Study YOGA

TRANSCRIPT

VIKRAM JEET SINGH

Amy:

Welcome to the Study Yoga Online Summit. If you are seeking beyond the sea of superficial yoga, flooding your feed, yearning for insightful conversations and community, or are a sincere seeker devoted to the depths of studentship, then the Study Yoga Masterclass series is the nectar that you need.

Vikram Jeet Singh is a yoga teacher, teacher trainer, mentor, and Ayurvedic practitioner currently residing in Goa, India with his daughter.

Over the course of the years gone by, he has accumulated more than 11,000 hours of teaching experience across the US, Canada, and India.

Being born and growing up in India, Vikram has always been fascinated with the rich history and stories from the Indian culture, which were a big part of his childhood.

His passion for sharing the wisdom and deep desire to study yoga history and philosophy has led him to share the practical teachings of the Yoga Sutra, Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads, alongside significant aspects of yoga history.

Vikram also runs mentorship courses and workshops for teachers, studios and practitioners to help bring yoga into every aspect of daily life for all a strong advocate of true diversity.

Vikram consults, yoga teachers and studios on decolonization and inclusion in both yoga and related settings. He loves to share his culture and experience of growing up in India and believes that all practitioners at some point should visit the birthplace of yoga.

It is so wonderful to be speaking with you again, Vikram, and you’re literally off the back of just having come home from international travel. So a huge thank you for being here. Welcome.

Vikram:

Thanks, Amy. It’s always nice to chat with you.

Amy:

So your bio seamlessly leads into the realm of focus for this conversation, yoga in daily life, and this could move in many directions. So let’s set some foundation by touching on cultural context. What does this mean and how is it something essential to understand for all yoga practitioners as a means to having greater integrity but also enriching our personal experience of yoga far more greatly?

Vikram:

That’s a great question. I think oftentimes when we start any sort of studies, we find ourselves with 1, 2, 3 seminal texts. We read some philosophy, we read the history, and for all practical purposes, we stay in the confines of the pages of the book. And as a book, likely could be a deep scripture, right? So I say that with reverence, but I think in order to fully imbibe what the cultural context is, one has to be on the ground, if you will, one, to be intermingling in the actual place where those texts were written, where those lives were lived, where those stories were told to read them in isolation and separate from the ground reality, from the embodied reality, from the lived reality would be a huge disservice in my experience. So when people say cultural context, I think it’s imperative that they’re able to look past what is available through, I guess social media, online resources and books, being able to speak with someone who’s lived in that environment, being able to take part in rituals of that environment, being able to take part if life permits, to actually go live in that environment, to fully understand what that cultural context is.

With reference to India, it’s a big country, multiple states or provinces, multiple official languages, multiple regional languages, and God knows how many thousands of dialects, lots of different religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs, and not one size fits all, which is great because yoga is not a one size fits all, right? It’s never has been slight digress bit. Even in this modern studio setting, we might lead a class, a generic 60 minute hot talk class with 25 bodies in there, but I’m hoping that the teacher at some point is speaking to each one body separately and uniquely as much as they can in the framework of generic cues or a 60 minute timeframe. So coming back to the cultural context piece, I think it’s imperative to have as much of a lived reality as possible and to broaden one’s horizon, to broaden one’s perspective. Sometimes I feel mostly in yoga centric conversations that the window tends to get a little too narrow, it gets a little too specific, it gets a little too colored by one’s own preconditioned experiences and narratives.

So in order to fully understand, embody experience, the cultural context of India or of yoga, it would be hard to separate the history and the culture of what we deem as yoga and India. They’re not separate, they’re interwoven. So in conclusion, or to wrap that up, I would say that if one is looking to go deeper into the cultural context of yoga, it would be practically impossible without deep diving into the cultural context of India, broadly speaking, and it’s relative history because they go hand in hand. Yoga history wasn’t happening in isolation. Yoga history is embedded in India’s history and for the sake of conversation, broadly speaking, south Asian history. Yeah,

Amy:

That’s great, Vikram, thank you. Just tie a bow on that and say we’re done. That just perfect. I loved how you articulated that. Thank you. And yeah, it’s at least speaking from my personal experience, the last few years I’ve felt inclined to delve into more academic study, which is certainly not the be all and end all, but more specifically related to yoga history. And I was never interested in history like in school. It just wasn’t a thing for me. But understanding the history of yoga and the complexities there, and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions and variations and we’re still figuring out the exact timeline, but it has only enriched my own practice. Of course, having traveled to India many times, that speaks for itself. But yeah, I’m so glad that you pointed out. It’s understanding the history and the culture at large. And I mean that’s big. That’s big because like you articulated at the very beginning, so there’s so many variations in India itself. It’s amazing, as many people say, it’s a melting pot, this huge amalgamation, but that’s yoga as well.

