(Especially if you’re time shy like me)
Svadyaya is to study scriptures and the self.
I pretty much always start my practice in Sphinx pose reading some holy text or quote which’ll inspire my practice. Sometimes I take my book with me through the practice.
Admittedly you can’t fully focus on bodily sessions while you’re reading and vice versa but it’s a good happy medium.
The teachings will absorb themselves eventually and inevitably and it’s better than thinking about your to-do list while you’re on your mat.
For the last 6 months of zoom yoga I’ve been reading Paths to God, living the Bhagavad Gita by Ram Dass. I love his teachings, they’re so real.
In talking about my favourite subject, Guru, he says:
“Along the way there are upagurus. They are teachings for us; they are like marker stones along the road that say “go this way, go that way.” (𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚝 𝚖𝚢 𝚔𝚒𝚍𝚜, 𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚐𝚕𝚘𝚋𝚊𝚕 𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚒𝚌) I think, in fact, that it’s much more productive to look at those beings that way- as teachings rather than teachers. That way, we can take a teaching here and there and then go on, instead of getting hung up in deciding. “Is this really my teacher?” (𝙱𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢, 𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚝 𝚒𝚜, 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚏 𝚠𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚢) (...) and then we sit around judging, comparing and worrying whether we made the right choice. None of that intellectual analysis is conducive to getting the Bhakti juices flowing. The more the inner wisdom develops, the more we see we are not being left alone to deal with our situation. We look around and see we are being guided, protected. Even while we thought we were doing it all ourselves, there were these beings nudging us along.”
While I let go of trying to be like someone else. I hear my teachers voices, I feel their love and go about doing MY thing. Proof that the teachings, eventually and inevitably are nudged in.
I humbly bow down to the markers, the ‘this ways’ and ‘that ways’, my teachers, the teachings, the texts, this life.
Who’s nudging you along the way?