March 20, 2023 • 34 mins
We often think of yoga as a physical exercise - but a centuries-old Sanskrit text, The Yoga Sutras, share teachings intended to improve both the body and mind. The author, Patanjali, makes clear that the poses and stretches are only part of picture - we also need to be kind, contemplative and grounded.
Jessamyn Stanley (yoga teacher and author of Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance) takes Dr Laurie Santos through Patanjali's text - saying its lessons "can be applied in every circumstance, no matter who you are or where you are".
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I was in graduate school and a friend of
mine was like, oh my god, you should come to
yoga because I was really depressed. This is one of
my wellness idols. Jessamin Stanley. She had drunk the yoga
kool aid. She was like, Oh my god, it's going
(00:36):
to change your whole life. The idea of that sort
of big change did appeal to Jessamin, who at the
time was feeling a bit lost. I was like, I
don't know who I am, what is the purpose of
my life? What's going on? And she was like, oh
my god, you should come to yoga. You're gonna love it.
And I was like, I am not doing that. Jessamin
(00:56):
had tried yoga once before in high school and she
absolutely hated it. But her friend wasn't going to take
no for an answer and knew just how to make
the case. She appealed to Jessaman's appetite for a bargain,
and she got me caught up on a group on
though she was like, what's the worst they can happen?
You go one time you paid thirty dollars with this past, Like,
what's the worst that can happen? Jessamin reluctantly agreed at
(01:19):
first that yoga class wasn't the amazing, life changing experience
Jessamin was hoping for. So it's really hot here, it smells,
it kind of sucks. Actually, like everything about this is
really hard. Jessamin couldn't do the poses as well as
the other students around her. As a queer plus sized
black woman in a mostly skinny, white lady yoga class.
(01:40):
She felt uncomfortable in her body and painfully self conscious.
I remember we were practicing a posture called awkward pose
that is literally it's so aptly named because it is
extremely awkward. So I'm looking at myself in this mirror
and which is traumatizing on its own, because I literally
would go out of my way at that stage in
my life to avoid mirrors and looking at myself. And
(02:03):
I'm just thinking, like, why did you even think you
could come to this class? Like you obviously don't know
what you're doing, and everybody here knows it, and you
can't even do this basic thing. This is like maybe
the third or fourth posture in the class. I'm like,
there's no like, if you can't do this, then why
even show up? And I was just talking cash shit
to myself, and I had this moment where I was like,
(02:26):
you know, you could just try. Maybe you just try, Like, yes,
maybe you're gonna fall down. Maybe everyone in the room
is going to know that you don't know what you're doing.
Maybe the teacher's gonna know that you don't know what
you're doing. And maybe that's just gotta be okay, Because
did you spend this money to come to this class
to just stand here and talk shit about yourself because
(02:48):
you could have done that at home. Jessamin decided to
make good on her thirty dollar investment. She committed to
halting her usual self criticism, if only for the length
of that one class. She started leaning into all the
new postures and movements, and then something incredible happened. She
actually started to enjoy yoga. It was the first time
(03:09):
Esseman was able to get out of her head and
as long as she could remember. So it was this
insane moment of like actually having to reckon with something
that I had just decided about myself, and that moment
that breaking point to this day. Ultimately, that is why
I continue to practice yoga, because it really is it's
a cracking open of the spirit. It's like you're looking
(03:31):
in a foggy bathroom mirror, a mirror that you fogged up,
and like just swiping across it and seeing your actual
reflection back at you. And it was so profound for
me in a way that I certainly didn't walk into
the class thinking I was going to experience. Decades later,
Jessaman has gone from an awkward novice to becoming a
(03:52):
famous yoga professional. She's now one of the most sought
after yoga and wellness instructors in the world. Jessaman's done
ad campaigns for places like Gatorade, Adidas, and Amazon. She's
the co founder of The Underbelly, an international yoga community
that celebrates bringing yoga and movement to people of all
body types and identities. But initially that experience, I really
(04:15):
only understood it on a physical level, an example being
like I'm just going to work on this pose, like
I'm going to work on camel pose or downward facing
dog like. I got really into headstanding and understanding the
mechanics of that, and through that practice of focusing on
different postures, I did start to understand that there are
(04:40):
a lot of themes that come up when you are
practicing yoga so like grounding stability, strength, flexibility, and understanding
those concepts beyond what they were offering me physically, So like,
(05:03):
if I am in a posture that is offering flexibility
in my physical whole body, what other parts of my
life can I be more flexible in. Jessamin was training
extensively in the physical side of her practice, but she
hadn't yet looked at the historic or spiritual roots of yoga.
Was her practice really supposed to be just about the poses,
(05:24):
she wondered, or did the founders of yoga intend for
it to be deeper. Jessamin was fascinated by all these questions,
but she also worried that the answers might not be
for people like her. I am black, I am American,
I am not South Asian. I do not have a
cultural relationship with yoga. And I was like, I'm pretty
(05:44):
sure this is all appropriation and it's probably not cool
for me to be doing this at all. But at
a minimum, I'm just going to stick with the physical stuff,
and then I won't. I'm not even going to dig
into anything else. But as Jessamin thought more about the
varied benefits that she and her students got from yoga.
She began to realize that the physical side of this
ancient tradition was just the tip of the iceberg. As
(06:07):
she explains in her most recent book, Yoga, My Yoga
of Self Acceptance, she came to learn that it's less
about fitness and more about dealing with your mental and
emotional baggage. So much of what was making me unhappy
and unsatisfied in my life was that I'd created all
of these boundaries for myself, and I made all these
decisions about the type of person that I am and
(06:28):
about what I'm capable of handling, and I never allowed
myself to step outside of those boundaries. Yoga requires that
you step outside of your boundaries, and it's put me
in these situations where I actually had to look at
the way that I talked to myself and look at
the way that I process information and be like, you
know what, I know. I decided that I'm not going
(06:51):
to be able to do this, but maybe I'm just
going to try. And part of that commitment to moving
past her boundaries involved taking a careful look at the
cultural origins of yoga. Jessamine began reading about the history
of her practice, and in doing so, returned to an
important spiritual work that she'd first heard about and her
yoga teacher training a book that's often thought of as
(07:11):
the earliest textbook of yoga. It's called The Yoga Suits.