Vikram:

Yeah, I’d come up a survey and I might circle back and try and credit the source of that survey to you, but I think the object of the survey was to find the popularity of yoga in India. And I think the survey seemed to indicate that it wasn’t very popular, but I would be curious to know what part of yoga was surveyed, what were the questions like who? But a lot of people, yoga does not fit the same definition that it would fit in. I want to say in cosmopolitan India and in modern day rest of the world, my initiation to yoga in a studio setting did not happen to, I cross the borders and came to Canada, but initiation into a yogic way of living or a yogic way of thinking or just being able to understand that you are practicing those principles without it being labeled as a yoga class or a yoga session, I think they’re much more intrinsic and interwoven in one’s daily life. So yeah, let me circle back to you on that because that’s the other challenge. I sometimes feel that it comes to conversations around the popularity, if you will, of yoga in India. What are we looking at studio settings, ashrams, or are we looking at it’s general, I guess, embodiment and relationship with the people at large.

Amy:

And even if you were to define yoga, there are so many definitions of yoga and not even in the modern or western globalized sense of, okay, it’s really postural yoga. No, it’s not, it’s union. Well actually some suggest, no, it’s not union. So what is it? And then therefore, how is that expressed through a daily life? This is just such a huge but fascinating open-ended conversation really, but one that I think is very important that we as a global yoga community are having. And that’s why I feel really, really drawn to what you share and your work because you’re able to come through the lens of someone who is born and raised in India, but you have that great understanding of how yoga experienced and perceived in the rest of the world. But at the same time, and this is something you mentioned on the podcast too with me, is that the way yoga looks in the west is also very much how it’s developing in India itself as well.

So when folks in India also claim to practice yoga, we have to also say, well, what do you mean by that? What does that look like to you? It’s a really interesting time for that reason. Yeah. So let’s move on from that idea of cultural context, but keeping that as sort of the foundation here through the Vedic worldview. Would you mind giving us an overview of the four stages of life and perhaps some practical examples of living according to these inherent phases so we can not just understand the ashrams intellectually, but can begin to gently configure our lives to align with them?

Vikram:

Yeah, for sure. So conventionally there would be four stages or four. Asher must, like you said, bra sharia, a student’s life rooted in celibacy. I’m speaking from a IC lens. First,

Second would beta, which is a householder, which would technically start at the time of their marriage, vanta. So getting ready to step into retired life, fulfilling of your societal obligations towards your community, your family almost starting to slow things down. And then sanya, I run and see it, someone who’s going to leave mainstream society willingly and retreat away from active engagement in the world, almost approved by higher authority that, okay, you’ve done your bit, now it’s time to focus in the last little piece of your life. And they’re rooted with the four hur, the four main goals of life you can say, which would be, so we could spend the next many days just unpacking that, which let’s just say herma in terms of one’s spiritual and societal responsibilities. Arthur, how to earn a livelihood, how to support yourself and fulfill your obligations, your financial obligations, comma, the pursuit of one’s central pleasure and engagement with your partner and life.

And then moksha the big ticket, right? Finding liberation, finding moti, finding freedom, and they kind of go hand in hand these four, the first four and the second four go hand in hand. If I look at a modern day interpretation of that, it’s not really that different. Your average person would take the first quarter of their life if I was to shelf things nice and easy and focus on education, they would take the next quarter and work on raising a family, building a career, amassing wealth for taking care of the ones they have taken responsibility for the third quarter, almost streamlining everything, creating legacies, closing all open-ended responsibilities, setting up I guess your children for their later years and then the last quarter, if you will, to almost reflect an introspect on what the last three quarters have been, right? What remains common in both of these scenarios though?

