If tamas is the sacred weight of descent and rajas the restless fire of becoming, then sattva is what becomes visible when weight and fire find balance. It is the quality of luminosity, harmony, and intelligibility – the clear seeing […]

If tamas is the weight of the earth, rajas is the fire that refuses to stay contained. Where tamas grounds and stills, rajas ignites and agitates. It is the spark that leaps, the flame that spreads, the heat that drives […]

Yoga is often presented as a journey toward clarity — toward light, awakening, balance. And yet, the journey itself unfolds within the constant dance of three qualities that shape every moment of our experience: the gunas. sattva, rajas, and tamas […]

Abhinivesha is perhaps the most elusive of the kleshas—and the most deeply rooted. Patanjali describes it as the fear of death, but this isn’t just about physical mortality. It’s the tenacious grip we have on life-as-we-know-it, the instinctual clinging to […]

If raga is the longing for what pleases us, dvesha is its shadow: the aversion to what we find unpleasant. These two often work as a pair, tugging us toward and away from experience, keeping us oscillating between craving and […]

Raga is a familiar presence in our lives. It’s that longing for a past joy, the hunger for something just out of reach, the belief that happiness lies in securing and repeating pleasurable experiences. As the third of the kleshas, […]

Following on from our exploration of avidya (ignorance or lack of knowledge), we turn now to the second of the kleshas: asmita. While avidya lays the foundation for all the kleshas by obscuring our ability to see things clearly, asmita […]

Like many systems of thinking from around the world, yogic philosophy puts our dukkha or suffering squarely at the foot of our deeply conditioned responses to the world. The reality that we co-create with the people and situations that we […]

Time. I’m fascinated by our perception of time. Our experience of it varies wildly, with nothing to ‘occupy us’ it can seem to crawl by, when we have a lot to do it flies by, sometimes it feels very full […]

Aparigraha is the principle of non-grasping and is the fifth Yama (principles to live by according to the sage Patanjali). It’s something that we work hard to cultivate in our practice at SSY. It’s so easy to get drawn into […]