Such means thread, so it's literally like threads that tie
us together. These sutras have been passed down for thousands
of years, and they've been translated an untold number of times,
and they really are just words that were captured by
(07:35):
the students of a teacher. Parts and jolly, and these
words were just guiding thoughts for life. Potentially was the
wise Sanskrit stage who first outlined what's known as the
eight limbed Path. The eight limbed path was a way
for students not just to achieve a fitter body, as
we often think of yoga today, but to gain a
(07:57):
fitter mind and spirit. Potentially argued that when followed correctly,
the eight limbed path is a way for us all
to become free of mental suffering. It's really just like
so many other ancient texts, and it's been passed down
because the universality of the aphorisms. They can be applied
(08:17):
in every circumstance, no matter who you are or where
you are, and that's one of the reasons we'll be
turning to the yoga sutras in this episode. Today we'll
explore what the eight Lived path says about how to
live a happier, healthier life. Welcome back to Happiness Lessons
of the Ancients on the Happiness Lap with me, Doctor
Laurie Santos. Certainly, yoga has become in the mainstream almost
(08:44):
entirely associated with exercise. What poses are you doing? The
difficulty of the practice is engaged by the difficulty of
the postures, like how acrobatic is your practice becomes the metric,
so that when people go to a yoga class, it's
always about like what are the physical benefits going to be?
And that even when you talk about like meditation or breathwork,
(09:07):
it's not necessarily seen as a necessary component of a
yoga practice. And ultimately though, the physical experience of yoga
is really a very minor part of the experience. As
Jessamin learned more about the history of yoga and the
yoga sutras specifically, she quickly realized that yoga poses, or
(09:28):
asina's as they're called in Sanskrit, are just a tiny
part only one branch of the eight limb path that
Potentially originally outlined. In fact, Asina's didn't even make it
into the first limb that Potentially preached about. His classic
text started not with Asina's but with what are known
as the yamas or restraints. Yama's especially, I think, because
they go first. It's the suture that I think people
(09:50):
are most familiar with and the ones that have the
most intense translations in our society. The yamas remind us
about the responsibility we have to other people. In doing so,
the yamas fit well with one of the most well
documented effects in the entire field of happiness science that
becoming more other oriented is a quick way to improve
(10:12):
our well being. Study after study shows that focusing on
other people, either through volunteering or donating money, can make
us feel happier, and acting intentionally towards others is what
the first limb of the eight limb path is all about.
In fact, Potentially thought our responsibilities to others were so
important that he divided the yamas into five tinier principles,
(10:33):
as he called them, and the first and most famous
of these principles is what's known as ahimsa, which is
this idea of non violence, and often Ahimsa is translated
as a call to action for vegetarianism or veganism, because
the best way to be non violent in terms of
(10:58):
not harming other creatures is to literally not consume other creatures.
But that's just one translation of Ahimsa, and that's just
one translation for some people. Non violence, to me has
always come up more in the language that we used
to talk not just about other people, but about ourselves,
(11:20):
because if you are using violent language to talk about yourself,
that is coming into the way that you communicate about
other people as well, which is kind of ironic, because
I think the whole idea of a himself is not
to engage in violence, and in some ways, critiquing people,
especially critiquing people's bodies, you know, might be really a
violation of the very principle exactly. And another one that
(11:44):
jumps up for me is Bramacharia, which is this idea
of chastity. And like I remember in my own teacher
training it being said like, oh, well, we don't really
think about Bramacharia that much, like it's not that big
of a deal. You don't need to worry about it
because bramacharia being translated as chastity and therefore meaning celibacy,
no sex, no sex. People are like, I'm not not
(12:06):
going to have sex what you're saying, And in my
own understanding of brahmacharia, I think that it's more about
owning your own spirit so that when you are engaged
in acts that are literally sharing your spirit with other
human beings, that you can at a minimum know what
you're getting into. And that's what sex is. It's offering
(12:29):
yourself to another human being, and sex it can get
you twisted in the game. It will get you confused,
and that is really all that Brahmacharia is. It's really
just asking a question. It's like, you know, what does
it mean to hold onto your essence? To preserve your spirit.
(12:50):
Jessamine has a similar interpretation of the other three Yamas principles.
They're there so our minds don't get twisted up and
so that we can preserve our spirit. These final free
principles include Satya or truthfulness, basically, don't lie to people
and commit to living in truth even when doing so
is painful. Then there's estey, which tells us not to
(13:10):
be covetous Astea is all about nipping that green eyed
monster of jealousy in the bud and to try to
avoid social comparison generally. And finally, there's a paragraha, which
is freedom from desire. A paragraha fits nicely with a
happiness strategy we talk about a lot on this podcast,
remembering that more stuff and more accolades are not going
(13:31):
to make us happy. A paragraha is all about trying
to notice times when we're feeling a little greedy. It's
really not like hard rules, it's opportunities to engage with
yourself on a more visceral pud For the next limb
of the eight limb path, the Niyamas is even more
focused on engaging internally, and that's because the five principles
(13:54):
of the Niyamas are focused on the responsibilities we have
not towards other people, but towards ourselves. Those principles include
sautcha keeping your body clean physically, mentally and emotionally, tap
Us a sense of austerity and self discipline. Svadiaya, a
commitment to studying yourself and looking within yourself for answers.
Isfara pranidana committing to finding a spiritual path, and my
(14:17):
favorite of the niyamas Santosa. Santosa is my favorite, not
because the word kind of sounds like it should be
the name of some cousin of mine, but because it's
the principle that's focused on finding contentment in the present
moment and doing so without ruminating about the past or
the future. You could spend your whole life just focusing
on the yamas, honestly, because they show up in everything,
(14:38):
and they can be interpreted so many different ways, whether
that's through the language that you use, through your personal
definition of chastity, through the things that you consume, how
you cleanse your body, but then it's also the way
that you engage with other human beings, not coveting what
(15:03):
other people have, not speaking ill of other people, and
really like having an attention to your words and the
language that you use. But the eight limp path doesn't
just stop with the yamas and the ni Yamas. When
we get back from the break, we'll continue our discussion
of Patanjali's other six limbs. We'll see where all those
tough yoga poses we use in the modern day fit
(15:25):
into the ancient stage's vision of the good life. And
we'll learn how a true eight limbed path towards flourishing
requires regulating not just the body, but also the mind.
