June 1 and June 8, 2026 - Holding the World Together

Please forgive my tardiness in writing up these practice notes. I don’t tolerate shifts in my schedule very well, even if they’re supportive in nature. However, this may provide a good segue into what we’ve discussed over the last two weeks of practice.

June 1

We’ve continued exploring sattva in practice. We first introduced it as an expression of the dreaming aspect of consciousness, the higher truth of mental projections as the architecture for our lived experience. In the next class, we worked with how sattva is also thought of as a collecting, coalescing, and gathering force. Think of those mental projections - Visnu’s dreams - as little centers of gravity which serve as blueprints for material reality. Although the materials are imperfect and the dream may never be realized, we witness sattva as a force that through its perfection draws the other threads of reality - rajas and tamas - to it. Think of it like as a charismatic leader who, through clarity of vision, unifies people of different, even oppositional, creeds and viewpoints. It may not be perfect (no shit), but they’re trying to come together.

What is interesting about that, however, is what happens when two opposites come into the same space. My teacher’s teacher, Appa, used to say that “when two opposites are found in the same place, the divine is present.” This is the unique power of sattva: to gather things together that ordinarily wouldn’t be in the same place and in doing so, to create a wholly new, third expression of reality. Balancing the volatile forces of creation (rajas) and the decaying influence of death (tamas), life emerges. Life as a sustaining if unstable equilibrium between birthing and dying.

To that end, we used our own imaginal capacities to craft a deeply energetic movement practice, using pranayama as an essential trail guide to the practice. We:

Began with an opening “savasana,” bringing attention to the opposing forces present within it - inhale and exhale, spinal flexion and spinal extension.
We explored inward and outward energy, how breath can create a tidal experience pulling into the core (torso) from the periphery (limbs) and exiting from the core back out the periphery.
We emphasized subtle ujjayi breath throughout the practice and then dedicated time to nadi shodhana, alternate nostril breathing, to explore the balance of oppositional forces in the energy body.

June 8

This class focused on sattva as an expression of clarity and lucidity, particularly of the mind (which for many is what yoga is all about) For those in the new, most are familiar with this particular conception of sattva because it’s detailed in the Bhagavad Gita as the journey from ignorance (tamas) through activation and agitation (rajas) to clarity of thought (sattva). However, there are other ways to think about this.

Again and again, the yoga tradition stresses the importance of mental cultivation, particularly the faculties of concentration and awareness. Within the gunas, sattva represents the most refined expression of these faculties. The resulting state of sattva, my teacher and I would argue, is best conveyed through the word lucidity. Lucidity means clarity of expression, a state of mind without confusion, and also the awareness of being in a dreaming state (this is Visnu to a T!). If sattva is an aspirational state of mind, then, we aim to develop our ability to concentrate and remain in awareness. Which, given the age, is really hard. However, the fruits of lucidity are great. To be clear in thought and action, in a state without confusion, and to know that so much of what you see and experience is not fixed or necessarily true is a gift. It leads to a great sense of poise, of knowing what to do at the right time in the right moment because there is almost nothing that escapes your attentions. Perception is power, you might say.

We took some steps towards cultivating during class. The best way I know to teach and practice this in yoga is to choose a basic anchor for practice and stick to it. This is in line with our previous discussions about sattva, a force that gathers and holds things together in order to achieve a state of continuity, of sustained preservation. The anchor we chose, unsurprisingly, was breath. Specifically, we used counted breath to create a through-line in the practice, establishing a more precise pace of movement that required us to concentrate continuously. We discovered that this is no easy feat, especially given the age. We:

Began with another deep, beginning restorative to map the sensation of breath in the body
Explored more rigorous asana to purposely challenge our ability to maintain an even, counted breath and our concentration
Focused on counting in seated pranayama to further encourage concentration, but in a more relaxed physical state.

So now we’re all caught up. And that’s all for now.

Saprema, Joey