The classical one and the modern one. I say that in air codes because who am I to say what’s classical and what’s modern? Whatever works for one would make the most sense for that person, right? Someone could be living a very classical life in a modern setup too, and that’s great if that works for them. But the common theme that runs along this conversation is the concept of dharma. It goes through all four phases because that’s the foundation, that’s the ethical foundation that’s going to keep you on track as you go about your life, fulfilling your responsibilities, but also gently remind you to not forget the spiritual aspect of it, the non-realistic aspect of one’s life. In all those four stages, as you grow older, it becomes evident, but to kind of keep you in check in the first two stages or the first half of your life, the moksha piece, I’m not really sure.

I think that’s an interesting conversation. When we look at modern day practitioners, the Sanskrit word for that is mukshu, someone who’s desirous of liberation, and I’ll be keen to pull the 300 million practitioners that we have across the world that how many are desirous of liberation? How many get up every day, roll out their mat or embark on the path of yoga in any capacity as they deem fit with the end goal being Somali or moksha. So I don’t know about that. Death is certain, moksha is not. There’s a difference. The life will end. It’s geared to do that, but the moksha is not guaranteed to close that question. If I bring it back to myself, I’ve used these frameworks when I became aware of them, and I’ll keep using them for the rest of my life. They are great guidelines. They are very non-dogmatic and non brigit.

They allow for a lot of flexibility and relative, or I should say relevant embodiment. So it’s great that they come from a history that is many, many, many thousands of years old, but it’s still applicable. And that’s why I said it’s no different than what the four stages meant, and a good framework, a good framework to add some purpose to your life. It’s a good framework to keep yourself in check as you go about pursuing material, spiritual central pursuits. It’s a good check to understand that as one gets older and as you move towards the end of one’s life, what will one’s legacy be outside or what the lead behind for their loved ones

Amy:

Are your legacy beyond your, let’s say, career pursuits or occupation. And I do really love how the latest stages of life, they come with a degree of reverence and thereby in some sense encourage us to have greater respect for our elders. And I think that that’s particularly in the West, I think that’s really lacking the way that we see that final stage of life. And we put people in old person’s homes, and there’s obviously certain circumstances where that’s absolutely appropriate. There’s context to everything and individualized factors for everything. But yeah, I think that as you perfectly articulated, it allows for a bit of fluidity, but it gives us a really lovely framework that’s timeless and very similar to what we inherently kind of live and would perhaps more so if we were more attuned and aware of it. But I think that yeah, what we could learn perhaps outside in the western world, the affluent world, is that there is almost a sense of awe for that toward that later stage of life.

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say, rather than, oh, I’m old and no one wants to get old and no one wants to age, and yet there’s such a wisdom in aging and a gift of being able to withdraw served. I’ve done my outer duties and now is my time to withdraw. And when you mention moksha and liberation, I think, yeah, okay. Most of us are not at least looking at that as our aim, but in some sense, I like to hope that those of us on the path of yoga who are really sincere practitioners, were at least aiming towards some kind of liberation from excessive desire, just having detachment, being able to just accept things, accept the body, the aging body, accept our circumstances, accept the life we’ve lived. And I think that that is still something to aspire to. I don’t know. What are your thoughts?

Vikram:

No, for sure for me, and I’m going to point to a specific text, not just from the pita perspective, but from my own lived experience so far in my life, nothing is ever going to go waste. So whether I consciously aspire towards liberation or it naturally comes as a result of the life that I’m leading right now, in both cases, none of the effort goes waste. So to kind of circle back to what you’re saying, one might not have at the end of their yoga goal, cheat sheet moksha ti, but to live a life in accordance with that will eventually take you there all roads lead to moksha, doesn’t matter. Dual non-dual Gita, yoga, Sora, doesn’t matter at the end of it, we are all headed in the same direction or that’s what the teachings tell us. It’s an embodied practice. The ones who actually get to that are not around to tell us if it’s true or not.

We have some great examples whose lives we can follow and be inspired by them, and they help us guide our, I think the other piece besides the fact that nothing ever goes waste is the concept of suffering. We are not too far coming out of a pretty intense collective suffering for many years that you live in Australia. At that point I was living in Canada, but now I live in India, but it doesn’t matter, we were all death hurt to this collective suffering of the pandemic in the last couple of years. And we are just coming out of that hopefully, and things will stay the way they are. So one common thread in all of our lives is suffering, whether manifested by us or as a result of external sources. And my hope also is that even if one might not be desirous liberation, they are desirous of a lessening of the suffering for themselves and then the life permits to pay it forward and let that become a prerogative that as a result of your practice, you’re now also invested in lessening the suffering of others.