The happiness lab will be right back. When you look
at people who are extreme athletes, like I think a
(15:49):
lot about ultramarathoners and people who run ultramarathons, they're not
doing that for their health, Like they're not obsessed with
that experience because it's like, oh my god, my body
is going to look this way. No, they are working
out deep psychological truth, so they are they are having
a spiritual experience. The ancient sage patan Jolly lived way
(16:11):
before modern fitness practices like CrossFit and tough Mutters were
a thing, but he still recognized that moving our bodies
could be an important step towards spiritual enlightenment. And that's
the logic behind the third and most famous limb of
patan Jolly's eight limbed path, the asanas. The asinas are
what most Westerners typically think of when they think of yoga,
the poses, things like downward facing dog, chaturanga, gomu casana,
(16:36):
and chair pose. But the key to getting the most
out of all these asanas isn't what most modern practitioners
think from Patan Jolly's perspective, the goal wasn't to twist
your body into an uncomfortable pretzel. Author and yoga instructor
Jessamine Stanley says that the original idea behind the asinas
was much simpler, asina really means to sit, so it's
(16:57):
not even as complicated as assume this specific posture. It's
literally like to be just to exist. Patan Jolli is
really saying that any form that your body takes is
assuming a shape that then is a part of this world,
(17:18):
and it's something that evolves for every person throughout their life,
depending on what's going on in their life. But the
reality is that you really only need to practice one posture,
and it can be any posture. The posture can be
sitting down, it can be lying on your back, it
can be standing up. That's sufficient posture because ultimately they're
(17:43):
very complex postures, and in truth, being able to just
be in stillness is the hardest posture. Jessamin tells her
students that this is the point performing all the yoga
poses they practice. The austins are there to help us
accept the hard challenges that come not on our yoga mats,
but in life. Let's take a posture like post For example,
(18:06):
you look at a posture like cheer pose and it's like,
what do I need to do? I need to turn
my thighs toward one another. I need to engage my core.
I need to fall down backwards while also sitting upright.
I need to lengthen out of the crowd of my head.
All of these things are things that I need to
(18:27):
do when I'm challenged, when someone is pushing back against
me at work, when I feel like someone is being
mean to me, when I'm feeling challenged, those are the
same things that I need to do. I need to
pull into my core. I need to try to fall
down backwards but also stay upright. I need to lengthen
(18:48):
up to the sky. I need to pull It's all
of these ideas that seemed theoretical and that seemed like
philosophical but that are really actually very practical, And I
think it makes it easier to deal with the parts
of life that are really hard, really really hard and
complicated and that are not meant to be anything other
(19:09):
than that. Like I think sometimes in life, really hard shit,
bad shit happens, and you think this isn't how things
are supposed to be things are supposed to be good.
I'm supposed to be happy. This is wrong, And what
yoga reminds is that everything in life is not good.
Everything in life is not happy. You need for things
to be hard so that you can actually strengthen from
(19:33):
the inside. So practice the things that you do when
things get hard. Pull into your core, become flexible in
your hamstrings, draw your butt cheeks together, whatever the things are.
Practice that in the moments that feel emotionally hard, and
you will be strengthened as a result. The fourth limb
of the eightfold path, it is also about harnessing something
(19:54):
that can help us get through tough times. Not mindful
movements as in the Ausinas, but mindful breath. It's called prana,
the full word as prana yama, Prana being this energy
that we we most consciously understand as breath, and so
breathwork becomes the focus of pranayama. Scientists have long recognized
(20:19):
that our breath can have a huge impact on our
well being. Take for example, one of the easiest ways
to shut off activation in our fighter flight system, or
what neuroscientists refer to as our sympathetic nervous system. You're
probably familiar with the activation of this system if you've
ever felt overwhelmed by too many demands at work, or
anxious after reading some scary news article, or pissed off
(20:41):
by an annoying email. Our sympathetic nervous system kicks in
whenever we feel under threat. It's a system that's only
supposed to turn on once in a while in moments
of urgent threat or danger, but many of us keep
this system running chronically, which leads to a whole host
of stress related illnesses and bad feelings. But there's a
fast and easy way to get our fighter flight systems
(21:02):
to chill out for a while, and we can do
that through our breath. There's evidence that we can switch
off sympathetic nervousness to activity simply by taking a slow,
deep belly breath, especially one with a long exhale. Pat
and Jolly wasn't a neuroscientist, but he realized that we
can use the breath to change the way we feel
in our bodies and our minds. But Jessamin says that
(21:23):
prani Yama isn't just about taking a few deep breaths
when we're feeling stressed. Prama is really like everything. Once
you focus on your breath and once you assume a posture,
whatever that posture is, then your body starts to go
into a state of actually engaging with what is underneath
(21:45):
your skin and what is happening beyond your mind. It's
starting to unite the way that your body moves and
the way that your mind works, and the way that
you feel so that you're able to understand yourself as
a full spiritual being. But if you really want to
understand yourself as a full spiritual being, you can't stop
at Praniyama. You also need to commit to practicing what's
(22:07):
discussed and the rest of the limbs of the eightfold Path,
the ones that we haven't talked about yet. We'll hear
more from Jessamine about what these final spiritual practices are
and how we can harness them to live and feel
better when the Happiness Lab gets back from the short break,
(22:29):
so that the last limbs of the eight limb path, Pratiahara, Darana, Diana,
and the Samodi are all the stages that happen once
you have united your breath with what reform your body
(22:52):
is taking. So far in our progress through Patanjali's path.
We've talked about the importance of the yamas our responsibilities
to other people. The ni yamas are responsibilities to ourselves.
The Austina's physical postures we can relax into distay, grounded
and prani yama, the importance of controlling our breath. And
if you're counting and keeping track of where we are
(23:13):
in the eight limbs, you might be tempted to think
that we basically hit the halfway point towards spiritual enlightenment.
But author and yoga instructor Jessamine Stanley's quick to point
out that Pat and Jolly didn't intend for the limbs.
He described to be boxes that we check off on
some spiritual to do list. So the idea behind the
eight limb path is that it provides structure for your life,
(23:34):
and it provides a way to go about taking care
of yourself, and then the way that you show up
in the world, and then the way that you are
engaging with the energy of the world, and then ultimately
the way that you process that energy and bring it
forth into back into the world. And I think that
(23:57):
when you say eight limb path, it's always like, okay, cool,
So I've done the first three. Once I get to
level eight, I will have figured out how to be
a perfect human. And it's like no All of the
limbs are happening at once, and there's no ending points. Ultimately,
you're just moving through and around them at all times.
(24:21):
The sutras are just the truth. They're the truth of
the human experience, and they can be applied in different
ways depending on what's going on in your life. Patan
Jolly's eight Limb Path was also not meant to be
a quick journey. His tips can't be mastered in a
forty five minute yoga class. His spiritual path was meant
to be a lifelong practice, which is kind of a relief,
(24:43):
especially since the last four limbs described in the eight
Limb Path may require even more time and care than
the earlier ones. Take for example, pat and Jolly's fifth limb,
which Jessamin thinks is probably the hardest for modern Western
practitioners to work through. It's called profe yahara, the commitment
to detaching from things external. What does Patu and Jelly
(25:03):
mean here by external things? Think what we look like,
how much money we have, the stuff we own, how
successful we are at work? And all the identities we
share online on social media. It's so hard because we
live in a world where we are constantly tapped into everything.
