Detachment, Discrimination, and Mindful Yoga

by Baxter

Clouds Blowing By by Brad Gibson

At my recent workshop at The Yoga Project in Sellwood (see here), many insightful stories were shared among students over the course of our two days of practice together. One of my favorites came from Maleena on Saturday at the start of class. Maleena was one of the students who had taken both sessions on Friday. The practices we did that day included slower, introspective practices that involved noticing and feeling without jumping to judgment on the insights we perceived. An emphasis on grounded observation was encouraged throughout. Pranayama practices that were cooling, and long Savasanas were also a part of our work that first day.

Maleena mentioned a shift in reactivity that she had noticed upon returning home to her family on Friday evening. Maleena is a mother of three sons, ages 13, 15 and 18, and this night the 18 year old was up to some old patterns of interaction that would normally get Maleena stressed and worried, and could lead to a confrontation. But, to her surprise, she found that she was able to listen, observe and find curious the behavior her son was displaying without her usual emotional reaction.

As we explored this quite welcome discovery, it seemed that the slower, introspective yoga practices had grounded her is such a way that her old pattern had shifted. In yoga philosophy, this skill is known as vairagya, or detached awareness. The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali tells us that the practice of detachment is an important part of what it means to be a yogi:

“Renunciation is the practice of detachment (vairagyam) from desires.” Yoga Sutra 1.15, trans. B.K.S. Iyengar

This “detached awareness” does not imply Maleena did not care deeply about what her son was saying or feeling. But vairagya permits a yogini to have some space with which to apply another essential component of yoga, viveka, or discrimination, in order to chart a beneficial course of action for all involved.

“The ceaseless flow of discriminative knowledge (viveka) in thought, word and deed destroys ignorance, the source of pain.” Yoga Sutra 2.26, trans. B.K.S. Iyengar

And, of course, the more one mindfully practices, the more readily these new habits, or beneficial samskaras, supercede and eventually replace the older, obsolete reactions. This is one of the many milestone changes that take place as we deepen our practice that let us know we are on the right path. Thanks, Portland yoginis! I’ll see you in March! 

For those of you who are interested in learning more about mindful yoga, Nina will be writing a separate post on the topic this week (see Practicing Yoga Mindfully).

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