Could be as simple as one person in your life and could be as magnanimous and generous as thousands of people, shelters and orphans and whoever’s life you can touch in any capacity. And again, it’s a personal practice, right? No one size fits all. One will do what they feel the most called to do. So even if one is not headed towards moksha, but working with the framework of continuity of one’s actions and working towards the lessening of suffering and the upliftment of others are two very fundamental goals, if you will. That one can her to as part of their practice as part of these four stages. And that’s the beauty of it. I honestly cannot wait to be older and to be at that one plus stage to know that my daughter is doing well, she has her own life, she needs me not so much for the physical support that she does now or other kinds of support. So I have that free time. So I would encourage one to think that when they get to that stage and who knows, you might be there even now, it’s not really age specific. If you have that bandwidth, not a bad idea to see what are you going to do with that time? Whatcha you going to do with the resources? What are you going to do with that privilege? Whatever that looks like. And can it be a part of someone else’s lived reality? Now

Amy:

That’s beautiful, Vikram. Yeah, I feel the same way too, really looking forward to aging in that sense. Obviously I know there’s going to be new challenges faced, but yeah, like my children growing up and seeing them hopefully thriving and that reflection of laying a solid foundation for them and then also having that gift of reclaiming your time to go deeper. And it’s almost like everything we’re doing now is laying the foundation for that final stage and our capacity to, I don’t want to say relish in it, it seems like it’s really anchored in desire, but just to really take advantage of the gift of that time and just being quietude and reflection and contemplation. And this is the thing too, I think there’s a real mentality of hurry in yoga hurrying to accumulate knowledge and techniques and skills. But when we step back and see the broader timeline and how in that final stage of life, if we’ve tended to caring for ourselves so that we are healthy in that later stage of life, it’s actually we’ve got so much space and time ahead of us, and that’s such a gift to reframe how we can pursue the path of yoga over many years.

Yeah. So moving on, I know you teach a lot about the Yammer and ni Yammer, which most people obviously know from Pat Ungles eight limbs. And so let’s pluck from the Yama Neba, and I really appreciate how you teach about all of them in such a useful, reflective and practical light, which we need. But can we hone in on which many interpret as simply self-inquiry on the individual level, like self-help in a sense, which obviously is beneficial, there’s no doubt about that. However, the traditional intent of S is study of the self, the capital S itself, the supreme han higher consciousness, or however you would feel inclined to allude to that, which is beyond time and form. And to do this again traditionally, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but this is through study of shastra or yogic scripture or texts if you prefer that language. So with this in mind, would you share with us firstly how this is woven into the fabric of daily life in India and then shed some light on the ideal approach to working with studying and contemplating any particular yogic text?

Vikram:

Sure. In the traditional times, one was very aware of the small S self, so it made a lot of sense that was directed towards the capital S self because one was very firmly rooted in what the small S self is. So then the bridge is easy from the small S self to the capital S self. But in my opinion, as time progressed as we evolve, it’s ironic we evolve when you go backwards, but we evolve in other places, technology and so on and so forth. But as time evolves, as our distractions increase, as our world gets bigger, larger, I do want to say in a lot of ways, definitely more beautiful new perspectives, new horizons, that firm footing around the small S seems to diminish with time. So I think when it comes to, if I’m speaking to a modern day practitioner, the entry point would be how firm is one’s own relationship in understanding the small S self.

That’s where the journey starts. And depending on where you are, one could spend a lot of time there first in making sure that there is complete understanding of one’s own mental makeup, right? Physical makeup’s easy. You go to the studio, you practice asana, you stick with it for long enough, that part is easy. At some point it starts permeating the inner landscape and one starts dwelling deeper into pranayama, into meditation, and then you start building that relationship with a small S self, you start asking those questions, the classical questions, who am I? What am I doing here? What’s my larger purpose in life? Who is divinity? What is my relationship with divinity? The classical framework to start that inquiry.