And I think that that idea of withdrawal and what
(25:25):
it means to withdraw and how you withdraw. Is it
all your senses? Is it only in certain circumstances? Is
it for an hour in the morning and then you're
good for the rest of the day, Like what does
that mean? And the reality is that there are no
hard and fast lines or limits. It's really just about
understanding it for yourself on a personal level. For me,
(25:48):
withdrawal of senses only happens when I accept the fact
that my senses are alive and are awake. And that
doesn't mean trying to shut them down or pretend that
certain things are and happening, or trying to avoid things.
It's just let it all be there, Let every sound
be there, like every connection be there. I'm just gonna
(26:12):
let it all hang out. That's when you can pull
into yourself. That's when you can withdraw. And the importance
of pulling into yourself leads us to both the sixth
and seventh limbs of the eightfold Path, which are known
as dharana concentration, and the practice that leads to daharana,
which is diana or meditation. If you've listened to other
(26:32):
episodes of The Happiness Lab, you've probably heard about the
many physical and psychological benefits of meditation and concentrating on
your internal experience of the present moment. There's evidence that
practicing meditation regularly can lead to reduced anxiety, less stress,
better sleep, and fewer negative emotions. But Jessemin worries that
the hype about meditation may sometimes cause modern practitioners to
(26:54):
miss out on the way the practice was intended back
in Patanjali's day. Meditation has become so trendy. I think
that it makes it seem more complicated than actually is.
But when you assume a posture, let's say that the pasture,
you're sitting cross legged, and you are working on your
breath work, and it doesn't need to be any kind
of complicated breathwork. It doesn't need to be alternate nostril
(27:17):
or lions roar or anything. It can literally just be
breathing through your nose out through your mouth. You can
close your eyes, you cannot close your eyes. It's not
that big of a deal, but you find the posture
that works for you. When you tune in, that's when
the concentration starts, Like, that's when that one pointedness, the
concentration derama, that's when that begins. I think sometimes when
(27:39):
you sit for meditation and you're withdrawing your senses, that
you think, oh, there's supposed to be this magic moment
where my mind is clear and I'm totally calm. But
what actually happens is that all your thoughts collide and
it just becomes complete chaos inside your mind, and that
(28:02):
contemplation you find that as the focus and you just
sit in a space of contemplation, so that I always
think that meditation is like the best time to obsess
over something like as a virgo rising, I'm here, I'm
anxious and think too much, just like anybody else, and
meditation is my time to like, Okay, now I can
(28:22):
make all those lists that I was thinking about. Now
I can obsess over everything. Because the reality is that
if you apply focus and if you stay in a
space of concentration, you can't obsess over anything forever. And
the more that you just let your mind not be clear,
the clearer it will become. When you're in that state
(28:42):
of concentration and when you are really present and are
withdrawing your senses and these This is Patiajara, this is Drana,
this is Diana, all in action. And that gets us
to the final limb of the eight limp path, somebody
or total absorption. I think that somebody. It's seen as
(29:03):
like final level of yoga. Look at what a good
yoga I am. And it's like, if you know that
you're experiencing somebody, you're not experiencing somebody. First of all,
potentially thought that somebody was the ultimate goal, not just
of the eight limbed path, but of a well lived life.
It's the point at which we finally achieve balance across
(29:24):
our mind, body, and soul. He envisioned it as a
sense of union between ourselves and all the other beings
in the universe. So, yeah, somebody is pretty intense, not
for the beginner, the deepest form of somebody. Ultimately, it
is death. It is to move beyond this world. Thinking
of the eight limb path, it's not the same as
like eight steps to a great life. It's this is
(29:46):
just what it means to be alive. Ultimately, it's not
really more complicated than that. As long as you practice
the first few limbs, the others will come naturally. You've
been thinking about the sutures for a long time. You know,
what have you learned from following the eight limbed path?
Any big insights that have come along the way, summarize,
(30:09):
But my biggest takeaway is that everything is okay. Everything
is exactly where it needs to be. The bumps in
the road are supposed to happen. The darkness has to
be there. If you don't experience a darkness, you cannot
understand the light. You cannot appreciate it. There is no
(30:32):
love without the opposite side. There is no love without
fear and hate. And when you can just accept it all,
there is so much beauty in this world. There's the
beauty becomes easier to see because you're not trying to pretend,
you're not obscuring it with nonsense. And also a part
(30:56):
of that is that the practice is going to ebb
and flow with time, and that it's just going to change.
It's always changing. Your needs and understandings are always involving.
And if you can say, like the difficulty is why
I'm here, I was built to withstand it. And actually
(31:20):
it's not even being built to withstand it, because some
things you're not built to withstand. Some things you are
meant to fall to the floor and to melt into
the pavement. It's supposed to be hard. That was the point,
And it's about awareness and losing the need to perform
(31:41):
any aspect of yourself, and ultimately like, as long as
you're in a state of acceptance of all that is,
no matter how you are, you're really living the eight
mon Path, doesn't It admits that committing to Pat and
Jelly's Eightfold Path isn't easy. She's quick to remind us
that it's called a practice for a reason. I think
(32:02):
that I am on a journey for the rest of
my life to accept what the universe has brought me,
and that the more that I can just accept that
it's an ongoing journey and that there will always be
new ways that that journey looks, the more that I
can accept that the better, because it's never going to end. Potentially,
(32:24):
knew that following the path would take a lot of
work and that you probably wouldn't fully reach somebody, But
Jessamin will attest that sticking with this lifelong ancient journey,
both on and off the yoga mat is worth it.
It's like these truths of being revealed to me in
different ways in every moment of every day, and it's
(32:45):
beautiful and I'm grateful because to live is such a privilege,
and there's so much dope shit that happens every day,
and if it means hitting the pavement every day, it's
worth it. Talking with Jessamin has reminded me that there's
(33:06):
so much more to yoga that a bunch of twisted
poses on some colorful mat and that committing to a
broader version of the yoga path can pay real dividends.
So why not take a few steps down Patanjali's ancient path.
You can start by thinking more intentionally about the responsibilities
you have towards other people and to your own body
and spirit. You can try to find a space to
(33:27):
meditate and breathe, either in a tough yoga posture or
just lying down. You can think more critically about your
relationship with all things external and commit to getting back
to that meditation practice you know is pretty good for you.
And remember it's not about striving for the next level
like in most modern practices. It's more about accepting that
the path is there to guide you on a journey
(33:48):
towards better health and happiness that will last a lifetime.
Next week, the Happiness Lab will continue its investigation of
spiritual traditions from South Asia. We'll meet a scholar who
will help us explore the tenets of Sikhism, and we'll
see that committing to the full humanity of all people
may be a quicker path to well being than we expect.
