as individuals are able to tap into a divine source to let grace and love flow through us. If we think of energy as a finite resource in each of us, we become depleted very fast. If we believe in a divine source and think of ourselves as vessels through which energy flow, there will always be a place to draw our strength from.

Applying Niyamas in My Teaching of Yoga

1SauchaI believe personal hygiene is a courtesy that everyone appreciates. The teacher is in a position to set the rules for class so that everyone can have an enjoyable session in an odour-free environment.

2SantosaI would end the yoga practice with a gratitude exercise as described above, reminding students that they are blessed, encouraging them to carry this feeling of contentment out of class into their everyday life.

3TapasCertain poses seem impossible to achieve initially we can encourage the students by sharing our own journey and telling them that if they persevere, they will make progress. This would be a good opportunity to emphasize on the importance of building strong foundations in basic poses, instead of just getting into a shape without mindfulness.

4SvadhyayaYoga class is a good time for students to get to know their bodies better. Where are the areas that are stiff? Is one side tighter than the other? These questions prompt students to evaluate the relationship between their unconscious habits and the effect on their bodies. This helps them to know themselves better.

5Isvara PranidhanaThis is something that will come in time. Introducing this concept too early will just blow over students head. Eventually, they will feel transcendence and a feeling of connectedness to all things.

Applying Yamas as in My Teaching of Yoga

1AhimsaAhimsa means not to injure. We should not be holding yoga poses by force, but should slowly ease into the poses. Some people are very flexible and can easily enter certain poses, some people are tighter and teachers should always encourage them to respect their bodies and provide them with modifications to safely stretch those muscles. Straining ourselves to hold a pose will only cause injury.

2SatyaBy being authentic, we inspire others to becoming authentic as well. Being authentic is the ability to be true to oneself. Living an authentic life requires the ability to be true to our own wants, needs and desires and not live our lives by the opinion of others. Being authentic is the ability to make self-honoring choices and stand firmly in who we are in our core. Being true to ourselves gives us the insight and compassion to see others for who they are, not who we expect them to be. It frees us up from the judgment of ourselves and others and it gives others the freedom to be themselves as well.~Victoria J. Reynolds

3AsteyaAs the teacher we need to be fair to the students. If we are paid for the class, we need to put in the effort to let them leave the class having learnt something. The class is for them, not for our personal practice.

4BramacharyaBramacharya is about being mindful of where our energy flows, and the concept can be applicable to our physical practice as well. As we move into yoga poses, we should learn to feel our energy lines. Yoga is more than holding static poses, we are learning how to allow energy to flow through our bodies to support us better.

5AparigrahaLet go of the attachment to a certain outcome and enjoy the process. The fun in yoga is the process of discovering new areas within ourselves which we could not access previously. Everything will come in its time. Enjoy the journey.

Part C Q1

The Classic Path that Appeals to me Gnana Yoga

I have a natural disposition towards Gnana Yoga. When I was younger, I tended to live in my head. My world was abstract and I formed theories for everything. I enjoyed introspection and philosophical inquires which probe the meaning of life. There has always been a spiritual flame inside me yet I spent the first twenty years of my life trying to reconcile my values with the teachings and practices of Abrahamic religions. My intellect interfered with my desire to believe in God. I was constantly told to just have faith and believe, but to me, the truth should be able to withstand questioning.

Perhaps it was just the lack of enlightened spiritual guides in my immediate environment, I could not get the answer to the seeming contradictions that I needed to reconcile. Through self-study, I eventually came across writings and teachings that presented the world in a much more cogent sense to me. It was through Aristotle, that I rationalized that the purpose in life is eudaimonia that a flourishing life begins with a life of virtue in agreement with reason. This led me to reading about newer age transcendental psychology, which frequently quoted from classic ancient texts. This was my entry point to study Yoga at a deeper level. Prior to this, my experience with Yoga was more of a physical practice. No doubt my early yoga practice has already started making me more aware of the mind-body connection, this was taking place at a more subtle level. This experience enabled me to relate to my readings later on the text made sense to me and provided me with a roadmap to guide my exploration.