Now, the challenge there is one can stop right there or go a little deeper where SWAT becomes more self-help, and I don’t want to say new ag, but it kind of just stays in that self-help bucket. So we are spending years after, years after years just analyzing and psychoanalyzing, but never being able to go past that. I say this with some experience that I could spend multiple lifetimes trying to figure out and answer those two big questions. Who am I and what am I doing here? So in my opinion, when one is ready and has a firm footing on the concept of the small S self, then it’s time to go back to the traditional way of bringing in the shastra or the yogic text because without that framework, one is just going around in an endless loop. There is never any end to figuring out that small piece if you don’t have a classical framework that A is designed to do that and B has stood the test of time.

So it’s not a fad, it’s not something that was invented yesterday. It’s not something that blew up or went viral on the internet. It’s been around with the intent of what it did thousands of years ago, and it’ll do thousands of years later from today. So while it’s great to introspect, to journal, to meditate, to self inquire, to do any of those tangible activities that I can add to the practice of swat, it would be imperative to have a classical framework of a teacher that you’re working with and the text that they bring to you, or you’re working with the text on your own, you have that familiarity and you use that as a framework or you use that as a sounding board, or you use that sometimes literally as a place to find your answers. I think building that relationship, building that bridge, like they classically did one-on-one starting with the teacher whose aim was to be that whose aim was to be that condu of that knowledge.

No teacher was quoting something that wasn’t already existing. Do you know what I mean? That framework, that’s why I say that framework has took that test of time. So balancing the two or using one and then bridging the distance between the two to me would be a more successful, a more effective embodiment of SW as opposed to just staying in the, might seem a little harsh to use that word, but I’ll say it because it is that staying in the realm of just self-help and self-inspection would be a very shallow dip in the wider pool of SW or in the deeper pool of

Amy:

It’s almost keeping you identified with the individual self anyway. So it’s in some sense it’s limitation, it’s limiting us, but also I really appreciate your very balanced perspective on everything. Anytime I hear you speak, it’s a very, very balanced perspective. You always speak to both sides of the coin, so to speak, and I really appreciate it. And something that I thought just now is that even when we are at that more let’s say superficial level of self-help, I think what is useful in terms of keeping it anchored in yoga teachings is understanding the anatomy of the mind. We learn of manas and buddhi and hamara and so forth. And so I think for the listener, perhaps that’s sort of the angle to delve or an angle I should say, to delve into initially that it still keeps us tied to the yoga rather than it being, as you mentioned, more of a new age approach to the mind. What are your thoughts around that?

Vikram:

For sure, when in doubt, I just go back to the Yoga Sutra, chapter one, verse 12, use the same guiding principles uninterrupted, done over a long time with reverence of a devotion. So even if it’s something that technically is very limited to just let’s say introspection, journaling, anything that we can say, oh, that’s a new ag, don’t just stop there, stick with it. It’s the same thing with Asana. A lot of people, a lot of people, it’s gateway to the broader practice of yoga is through Asana, and that’s fine, that’s absolutely fine, but in order for it to bear fruit, one has to stick with that as well. Anyone who’s been practicing for a few years for a little while, they’ll tell you that the buck doesn’t stop at Asana. They’re stuck with asana long enough for them to keep expanding, to keep going beyond the asana, and then explore other avenues that the holistic practice has to offer.

I’m a great example of that myself, so that’s why I can speak to it with some confidence, but I had to stay with it. It’s that same analogy, if you’re trying to find water, you got to stick with one place and dig deep enough and then go just shallow surface digging in multiple spots will just leave to a big messy field, if you will, but nothing tangible will come out of it. So yeah, that’s great. Stick with anything. It doesn’t have to be, everything doesn’t have to be rooted in the same realm of how was done thousands of years ago. The audience was different, the teachers were different, the world was different. So if you are engaged in activities that are just scratching the surface, stick with them for long enough so that they can bear the fruits over time.

Amy:

That’s lovely and only emphasizes how important our discipline is in the yoga practice, but that’s taught in the yoga tradition as well, having that tappa, that staying power, that resolve to stay in it, to be baked in the yoga, so to speak, and something else that came through as you were speaking when we’re talking about the mind and reflecting on the individual self, I even thought about mantra. Mantra is meant to be, even when we look at the Sanskrit word, a tool for the mind, and maybe we don’t need to be journaling, but if we’re going through the traditional yogic lens or Vedic lens mantra, being a tool to help reveal to us the higher self or to some degree, but also to focus and concentrate and harness the mind without having to put pen to paper and journal and those more, I would probably say western modalities for therapy or healing or what have you.