So I hope you'll join me back here next week
(34:10):
for the next episode of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients
With me. It is Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab
is co written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by
Ryan Dilley, Courtney Grano, and Britney Brown. The show was
mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was composed
by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler,
(34:33):
Carl Migliori, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, my agent,
Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team. The
Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
by me, Doctor Laurie Santos.
Pushkin. I was in graduate school and a friend of
mine was like, oh my god, you should come to
yoga because I was really depressed. This is one of
my wellness idols. Jessamin Stanley. She had drunk the yoga
kool aid. She was like, Oh my god, it's going
(00:36):
to change your whole life. The idea of that sort
of big change did appeal to Jessamin, who at the
time was feeling a bit lost. I was like, I
don't know who I am, what is the purpose of
my life? What's going on? And she was like, oh
my god, you should come to yoga. You're gonna love it.
And I was like, I am not doing that. Jessamin
(00:56):
had tried yoga once before in high school and she
absolutely hated it. But her friend wasn't going to take
no for an answer and knew just how to make
the case. She appealed to Jessaman's appetite for a bargain,
and she got me caught up on a group on
though she was like, what's the worst they can happen?
You go one time you paid thirty dollars with this past, Like,
what's the worst that can happen? Jessamin reluctantly agreed at
(01:19):
first that yoga class wasn't the amazing, life changing experience
Jessamin was hoping for. So it's really hot here, it smells,
it kind of sucks. Actually, like everything about this is
really hard. Jessamin couldn't do the poses as well as
the other students around her. As a queer plus sized
black woman in a mostly skinny, white lady yoga class.
(01:40):
She felt uncomfortable in her body and painfully self conscious.
I remember we were practicing a posture called awkward pose
that is literally it's so aptly named because it is
extremely awkward. So I'm looking at myself in this mirror
and which is traumatizing on its own, because I literally
would go out of my way at that stage in
my life to avoid mirrors and looking at myself. And
(02:03):
I'm just thinking, like, why did you even think you
could come to this class? Like you obviously don't know
what you're doing, and everybody here knows it, and you
can't even do this basic thing. This is like maybe
the third or fourth posture in the class. I'm like,
there's no like, if you can't do this, then why
even show up? And I was just talking cash shit
to myself, and I had this moment where I was like,
(02:26):
you know, you could just try. Maybe you just try, Like, yes,
maybe you're gonna fall down. Maybe everyone in the room
is going to know that you don't know what you're doing.
Maybe the teacher's gonna know that you don't know what
you're doing. And maybe that's just gotta be okay, Because
did you spend this money to come to this class
to just stand here and talk shit about yourself because
(02:48):
you could have done that at home. Jessamin decided to
make good on her thirty dollar investment. She committed to
halting her usual self criticism, if only for the length
of that one class. She started leaning into all the
new postures and movements, and then something incredible happened. She
actually started to enjoy yoga. It was the first time
(03:09):
Esseman was able to get out of her head and
as long as she could remember. So it was this
insane moment of like actually having to reckon with something
that I had just decided about myself, and that moment
that breaking point to this day. Ultimately, that is why
I continue to practice yoga, because it really is it's
a cracking open of the spirit. It's like you're looking
(03:31):
in a foggy bathroom mirror, a mirror that you fogged up,
and like just swiping across it and seeing your actual
reflection back at you. And it was so profound for
me in a way that I certainly didn't walk into
the class thinking I was going to experience. Decades later,
Jessaman has gone from an awkward novice to becoming a
(03:52):
famous yoga professional. She's now one of the most sought
after yoga and wellness instructors in the world. Jessaman's done
ad campaigns for places like Gatorade, Adidas, and Amazon. She's
the co founder of The Underbelly, an international yoga community
that celebrates bringing yoga and movement to people of all
body types and identities. But initially that experience, I really
(04:15):
only understood it on a physical level, an example being
like I'm just going to work on this pose, like
I'm going to work on camel pose or downward facing
dog like. I got really into headstanding and understanding the
mechanics of that, and through that practice of focusing on
different postures, I did start to understand that there are
(04:40):
a lot of themes that come up when you are
practicing yoga so like grounding stability, strength, flexibility, and understanding
those concepts beyond what they were offering me physically, So like,
(05:03):
if I am in a posture that is offering flexibility
in my physical whole body, what other parts of my
life can I be more flexible in. Jessamin was training
extensively in the physical side of her practice, but she
hadn't yet looked at the historic or spiritual roots of yoga.
Was her practice really supposed to be just about the poses,
(05:24):
she wondered, or did the founders of yoga intend for
it to be deeper. Jessamin was fascinated by all these questions,
but she also worried that the answers might not be
for people like her. I am black, I am American,
I am not South Asian. I do not have a
cultural relationship with yoga. And I was like, I'm pretty
(05:44):
sure this is all appropriation and it's probably not cool
for me to be doing this at all. But at
a minimum, I'm just going to stick with the physical stuff,
and then I won't. I'm not even going to dig
into anything else. But as Jessamin thought more about the
varied benefits that she and her students got from yoga.
She began to realize that the physical side of this
ancient tradition was just the tip of the iceberg. As
(06:07):
she explains in her most recent book, Yoga, My Yoga
of Self Acceptance, she came to learn that it's less
about fitness and more about dealing with your mental and
emotional baggage. So much of what was making me unhappy
and unsatisfied in my life was that I'd created all
of these boundaries for myself, and I made all these
decisions about the type of person that I am and
(06:28):
about what I'm capable of handling, and I never allowed
myself to step outside of those boundaries. Yoga requires that
you step outside of your boundaries, and it's put me
in these situations where I actually had to look at
the way that I talked to myself and look at
the way that I process information and be like, you
know what, I know. I decided that I'm not going
(06:51):
to be able to do this, but maybe I'm just
going to try. And part of that commitment to moving
past her boundaries involved taking a careful look at the
cultural origins of yoga. Jessamine began reading about the history
of her practice, and in doing so, returned to an
important spiritual work that she'd first heard about and her
yoga teacher training a book that's often thought of as
(07:11):
the earliest textbook of yoga. It's called The Yoga Suits.
Such means thread, so it's literally like threads that tie
us together. These sutras have been passed down for thousands
of years, and they've been translated an untold number of times,
and they really are just words that were captured by
(07:35):
the students of a teacher. Parts and jolly, and these
words were just guiding thoughts for life. Potentially was the
wise Sanskrit stage who first outlined what's known as the
eight limbed Path. The eight limbed path was a way
for students not just to achieve a fitter body, as
we often think of yoga today, but to gain a
(07:57):
fitter mind and spirit. Potentially argued that when followed correctly,
the eight limbed path is a way for us all
to become free of mental suffering. It's really just like
so many other ancient texts, and it's been passed down
because the universality of the aphorisms. They can be applied
(08:17):
in every circumstance, no matter who you are or where
you are, and that's one of the reasons we'll be
turning to the yoga sutras in this episode. Today we'll
explore what the eight Lived path says about how to
live a happier, healthier life. Welcome back to Happiness Lessons
of the Ancients on the Happiness Lap with me, Doctor
Laurie Santos. Certainly, yoga has become in the mainstream almost
(08:44):
entirely associated with exercise. What poses are you doing? The
difficulty of the practice is engaged by the difficulty of
the postures, like how acrobatic is your practice becomes the metric,
so that when people go to a yoga class, it's
always about like what are the physical benefits going to be?
