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 are not moral categories, personality types, or fixed states. They are energetic tendencies — subtle textures of consciousness and matter — moving through everything in nature, including our thoughts, bodies, relationships, and spiritual practice. Originally rooted in Sankhya philosophy, the gunas are foundational in understanding how we relate to life, and how we get bound or freed by our own patterns. They aren’t obstacles to overcome — they are the very language of our becoming.

Over the next three blog posts, we’ll explore each of these qualities in turn. But unlike many interpretations that rush toward the ‘purity’ of sattva, we’ll begin where most of us actually are: in the mud, the fog, the gravity of tamas. Because to deny tamas is to deny the womb of transformation. And if we’re unwilling to go down into the dark, we cannot rise with integrity into the light.

tamas: the sacred weight

tamas is often translated as inertia, darkness, lethargy, or obscuration. And while those words can sound pejorative, they don’t capture the sacred, necessary dimension of tamas. This is the energy of stillness, of rest, of decay and dissolution — the compost from which life renews itself.

In its balanced form, tamas helps us ground, pause, and reset. It wraps us in deep sleep, holds us during grief, quiets the nervous system, and draws us inward when the world has become too much. Without Tamas, there is no end to the doing. No root. No wintering. No death — and without death, no rebirth.

But when tamas dominates without awareness, it can manifest as depression, disconnection, self-doubt, apathy, or numbness. We get stuck in loops that feel too heavy to name. We know we want to move, to shift — but can’t remember how, or why. We feel cut off from our own aliveness. And often, we judge ourselves harshly for this state — compounding the inertia with shame.

befriending the dark

The yogic path doesn’t ask us to eliminate tamas. It asks us to relate to it differently. Not as an enemy to be conquered, but as a signal: something is calling for rest, repair, or release. When we befriend tamas, we begin to distinguish between sacred stillness and stagnation. We learn to feel the difference between a nourishing cocoon and a suffocating prison.

For many of us — especially in a world that demands constant productivity — Tamas shows up after long periods of overexertion. The body collapses. The mind resists. The spirit goes quiet. It is the aftermath of unsustainable striving (Rajas), or the natural descent after a peak.

Rather than resisting the descent, can we surrender to it consciously? Can we wrap ourselves in the softness of not-knowing and let the old stories fall away? tamas becomes sacred when we enter it with curiosity, not fear. When we trust the wisdom of retreat.

a practice

When you notice tamas arising — a pull toward sleep, withdrawal, heaviness — pause. Not to fix it, but to feel it. Ask:

• Is this a call for deep rest?

• What am I grieving, or releasing?

• Where am I refusing to let something die?

Then offer yourself a simple practice that honors the weight:

• Lie on the earth.

• Dim the lights.

• Breathe into your belly.

• Let silence be with you in the stillness, no requirement to explain or analyse.

a descent remembered

In the ancient texts, Bhūmi Devi, the Earth Goddess, is not just the ground beneath our feet — she is patience made manifest. Endlessly yielding, endlessly holding. When the weight of the world becomes too much, it is she who absorbs it.

During times of great imbalance, it is Bhūmi who descends — not to fight, but to endure. In one telling, when the asura Naraka overwhelmed the world with cruelty, she bore the sorrow of the earth until Viṣṇu intervened. But it was she who carried the suffering. She who held steady. She who didn’t collapse under the chaos, but let it pass through her dense, grounded being.

Bhūmi doesn’t rush to fix or to rise. She teaches us to stay. To root. To remember the slow intelligence of the soil. When we sink into tamas with reverence, we enter Bhūmi’s embrace — quiet, unmoving, vast. She reminds us that even the heaviest things can be held.

In the next post, we’ll move into rajas — the fire that agitates, propels, and distracts. But for now, let tamas have its due. Sink in. Let the dark hold you. There is wisdom there.