So mantra is there, and if we approach mantra in the most traditional sense, learning it from a masterful teacher who is with Vedic recitation and so forth, there’s so much potency there. And again, the reverence card comes in because it’s like then we start to really delve into the value of Sanskrit and sound and has just this multilayered healing in some sense, but capacity to take us far deeper into yoga than we could perhaps intellectualize. I know that as someone personally that’s invested in a lot more mantra study in the past couple of years at least that’s been my experience in having that in your mind, like a song, having Vedic mantra in the mind. And when we tie that into what you’ve been speaking to in terms of texts, these texts were originally written in Sanskrit and have a very similar balm, let’s say, and capacity to take us closer to the higher self. So in terms of texts and as mentioned at the beginning, what you generally speak to, but for anyone listening in, what would you say is a really ideal starting point? Would it be the more common sutras, Orba Gita? Where would you place people generally when they’re coming into texts freshly out of just a dominant asana practice, let’s say?

Vikram:

I would say either, I would say either, and maybe having some understanding of what is one hoping to, I guess, get out of something that is coming from a body of knowledge that is very new to you. Most people that I meet in a non yoga teacher training setup, which would mean practitioners who’ve been practicing for a while but are not necessarily undergoing any formal training. These names might mean nothing to them, or maybe they might have heard them being mentioned around on social media. In conversations, I would go with either one. I would go with the yoga Sutres or with the pug. With gha, the challenge that I see for most folks is some sort of a relevant embodied application of those texts as opposed to reading it like a book. That’s where I think that to be that bridge, that bridge needs to be kind of closed. One has to be able to, it’s easy in a teacher training setup. One is sitting there with the intent to learn, and then your teacher comes and then they’re going to help you. They’re going to navigate you and tell you in depth. But when I think of an average practitioner who comes, does their rational class and goes, and at some point they’re curious, what would they do?

Anything that speaks to them, anything that speaks to them. I’ve seen both work. I’ve seen both those texts work with people who are relatively new, the Yoga Sutras or the Pita, those are the two seminal texts where people will find themselves invariably in yoga studios and yoga conversations. They inform a lot of the conversations in modern yoga, at least in the online world and in shared community spaces, they’re not very dense. They can be very dense and they can be very academic, but they also can be very relevant and embodied. So I would say either or and maybe even reaching out to a teacher in your community. Let’s say you are a practitioner and you’ve had no experience with any kind of yoga philosophy per se, broadly speaking, reaching out to your studio space or your practice or your teacher and seeing, Hey, I was keen, I was curious. Do you have any suggestions for me? Something in the realm of that, maybe a basic yoga philosophy, one-on-one course, just understanding some concepts and then being maybe drawn to one concept over the other. It’s a big dense field. This one can spend many left times just figuring out which text to maybe dust the cover from, not even it. And then you open the first page and you can be there for many lifetimes as well. So yeah.

Amy:

Actually, I have a question off the back of that. For you at least in your opinion or your experience, let’s say someone’s picked up, I’ll just by example, the Bhagavad Gita. Do you find it’s better? I know there’s no right or wrong, but at least in your experience, is it better to go deep into that one translation and spend a lot of time with it, or do you think it’s actually useful to pick up a few translations and study them like side by side? Because obviously translations do vary, and that’s a really important point here. For anyone listening and you haven’t spent a lot of time studying text, there’s a lot of variation, and particularly the text you’ve mentioned the Yoga Sutra and bta, both of them have numerous English translations and obviously other languages. So what’s the approach that you generally take or that you would advise?

Vikram:

There’s some great copies of let’s say, the essence of the Bhagavad Gita, for example, by Rin. It’s not a literal translation, but it’s very true to the messaging of the Bhagavad Gita, and it makes for a much softer landing for someone who’s brand new, it would be very hard to do that with the essence of the Yoga Sutra. There are some essence of the yoga Sutra, but they’re so far removed from the original translation that I would almost shudder to recommend then to recommend any of those. It’s a commentary on the commentary and a commentary on the commentary where we are so far removed, because the Gita is not a Sutra text, it’s a sch, it’s a verse. So it’s easy to expand, build on that, whereas the Sutra relies heavily on the commentary and short 3, 5, 6, 8, 10 words. So the chances of misinterpretation in the Sutra are much higher than in the Gita.