And that even when you talk about like meditation or breathwork,
(09:07):
it's not necessarily seen as a necessary component of a
yoga practice. And ultimately though, the physical experience of yoga
is really a very minor part of the experience. As
Jessamin learned more about the history of yoga and the
yoga sutras specifically, she quickly realized that yoga poses, or
(09:28):
asina's as they're called in Sanskrit, are just a tiny
part only one branch of the eight limb path that
Potentially originally outlined. In fact, Asina's didn't even make it
into the first limb that Potentially preached about. His classic
text started not with Asina's but with what are known
as the yamas or restraints. Yama's especially, I think, because
they go first. It's the suture that I think people
(09:50):
are most familiar with and the ones that have the
most intense translations in our society. The yamas remind us
about the responsibility we have to other people. In doing so,
the yamas fit well with one of the most well
documented effects in the entire field of happiness science that
becoming more other oriented is a quick way to improve
(10:12):
our well being. Study after study shows that focusing on
other people, either through volunteering or donating money, can make
us feel happier, and acting intentionally towards others is what
the first limb of the eight limb path is all about.
In fact, Potentially thought our responsibilities to others were so
important that he divided the yamas into five tinier principles,
(10:33):
as he called them, and the first and most famous
of these principles is what's known as ahimsa, which is
this idea of non violence, and often Ahimsa is translated
as a call to action for vegetarianism or veganism, because
the best way to be non violent in terms of
(10:58):
not harming other creatures is to literally not consume other creatures.
But that's just one translation of Ahimsa, and that's just
one translation for some people. Non violence, to me has
always come up more in the language that we used
to talk not just about other people, but about ourselves,
(11:20):
because if you are using violent language to talk about yourself,
that is coming into the way that you communicate about
other people as well, which is kind of ironic, because
I think the whole idea of a himself is not
to engage in violence, and in some ways, critiquing people,
especially critiquing people's bodies, you know, might be really a
violation of the very principle exactly. And another one that
(11:44):
jumps up for me is Bramacharia, which is this idea
of chastity. And like I remember in my own teacher
training it being said like, oh, well, we don't really
think about Bramacharia that much, like it's not that big
of a deal. You don't need to worry about it
because bramacharia being translated as chastity and therefore meaning celibacy,
no sex, no sex. People are like, I'm not not
(12:06):
going to have sex what you're saying, And in my
own understanding of brahmacharia, I think that it's more about
owning your own spirit so that when you are engaged
in acts that are literally sharing your spirit with other
human beings, that you can at a minimum know what
you're getting into. And that's what sex is. It's offering
(12:29):
yourself to another human being, and sex it can get
you twisted in the game. It will get you confused,
and that is really all that Brahmacharia is. It's really
just asking a question. It's like, you know, what does
it mean to hold onto your essence? To preserve your spirit.
(12:50):
Jessamine has a similar interpretation of the other three Yamas principles.
They're there so our minds don't get twisted up and
so that we can preserve our spirit. These final free
principles include Satya or truthfulness, basically, don't lie to people
and commit to living in truth even when doing so
is painful. Then there's estey, which tells us not to
(13:10):
be covetous Astea is all about nipping that green eyed
monster of jealousy in the bud and to try to
avoid social comparison generally. And finally, there's a paragraha, which
is freedom from desire. A paragraha fits nicely with a
happiness strategy we talk about a lot on this podcast,
remembering that more stuff and more accolades are not going
(13:31):
to make us happy. A paragraha is all about trying
to notice times when we're feeling a little greedy. It's
really not like hard rules, it's opportunities to engage with
yourself on a more visceral pud For the next limb
of the eight limb path, the Niyamas is even more
focused on engaging internally, and that's because the five principles
(13:54):
of the Niyamas are focused on the responsibilities we have
not towards other people, but towards ourselves. Those principles include
sautcha keeping your body clean physically, mentally and emotionally, tap
Us a sense of austerity and self discipline. Svadiaya, a
commitment to studying yourself and looking within yourself for answers.
Isfara pranidana committing to finding a spiritual path, and my
(14:17):
favorite of the niyamas Santosa. Santosa is my favorite, not
because the word kind of sounds like it should be
the name of some cousin of mine, but because it's
the principle that's focused on finding contentment in the present
moment and doing so without ruminating about the past or
the future. You could spend your whole life just focusing
on the yamas, honestly, because they show up in everything,
(14:38):
and they can be interpreted so many different ways, whether
that's through the language that you use, through your personal
definition of chastity, through the things that you consume, how
you cleanse your body, but then it's also the way
that you engage with other human beings, not coveting what
(15:03):
other people have, not speaking ill of other people, and
really like having an attention to your words and the
language that you use. But the eight limp path doesn't
just stop with the yamas and the ni Yamas. When
we get back from the break, we'll continue our discussion
of Patanjali's other six limbs. We'll see where all those
tough yoga poses we use in the modern day fit
(15:25):
into the ancient stage's vision of the good life. And
we'll learn how a true eight limbed path towards flourishing
requires regulating not just the body, but also the mind.
The happiness lab will be right back. When you look
at people who are extreme athletes, like I think a
(15:49):
lot about ultramarathoners and people who run ultramarathons, they're not
doing that for their health, Like they're not obsessed with
that experience because it's like, oh my god, my body
is going to look this way. No, they are working
out deep psychological truth, so they are they are having
a spiritual experience. The ancient sage patan Jolly lived way
(16:11):
before modern fitness practices like CrossFit and tough Mutters were
a thing, but he still recognized that moving our bodies
could be an important step towards spiritual enlightenment. And that's
the logic behind the third and most famous limb of
patan Jolly's eight limbed path, the asanas. The asinas are
what most Westerners typically think of when they think of yoga,
the poses, things like downward facing dog, chaturanga, gomu casana,
(16:36):
and chair pose. But the key to getting the most
out of all these asanas isn't what most modern practitioners
think from Patan Jolly's perspective, the goal wasn't to twist
your body into an uncomfortable pretzel. Author and yoga instructor
Jessamine Stanley says that the original idea behind the asinas
was much simpler, asina really means to sit, so it's
(16:57):
not even as complicated as assume this specific posture. It's
literally like to be just to exist. Patan Jolli is
really saying that any form that your body takes is
assuming a shape that then is a part of this world,
(17:18):
and it's something that evolves for every person throughout their life,
depending on what's going on in their life. But the
reality is that you really only need to practice one posture,
and it can be any posture. The posture can be
sitting down, it can be lying on your back, it
can be standing up. That's sufficient posture because ultimately they're
(17:43):
very complex postures, and in truth, being able to just
be in stillness is the hardest posture. Jessamin tells her
students that this is the point performing all the yoga
poses they practice. The austins are there to help us
accept the hard challenges that come not on our yoga mats,
but in life. Let's take a posture like post For example,
(18:06):
you look at a posture like cheer pose and it's like,
what do I need to do? I need to turn
my thighs toward one another. I need to engage my core.