Eventually, Ive come to embrace my own brand of spirituality, adapting from the various religious traditions. I embrace pantheism and earth based religions in their celebration of life on this earth and living in harmony with nature. I embrace teachings from the classic texts, but I am discerning about the teachings in context to their times, and that religion as practiced now is an interpretation by humans, and there are many different interpretations around. I appreciate the passionate poetry of Rumi and his Love, where God and Love are just words that insufficiently capture that state of transcendence and desire for unity. Sometimes I wonder to myself if I am going down the path of self-radicalization and here comes the importance of reading widely and from various sources to get a wider perspective. I learnt to read with an open mind first and evaluate later, instead of pigeonholing texts as blasphemy or satanic. I would not recommend this path to young impressionable minds though. A certain level of maturity is needed to discern between wisdom and egoic pursuit of super powers, and the person should also be socialized into his/her community to give him/her a sound foundation to start from. I definitely can see how people who feel marginalized can put themselves on a self-serving destructive path, using selected texts to justify their actions.

I recognize the importance of the other classic yoga paths and have incorporated all of them into my philosophy of life. It was difficult to choose one which appeals most to me, because I think they are all equally important to lead a balanced, eudaimonic life. However, if I were to trace the entry point in which I started making progress in my spiritual journey, it has to be Gnana Yoga.

Part C Q2

Applying the 5 Classic Paths to Day to Day Living

HathaWhen I was growing up, I spent a lot of time in my head and was not connected with my physical body. Inspired by a friends sensitivity and attention to her body, I started paying more attention to the patterns and signals in my body, acknowledging them and cultivating sensitivity to the messages that my body is sending me. Hatha yoga is a good start for cultivating this sensitivity because it is a meditative practice that enables us to feel our bodies. As we get into poses and are corrected for better alignment, we learn to feel our energy lines. Most people becomes stiffer as they grow older, but if they keep up a Hatha practice that attempts to build both strength and flexibility, the physical deterioration of the body progresses at a much slower rate. Our body is the vehicle we transport the soul in, it is important to keep the vehicle well maintained if we want to go a long way, and hence, it is important to keep a regular practice that is tailored to our physical needs at the moment.

KarmaEach of us has a gift that we bring to the world. Our job is to find out what that gift is and develop it. The belief in this becomes our narrative and it gives us a purpose and sense of meaning in life. We understand that we fit into a grander scheme of things and learn to harness our gifts in ways that benefit our community. We see ourselves as having an irreplaceable role to play in the community. I knew from a young age I wanted to be doctor or a teacher, I understood later in life it was a calling to the healing arts, to embrace health and embody holistic living, to help people live out their fullest potential.

BhaktiI have the first hand experience of how dance, art, music and nature connect us to the divine and inspire a deep feeling of transcendence and being. As mentioned earlier, when I was younger, I had the tendency to live in my head and go through the motions in life without really connecting to my deeper self. One day, I made the decision to start taking dance class and fell in love with the medium that allows me to express myself. Thereafter, I saw art in a different light. I had a deeper appreciation of beauty and harmony, and aspired towards a life of beauty and harmony. More important than appreciating beauty, is the act of creating beauty, embodying the divine in each of us.

RajaBesides my hatha practice, I adhered to a core set of values not so different from the yamas and the niyamas described by Patanjali. Some values were inculcated into me at a young age, some values I adopted from philosophical understanding later on in life. I was introduced to breath work even before my official forays into Yoga, primarily through a course in massage that taught us to use the breath to gently sink into tissues instead of entering through brute force. I started experimenting with breath and experienced its power, and the readings prescribed for this TTC provided an array of techniques to explore further in. Similarly, I was also introduced to the power of meditation in a different context, and it is something that I practice everyday while commuting to work. In giving myself time, and my mind permission to not be actively churning, I learnt to observe the issues that plague me, and despite the wild situations that life places me in, my closest friends commented that I always have this clarity about the situation, the amount of influence I have over it, and my choice of action.

GnanaI love reading, and I have benefited immensely from it. I have written about my thoughts on Gnana Yoga in the previous part.