There’s some beautiful poetic renditions of the yoga Sutra, but they don’t do complete service to the original text or the original meaning. It doesn’t matter what kind of style of yoga you practice or what nationality you are, what ethnicity or any of our, I guess, identifying labels. So I would point someone in the direction of a generic essence of the Pita as opposed to some sort of a concise yoga sutra. Having said that, since we spoke about the Yama and the Yma, there’s some great translations of that, and that’s a very action oriented approach. It’s a very, in the world, we live in approach. You also know this in the translation of Somi nda, Nia or B’S translation. The very first line of the second chapter of the Yoga Sutra says that the first pada was for the one who is of an adept meditator, speaking simply now, let’s speak to the ones with the distracted mind, a K, all of us, and we introduce Korea yoga, and then go on to Ashtanga yoga, right?

So it’s clear, even the text almost knew back then that as this travels through time, as the world evolves, as things change, we’ll be faced with more distracted people, if you will, than the ones who can hold long, long stages of concentration. So if you will find yourself, let’s say in the realm of a concise version of the Yoga Sutra, I would draw someone to the very specifically the one that’s speaking about the eighth limbs or about the yamas in the yamas. Not the whole text as such, but switching sites and essence of the bug with Gita could be a great point to get into. I think my very first book, if I remember a long time back, was the essence of the Pita by Issuant. And I recommend it to pretty much everybody that I meet. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in a yoga teacher training or not, because it’s a beautiful introduction on what the text has to teach you in a very easy digestible format and comes from an embodied practitioner, comes from someone who lived that life.

Amy:

His work is wonderful, he’s got a number of different texts, and he’s got this very stunning way of poetic, metaphorical way I think, of communicating things, at least in my experience, but not something that wanders away from truth. It just merges those two things so seamlessly. And I think also too, your point about honing in on the Yama and Niyama, if you’re looking at something more accessible in terms of approaching the sutra, it’s amazing how even just that study in itself expands this huge window of opportunity of understanding yoga in daily life, but also each of the Yama and Yama can be interpreted in different ways, put in different contexts, especially in the more classical or traditional versus in modern life. And we see people who expand upon each of them in different ways, I suppose, as we’ve touched on with sw. But it is a seed because even for myself personally, Yama and Yammer was something I learned early on even before I started teaching yoga. But it’s sort of coming full circle because in more recent years I’ve become more aware that other texts mentioned Yama and Yammer, and they’re not even the same. And some texts actually mentioned more. And so you could just hone in on that and spend years exploring these teachings and contemplating how they can be brought into daily life.

Vikram:

Yeah, this is a personal interpretation. It doesn’t say the word Hama doesn’t exist in the Yoga Sutra, but since we spoke about that, it’s a foundational concept of the P Gita. The yamas and niyamas are the of the yoga Sutra. They’re the foundational principles, ethical principles. The Yoga Sutra is not a text of how to be in the world, but if one is using that as a guideline of how to be in the world, and you need a practical framework, ethical guidelines, things to do when you interact with people, things to do for introspection for your own self, one has a great framework in the yamas and the yamas, so it’s possible. We also tend to sometimes alienate the yoga sutra and put it very categorically that, oh, a re and see it, aesthetic, male celibate monk, but not all of it.

Amy:

And it’s a whole other direction of conversation that you could go in, but you could also speak to, do you get a translation of a text that is translated by an academic versus someone who is just a masterful, I shouldn’t say just, but is a masterful teacher, completely different lens coming at exactly the same text and teachings, which I think is really

Vikram:

Interesting. I would say since we all want the best scenario for us all the times, I would say get someone, get a translation that has stood the test of time that comes from academia, and then find a teacher who can make it relevant for you. That would be perfect, because the person from academia probably does not necessarily teach it. They wrote a beautiful rendition and then they moved on. Who knows, maybe they teach it. But if you can find one that is true to the interpretation and then a teacher who can help bring it together for you and make it relevant for you, that would be ideal. And I guess that’s true of any yogic texts. I’ve studied some very dense yogic texts, but who I studied them with helped me find some practical application of those texts in my life. So yeah, that would be an ideal scenario. Then it’s a text, then it’s a living text, then it’s a living body of knowledge, not an archaic one.