I need to fall down backwards while also sitting upright.
I need to lengthen out of the crowd of my head.
All of these things are things that I need to
(18:27):
do when I'm challenged, when someone is pushing back against
me at work, when I feel like someone is being
mean to me, when I'm feeling challenged, those are the
same things that I need to do. I need to
pull into my core. I need to try to fall
down backwards but also stay upright. I need to lengthen
(18:48):
up to the sky. I need to pull It's all
of these ideas that seemed theoretical and that seemed like
philosophical but that are really actually very practical, And I
think it makes it easier to deal with the parts
of life that are really hard, really really hard and
complicated and that are not meant to be anything other
(19:09):
than that. Like I think sometimes in life, really hard shit,
bad shit happens, and you think this isn't how things
are supposed to be things are supposed to be good.
I'm supposed to be happy. This is wrong, And what
yoga reminds is that everything in life is not good.
Everything in life is not happy. You need for things
to be hard so that you can actually strengthen from
(19:33):
the inside. So practice the things that you do when
things get hard. Pull into your core, become flexible in
your hamstrings, draw your butt cheeks together, whatever the things are.
Practice that in the moments that feel emotionally hard, and
you will be strengthened as a result. The fourth limb
of the eightfold path, it is also about harnessing something
(19:54):
that can help us get through tough times. Not mindful
movements as in the Ausinas, but mindful breath. It's called prana,
the full word as prana yama, Prana being this energy
that we we most consciously understand as breath, and so
breathwork becomes the focus of pranayama. Scientists have long recognized
(20:19):
that our breath can have a huge impact on our
well being. Take for example, one of the easiest ways
to shut off activation in our fighter flight system, or
what neuroscientists refer to as our sympathetic nervous system. You're
probably familiar with the activation of this system if you've
ever felt overwhelmed by too many demands at work, or
anxious after reading some scary news article, or pissed off
(20:41):
by an annoying email. Our sympathetic nervous system kicks in
whenever we feel under threat. It's a system that's only
supposed to turn on once in a while in moments
of urgent threat or danger, but many of us keep
this system running chronically, which leads to a whole host
of stress related illnesses and bad feelings. But there's a
fast and easy way to get our fighter flight systems
(21:02):
to chill out for a while, and we can do
that through our breath. There's evidence that we can switch
off sympathetic nervousness to activity simply by taking a slow,
deep belly breath, especially one with a long exhale. Pat
and Jolly wasn't a neuroscientist, but he realized that we
can use the breath to change the way we feel
in our bodies and our minds. But Jessamin says that
(21:23):
prani Yama isn't just about taking a few deep breaths
when we're feeling stressed. Prama is really like everything. Once
you focus on your breath and once you assume a posture,
whatever that posture is, then your body starts to go
into a state of actually engaging with what is underneath
(21:45):
your skin and what is happening beyond your mind. It's
starting to unite the way that your body moves and
the way that your mind works, and the way that
you feel so that you're able to understand yourself as
a full spiritual being. But if you really want to
understand yourself as a full spiritual being, you can't stop
at Praniyama. You also need to commit to practicing what's
(22:07):
discussed and the rest of the limbs of the eightfold Path,
the ones that we haven't talked about yet. We'll hear
more from Jessamine about what these final spiritual practices are
and how we can harness them to live and feel
better when the Happiness Lab gets back from the short break,
(22:29):
so that the last limbs of the eight limb path, Pratiahara, Darana, Diana,
and the Samodi are all the stages that happen once
you have united your breath with what reform your body
(22:52):
is taking. So far in our progress through Patanjali's path.
We've talked about the importance of the yamas our responsibilities
to other people. The ni yamas are responsibilities to ourselves.
The Austina's physical postures we can relax into distay, grounded
and prani yama, the importance of controlling our breath. And
if you're counting and keeping track of where we are
(23:13):
in the eight limbs, you might be tempted to think
that we basically hit the halfway point towards spiritual enlightenment.
But author and yoga instructor Jessamine Stanley's quick to point
out that Pat and Jolly didn't intend for the limbs.
He described to be boxes that we check off on
some spiritual to do list. So the idea behind the
eight limb path is that it provides structure for your life,
(23:34):
and it provides a way to go about taking care
of yourself, and then the way that you show up
in the world, and then the way that you are
engaging with the energy of the world, and then ultimately
the way that you process that energy and bring it
forth into back into the world. And I think that
(23:57):
when you say eight limb path, it's always like, okay, cool,
So I've done the first three. Once I get to
level eight, I will have figured out how to be
a perfect human. And it's like no All of the
limbs are happening at once, and there's no ending points. Ultimately,
you're just moving through and around them at all times.
(24:21):
The sutras are just the truth. They're the truth of
the human experience, and they can be applied in different
ways depending on what's going on in your life. Patan
Jolly's eight Limb Path was also not meant to be
a quick journey. His tips can't be mastered in a
forty five minute yoga class. His spiritual path was meant
to be a lifelong practice, which is kind of a relief,
(24:43):
especially since the last four limbs described in the eight
Limb Path may require even more time and care than
the earlier ones. Take for example, pat and Jolly's fifth limb,
which Jessamin thinks is probably the hardest for modern Western
practitioners to work through. It's called profe yahara, the commitment
to detaching from things external. What does Patu and Jelly
(25:03):
mean here by external things? Think what we look like,
how much money we have, the stuff we own, how
successful we are at work? And all the identities we
share online on social media. It's so hard because we
live in a world where we are constantly tapped into everything.
And I think that that idea of withdrawal and what
(25:25):
it means to withdraw and how you withdraw. Is it
all your senses? Is it only in certain circumstances? Is
it for an hour in the morning and then you're
good for the rest of the day, Like what does
that mean? And the reality is that there are no
hard and fast lines or limits. It's really just about
understanding it for yourself on a personal level. For me,
(25:48):
withdrawal of senses only happens when I accept the fact
that my senses are alive and are awake. And that
doesn't mean trying to shut them down or pretend that
certain things are and happening, or trying to avoid things.
