The first of August has long been marked in Britain as the beginning of the harvest.

In Anglo-Saxon tradition it became known as Lammas, from hlāfmæsse — the “Loaf Mass” — when the first bread made from newly harvested grain was offered in blessing.

In the Gaelic world it is known as Lughnasadh, a festival associated with the god Lugh and the myth of Tailtiu, who gave her life clearing the land so that people could be fed. In this story, harvest is never separate from sacrifice. What nourishes life is always born of relationship, effort, and care.

Nothing ripens alone.

No loaf is made from a single grain.

No life becomes itself in isolation.

As the light of midsummer begins its slow softening, we are invited to notice what has quietly come to fruition within us.

Not only what we have done.

But what has grown within us through time, attention, and care.

This practice is an invitation to enter the first harvest.

Not to gather things.

But to recognise what has ripened in you.

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“Perhaps the body was never made of separate parts at all. Perhaps muscles, bones and organs were simply the landmarks we noticed first. And what if the tissue we ignored for centuries turns out to be one of the most important conversations happening inside us?”

When many people begin yoga, they think they’re stretching muscles.

Hamstrings.

Hip flexors.

Shoulders.

Back.

For generations, anatomy taught us to imagine the body like a machine: muscles pulling on bones through tendons, each structure performing its own isolated task. But over the past few decades another picture has emerged. Not one of separate parts. One of continuity. A living web that wraps, supports, connects and communicates throughout the entire body. This is fascia.

Not a new discovery, surgeons have always encountered it, but a tissue whose significance has only recently begun to be appreciated.

For yoga practitioners, it changes less about what we do than about how we understand what we are already experiencing.

What is fascia?

Imagine peeling an orange.

The white fibrous strands that separate each segment...

The thin membrane beneath the skin...

The delicate wrapping around every section...

That gives a rough sense of fascia.

Inside your body, fascia forms an uninterrupted three-dimensional network.

It surrounds every muscle.

Every nerve.

Every blood vessel.

Every organ.

Every bone.

Every joint.

It is impossible to remove one piece without affecting another because it is, quite literally, continuous.

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This essay forms the fourth thread in an ongoing exploration of trauma-informed practice, embodiment and movement. We began by exploring how life experiences can shape our nervous systems and our relationship with the body. We then turned towards embodiment (the practice of inhabiting our lived experience more fully) and functional movement, the ways awareness and adaptation reveal themselves through daily life. Here we explore a deeper question: Why are movement, emotion, thought, breath and awareness so profoundly interconnected?

Most modern approaches to health begin by dividing us into parts. There is the body; the mind; emotions; relationships; work; health; spirituality. Each placed neatly into its own category, studied separately, managed separately and often treated separately.

Yet our lived experience rarely behaves this way. A difficult conversation can tighten the jaw and alter the breath. A physical injury can affect confidence, mood and identity. An anxious thought can change posture. A deep exhale can soften fear. A walk through woodland can shift our perception of the world.

Everything influences everything else.

Long before neuroscience, psychology or systems theory began describing these relationships, Tantrik traditions were exploring the same reality through direct experience. Not as an abstract philosophy, not as a belief system, but as a way of understanding what it means to be alive.

Rather than viewing human beings as collections of separate parts, many Tantrik traditions describe what might be called a Tantrik Ecology of Experience.

An ecology in which body, breath, thought, emotion, awareness and world continually shape one another. Not a hierarchy, a ladder, not even layers, more like a living ecosystem, or a web, or a mandala, or a spiral. Every point influencing every other point simultaneously.

This perspective offers a profound lens through which to understand trauma, embodiment and functional movement. Not as separate conversations, but as different expressions of the same living reality.

In this article, we will explore a Tantrik understanding of the multilayered self. Not as a philosophical model to be learned or believed, but as a way of recognising the relationships already unfolding within our lives.

From this perspective, trauma, embodiment and functional movement are not separate topics sitting alongside one another. They are different ways of witnessing the conversations taking place within a living ecology of experience, an ecology in which body, vitality, thought, emotion, spaciousness, awareness and the world itself continually shape and inform one another.

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This essay forms the third thread in an ongoing exploration of trauma-informed practice, embodiment and movement. We began by exploring how life experiences can shape our nervous systems and our relationship with the body. We then turned towards embodiment—the practice of inhabiting our lived experience more fully. Here we explore functional movement and how awareness, adaptation and nervous system regulation reveal themselves through the everyday acts of moving, reaching, balancing and living.

Most people assume movement is automatic.

We stand up. We walk. We bend. We reach. We sit. We carry. We climb stairs. We roll over in bed.

Movement seems so ordinary that we rarely question it, until something hurts.

Yet beneath every simple action lies an extraordinary conversation between muscles, joints, connective tissue, breath, perception, memory and nervous system. Movement is not simply mechanical. It is relational. It reflects how we inhabit ourselves.

This is where the concept of functional movement becomes important.

Functional movement refers to the body’s ability to move efficiently, effectively and appropriately for the demands being placed upon it.

In simple terms, it means being able to perform everyday activities with ease, adaptability, coordination and minimal strain.

Functional movement is not about touching your toes, standing on your head or achieving perfect posture. It is not about how flexible, strong or athletic you appear. It is about whether the body can organise itself well enough to meet the tasks of daily life.

Can you bend down and pick something up from the floor without strain?

Can you reach overhead comfortably?

Can you turn to look behind you while driving?