Amy:

Yeah, that’s helpful. Very. They do exist. There’s academics out there that are long-term practitioners that can come through that lens, but it is hard to take off. I can imagine the academic hat and such a gift, like the academic research, because there are, particularly in the last few years, there’s more and more texts that are coming through now that are being translated. So obviously my understanding is that that BTA and the yoga ERs are really, in some sense, most well known because they were the two or one of the first two texts to be translated to English and thereby reach a really global audience. But we have the gift of academic research that is bringing more and more texts to us, which is connecting dots. But yeah, it is tricky to then take that text and weave it into the body, the practice into daily life and assimilate the information.

Vikram:

Yeah, I guess the last thing I would say on that piece is when one starts to study those texts and lift those texts move from a place of relative and absolute. So the texts are giving you what are the absolute goals. If you go back to the yamas and yma, right, the text will give you an absolute goal for the yamas and the yma, and then one finds their relative relationship with those absolute goals and maybe one day aspires to go from their relative goals right now to their absolute goals. And again, one size, we can’t do the one size fits all, but having a framework is very important. I think that’s where we need to all wear a big hat of humility and understand that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Someone did us a massive service free of cost in most cases, or easily accessible, don’t have to walk thousands of miles through a parch desert to get to a copy. It’s at your closest bookstore, probably available online. So I think being appreciative of that gift we’ve been left behind. Having that framework that we have and then finding the relevancy. I think that’s what keeps both the reverence and the relationship intact.

Amy:

So good. So before we close, Vikram, is there anything that you would like to add just in general that comes through for you in the realm of yoga in daily life that you feel might be pertinent or important just to share in closing?

Vikram:

It’s hard. It’s hard. I wish I could say one important thing. I guess what comes to my mind is always be in the seat of a student. Doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been here, always be in the seat of a student and have an open perspective as yoga history, yoga culture, yoga philosophy, yoga studies, as all of that evolves, I think having an open perspective so you can have informative dialogues and not be rigid. I am of the firm belief that yoga makes you flexible, but my belief is that it goes beyond the body. So at some point, there we go. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. So there’s one thing I’m going to leave you and anyone else who listens to this would be that think of your practice broadly speaking, more than just the flexibility of the body. If you can let it permeate into your mind and it brings about less rigidity, then I think the practice is working. Yeah,

Amy:

It’s interesting because every guest that I’ve had on the summit, I go away and I’ve literally, I’ve got things going swirling through my mind, just that each guest has shared. I know I’m going to do the same with you, and if often I’m interviewing someone and it’s in the evening, I literally have dreams about the subject matter that we’ve been talking about. And this has been so wonderful. I really, really cherish any opportunity I can to speak with you, but also listen to, you’ve been featured on many podcasts and so forth, and very much as I’ve already said, appreciate your very balanced perspective on all things and appreciate your capacity to translate things. As someone who’s been born and raised in India, I personally love India. Love going back, love taking people there, and it’s argued, but do you need to travel to India? I think without being pushy, it’s like, yeah, I actually really think you do. It’s not like, okay, you’re going to get a slap on the wrist if you don’t, but I actually think you’re really missing out if you don’t.

Vikram:

I would say put it on your list, trust, and then trust the process. It’s depending on where you’re coming from, it’s a long way, but it’s worth the travel.

Amy:

Absolutely. So for those listening, if you are tuning in and you feel drawn to learning more from and with Vikram, you can head to his website, which is wanderingmat.com, and Vikram also has a coupon code that you can apply to any of his self-paced online courses, which you can find on his website. So just jump over to the summit webpage and you can grab all the specific details there. And Vikram’s Instagram account also hosts a wealth of wonderful insight and contemplations highly recommended, and that is also @wanderingmat, and yes, to you listening, thank you so much for tuning in. Don’t forget you can upgrade to gain lifetime access to all these wisdom fueled conversations. And of course, immense thanks to you Vikram, for always offering such accessible and yet illuminating teachings that are anchored in the timeless and traditional wisdom of yoga in a way that present day practitioners can easily and steadily assimilate over time. So thank you so much.

Vikram:

Thanks, Amy.