It's just let it all be there, Let every sound
be there, like every connection be there. I'm just gonna
(26:12):
let it all hang out. That's when you can pull
into yourself. That's when you can withdraw. And the importance
of pulling into yourself leads us to both the sixth
and seventh limbs of the eightfold Path, which are known
as dharana concentration, and the practice that leads to daharana,
which is diana or meditation. If you've listened to other
(26:32):
episodes of The Happiness Lab, you've probably heard about the
many physical and psychological benefits of meditation and concentrating on
your internal experience of the present moment. There's evidence that
practicing meditation regularly can lead to reduced anxiety, less stress,
better sleep, and fewer negative emotions. But Jessemin worries that
the hype about meditation may sometimes cause modern practitioners to
(26:54):
miss out on the way the practice was intended back
in Patanjali's day. Meditation has become so trendy. I think
that it makes it seem more complicated than actually is.
But when you assume a posture, let's say that the pasture,
you're sitting cross legged, and you are working on your
breath work, and it doesn't need to be any kind
of complicated breathwork. It doesn't need to be alternate nostril
(27:17):
or lions roar or anything. It can literally just be
breathing through your nose out through your mouth. You can
close your eyes, you cannot close your eyes. It's not
that big of a deal, but you find the posture
that works for you. When you tune in, that's when
the concentration starts, Like, that's when that one pointedness, the
concentration derama, that's when that begins. I think sometimes when
(27:39):
you sit for meditation and you're withdrawing your senses, that
you think, oh, there's supposed to be this magic moment
where my mind is clear and I'm totally calm. But
what actually happens is that all your thoughts collide and
it just becomes complete chaos inside your mind, and that
(28:02):
contemplation you find that as the focus and you just
sit in a space of contemplation, so that I always
think that meditation is like the best time to obsess
over something like as a virgo rising, I'm here, I'm
anxious and think too much, just like anybody else, and
meditation is my time to like, Okay, now I can
(28:22):
make all those lists that I was thinking about. Now
I can obsess over everything. Because the reality is that
if you apply focus and if you stay in a
space of concentration, you can't obsess over anything forever. And
the more that you just let your mind not be clear,
the clearer it will become. When you're in that state
(28:42):
of concentration and when you are really present and are
withdrawing your senses and these This is Patiajara, this is Drana,
this is Diana, all in action. And that gets us
to the final limb of the eight limp path, somebody
or total absorption. I think that somebody. It's seen as
(29:03):
like final level of yoga. Look at what a good
yoga I am. And it's like, if you know that
you're experiencing somebody, you're not experiencing somebody. First of all,
potentially thought that somebody was the ultimate goal, not just
of the eight limbed path, but of a well lived life.
It's the point at which we finally achieve balance across
(29:24):
our mind, body, and soul. He envisioned it as a
sense of union between ourselves and all the other beings
in the universe. So, yeah, somebody is pretty intense, not
for the beginner, the deepest form of somebody. Ultimately, it
is death. It is to move beyond this world. Thinking
of the eight limb path, it's not the same as
like eight steps to a great life. It's this is
(29:46):
just what it means to be alive. Ultimately, it's not
really more complicated than that. As long as you practice
the first few limbs, the others will come naturally. You've
been thinking about the sutures for a long time. You know,
what have you learned from following the eight limbed path?
Any big insights that have come along the way, summarize,
(30:09):
But my biggest takeaway is that everything is okay. Everything
is exactly where it needs to be. The bumps in
the road are supposed to happen. The darkness has to
be there. If you don't experience a darkness, you cannot
understand the light. You cannot appreciate it. There is no
(30:32):
love without the opposite side. There is no love without
fear and hate. And when you can just accept it all,
there is so much beauty in this world. There's the
beauty becomes easier to see because you're not trying to pretend,
you're not obscuring it with nonsense. And also a part
(30:56):
of that is that the practice is going to ebb
and flow with time, and that it's just going to change.
It's always changing. Your needs and understandings are always involving.
And if you can say, like the difficulty is why
I'm here, I was built to withstand it. And actually
(31:20):
it's not even being built to withstand it, because some
things you're not built to withstand. Some things you are
meant to fall to the floor and to melt into
the pavement. It's supposed to be hard. That was the point,
And it's about awareness and losing the need to perform
(31:41):
any aspect of yourself, and ultimately like, as long as
you're in a state of acceptance of all that is,
no matter how you are, you're really living the eight
mon Path, doesn't It admits that committing to Pat and
Jelly's Eightfold Path isn't easy. She's quick to remind us
that it's called a practice for a reason. I think
(32:02):
that I am on a journey for the rest of
my life to accept what the universe has brought me,
and that the more that I can just accept that
it's an ongoing journey and that there will always be
new ways that that journey looks, the more that I
can accept that the better, because it's never going to end. Potentially,
(32:24):
knew that following the path would take a lot of
work and that you probably wouldn't fully reach somebody, But
Jessamin will attest that sticking with this lifelong ancient journey,
both on and off the yoga mat is worth it.
It's like these truths of being revealed to me in
different ways in every moment of every day, and it's
(32:45):
beautiful and I'm grateful because to live is such a privilege,
and there's so much dope shit that happens every day,
and if it means hitting the pavement every day, it's
worth it. Talking with Jessamin has reminded me that there's
(33:06):
so much more to yoga that a bunch of twisted
poses on some colorful mat and that committing to a
broader version of the yoga path can pay real dividends.
So why not take a few steps down Patanjali's ancient path.
You can start by thinking more intentionally about the responsibilities
you have towards other people and to your own body
and spirit. You can try to find a space to
(33:27):
meditate and breathe, either in a tough yoga posture or
just lying down. You can think more critically about your
relationship with all things external and commit to getting back
to that meditation practice you know is pretty good for you.
And remember it's not about striving for the next level
like in most modern practices. It's more about accepting that
the path is there to guide you on a journey
(33:48):
towards better health and happiness that will last a lifetime.
Next week, the Happiness Lab will continue its investigation of
spiritual traditions from South Asia. We'll meet a scholar who
will help us explore the tenets of Sikhism, and we'll
see that committing to the full humanity of all people
may be a quicker path to well being than we expect.
So I hope you'll join me back here next week
(34:10):
for the next episode of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients
With me. It is Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab
is co written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by
Ryan Dilley, Courtney Grano, and Britney Brown. The show was
mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was composed
by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler,
(34:33):
Carl Migliori, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, my agent,
Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team. The
Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
by me, Doctor Laurie Santos.
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