April 6, 2026 - The Horizon of Ignorance
In this week’s class, we continued to build upon the concept of tamas, one of the three gunas, or threads/qualities/natures of our material reality. We talked about tamas as darkness, inertia, heaviness, this force against which we can start to push in order to pursue a path of growth. There is, however, an additional aspect of tamas which is equally important, and one that makes it particularly reviled by many yoga lineages: ignorance.
Ignorance directly opposes the yogic quest to remove all the veils that conceal the true nature of reality, veils that lie within and without the individual. The mind is constantly disturbed by thoughts and emotions swelling from an ignorant apprehension of the world around us. This is made particularly clear in the classical yoga traditions that inform a great deal of American yoga (Buddhism isn’t dissimilar.). In order to achieve self-liberation, one must pierce the many veils that confound a correct understanding of the nature of things.
However, if we step back for a moment I believe that ignorance may not appear as evil as others make it out to be. For anyone who has a great love of learning, in any field, ignorance is often an important motivator. A student may be curious about a topic or be frustrated that they don’t know enough (or anything) about it, and so they motivate themselves to study. There are many times where one butts up against a concept or an experience that they didn’t even know they were ignorant of, and joy and delight may arise during these surprising advancements towards knowledge.
As a dedicated student of most any subject will tell us, the work of studying, the journey towards knowledge, is forever incomplete. There’s always more to know. In that sense, perhaps, the task of enlightenment may not be as much a process of removing all the veils between oneself and the Truth as much as it is a perpetual trek towards the unending horizon of our ignorance. Having it all figured out might sound restful, but I’m not convinced that it would be great way to live and neither am I convinced that it’s possible. But the idea of going through life, aware of ignorance, and seeking to move towards knowledge knowing that the work will never be quite done, well… it sounds harder, but far more interesting.
We began our class with:
Supine (lying on our backs) centering with a bolster under the knees. We emphasized an equal breath (sama vritti pranayama) while bringing awareness to the back of the ribcage, observing movement and sensation in a party of our body where we typically don’t have a lot of proprioception (knowing where the body is in space).
From there, we transitioned into a warm up, which included:
Bringing the knees into the chest and circling the thigh bone in the hip joint, followed by a figure-four stretch
Table top position position exploring: flexion (cat spine) and extension (cow spine), side bending, child’s pose, and a few flows.
Down dog, finger tip cobra, forward folds, low squats, squatting and standing twists.
We moved into the more heating phase of our practice, beginning with:
Kneeling lunge (anjaneyasana) with an emphasis on deep hip flexor (psoas) stretch with chest opening, and then transitioning to a twist with dynamic spinal and arm rotations going into a thigh stretch (this was a challenge for some of us, and understandably! Hamstrings are often weak and quads tight, and lifting bending the knee in this position puts a lot of stress on the hamstring because it’s loaded by gravity.).
We transitioned into wide legged poses, turning to face the side of the mat.
In a warrior II (virabhadrasana II) stance, we shifted our spine back and forth until arriving in a side angle pose to rotate the spine and arm. Then we landed in utthita parsvakonasana, extended side angle pose, lengthening across the side line of the body.
From there, we finished out standing practice in parighasana (gate pose - a pose I am deeply biased towards). We opened with the classic side stretch and then moved into a kneeling ardha chandrasana (half moon pose). We included a thigh stretching variation (called capasana - cha-pah-sah-nah).
We cooled down with seated poses: seated hip openers (hindolasana) and upward plank (purvottanasana).
We then entered into a long pranayama practice:
We began with sama vritti and transitioned into ujjayi, incorporating that soft hissing sound for a more heating breath. We then took ujjayi into a controlled kumbhaka (retention) practice, pausing after each inhale and exhale. This is a practice that can help with increasing carbon dioxide tolerance, and from a yogic perspective, begin to increase energy (prana) retention.
Then, you guessed it, savasana :)
Thank you, all! I love rising to that horizon with all of you during our classes.
Saprema, Joey