Get fit with us!

Stuck in a Rut?

 By Bo Forbes

As a psychologist, I'm aware that the repetitive behavior students exhibit during yoga class originated long before they stepped onto the mat; the classroom is simply the arena in which we can witness our deeply ingrained habits in all their glory. According to yogic philosophy, we're born with a karmic inheritance of mental and emotional patterns—known as samskaras—through which we cycle over and over again during our lives.

The word samskara comes from the Sanskrit sam (complete or joined together) and kara (action, cause, or doing). In addition to being generalized patterns, samskaras are individual impressions, ideas, or actions; taken together, our samskaras make up our conditioning. Repeating samskaras reinforces them, creating a groove that is difficult to resist. Samskaras can be positive—imagine the selfless acts of Mother Theresa. They can also be negative, as in the self-lacerating mental patterns that underlie low self-esteem and self-destructive relationships. The negative samskaras are what hinder our positive evolution. Our goal is to shine awareness on the dark ocean, to bring ourselves into being. To do so, we need to exchange our negative samskaras for positive ones.

Samskara is universal; it's one of the elements that define the human condition. We are, undeniably, creatures of habit, and the physical, mental, and emotional places we often gravitate toward are the well-navigated galaxies of negative samskara. Yet the Yoga Sutra (II.16) states, "Heyam duhkham anagatam," or "Future suffering is to be avoided." Sounds simple enough, but how do we do it?

Here I am going to interject that for this coming month, we will weave into our practice, attention to seven possible steps toward transforming negative samskaras.  We will have new tweaks on familiar poses, more attention to detail, and an everbuilding awareness of our habits...both physical and emotional.  Consistency will count all the more.

When starting a new pattern, or in times of stress, the lure of old patterns is strongest. Abhyasa (practice) helps make our new samskara more powerful than the old; the more we reinforce the new groove, the stronger it becomes. Understanding what can trigger a relapse and rededicating ourselves to our practice keep us from backsliding. This is a good time to ask, "How can my practice be more reflective?  All patterns, even samskaras, represent order. When we leave an old pattern behind, we enter a liminal space—a bardo, to borrow a Tibetan term. Like the space between an exhalation and the next inhalation, this place is ripe with unlimited possibilities for new choices. This in-between space can be unsettling.  We often resist new patterns for fear of losing the identities we've so carefully constructed. And it's true that when we change a long-held pattern, we undergo a rebirth of sorts. This rebirth hints at a new incarnation, a more evolved version of the self. Yet improving our samskara brings us closer to our true nature, which is the goal of yoga.

Samskara is also defined as a perfecting and polishing, a process of cultivation. Shifting samskara, then, is the ongoing work of chipping away at our negative patterns to illuminate the purity of the soul. Like alchemists in our own transformation, we constantly refine and direct our samskara into healthier designs. The good news is that the ability to shift our patterns—once we've sown the seeds—is self-generating, self-sustaining, and self-renewing. When we're patient enough to facilitate samskara's organic process, to honor its inner sound and slow rhythm, change simply flows. And it's a joy to taste the reward of all this hard work in its natural form, the sweetness that arises from seeing long labor and preparation come to fruition.