Can you carry shopping, climb hills, get up from the floor or play with your grandchildren?

Can your body adapt when the ground beneath you changes, when you lose your balance, or when life asks something unexpected of you?

These are questions of function.

A body may be strong yet function poorly.

A body may be flexible yet move inefficiently.

A body may even appear healthy whilst relying upon layers of compensation that eventually lead to pain, fatigue or injury.

Functional movement is not about how movement looks.

It is about how movement works.

Why Functional Movement Matters

The human body evolved for movement.

Our ancestors walked vast distances, climbed, squatted, carried, balanced, crawled and adapted continuously to changing environments. Movement was not a separate activity called “exercise.” It was woven into daily life.

Modern living often narrows our movement vocabulary.

Hours spent sitting, driving, working at computers and looking down at screens can gradually reduce mobility, coordination and sensory awareness. Certain movement patterns become overused whilst others become forgotten.

Over time the body adapts to these habits.

Joints become restricted.

Muscles become weak or overactive.

Breathing patterns change.

Balance deteriorates.

The nervous system begins to rely upon increasingly limited movement strategies.

At first this may not be noticeable.

Eventually it often appears as stiffness, recurring aches, reduced resilience, loss of confidence, or chronic pain.

Good functional movement supports not only physical health but independence, vitality and quality of life.

It allows us to engage more fully with the activities we love.

It enables us to age with greater confidence.

It helps us meet life’s changing demands without unnecessary effort.

In many ways, functional movement is less about fitness and more about freedom.

When Functional Movement Becomes Compromised

There are many reasons movement patterns become less functional.

Sometimes the cause is obvious.

A sprained ankle may alter the way a person walks for months or years afterwards. A shoulder injury may change how someone reaches overhead. Surgery, illness or chronic pain can all create adaptations that persist long after tissues have healed.

The body is remarkably intelligent.

When injury occurs it develops protective strategies designed to keep us safe.

The challenge is that these strategies can become habitual.

A compensation that was helpful during recovery may continue long after it is needed.

The body begins solving movement problems using workarounds rather than restoring full function.

Over time these compensations can create new difficulties elsewhere.

The knee compensates for the ankle.

The hip compensates for the knee.

The lower back compensates for the hip.

What began as protection gradually becomes restriction.

Yet injury is only one piece of the story.

Many movement limitations arise not from structural problems but from diminished awareness.

The Missing Ingredient: Embodiment

Many of us live predominantly from the neck up.

Our attention is constantly drawn outward, towards work, responsibilities, notifications, conversations and endless streams of information.

The body becomes something we carry rather than somewhere we consciously live.

Embodiment offers a different possibility.

Embodiment is the practice of inhabiting experience directly through the body.

It is the capacity to feel sensation, recognise patterns, notice habits and develop a deeper relationship with our lived experience.

Without embodiment it is surprisingly difficult to move well.

If we cannot sense how we stand, how we breathe, where we hold tension or how we distribute weight through our feet, we have little opportunity to refine these patterns.

The body may be communicating constantly, but we are no longer listening.

Functional movement depends upon awareness.

The nervous system requires accurate sensory information in order to coordinate efficient action.

Before movement can change, it must first be felt.

This is why sustainable movement improvement is rarely achieved through correction alone.

People can be told where to place their feet, how to align their shoulders or how to engage particular muscles.

Yet genuine change often emerges when awareness deepens and new possibilities become available from within.

The body learns not simply through instruction but through experience.

Trauma and the Body

There is another layer that is often overlooked.

Sometimes movement patterns are shaped not by injury or lack of awareness but by trauma.

Trauma is not defined solely by what happened.

It is also shaped by how the nervous system responded.

When experiences overwhelm our capacity to cope, the body develops protective adaptations designed to increase safety and survival.

These adaptations are intelligent.

They are not mistakes.

They are expressions of the nervous system doing its best under difficult circumstances.

Yet over time they can influence movement in profound ways.

Some people become habitually braced.

The shoulders lift.

The jaw tightens.

The breath becomes shallow.

The abdomen remains contracted.

Others may collapse through the chest, withdraw from sensation or lose awareness of parts of their body altogether.

The effects are not merely emotional.

They are physical, neurological and relational.

The body learns patterns of protection.

These patterns influence posture, breathing, balance, coordination, muscle tone and movement choices.

In this sense, functional movement cannot always be separated from nervous system regulation.

A body organised around protection will move differently from a body that feels safe.

This understanding has transformed many contemporary approaches to movement and rehabilitation.

Rather than asking, “What is wrong with this body?” we begin asking, “What is this body protecting?”

Why Trauma-Informed Yoga Matters

This is one reason trauma-informed yoga has become such an important development within contemporary yoga teaching.

Trauma-informed yoga recognises that movement is never merely physical.

Every posture, breath and sensation occurs within the context of an individual’s nervous system and life experience.

Rather than imposing idealised shapes or demanding particular outcomes, trauma-informed approaches prioritise choice, agency, safety and curiosity.

Students are invited to explore rather than perform.

To notice rather than achieve.

To experience rather than perfect.

The goal is not to force the body into alignment.

The goal is to create conditions in which the nervous system feels safe enough to discover new possibilities.

Research increasingly suggests that body-based practices can support nervous system regulation, interoception (the ability to sense internal bodily states) and emotional wellbeing. Through gentle attention to sensation, breath and movement, people often begin rebuilding relationships with parts of themselves that have been ignored, suppressed or disconnected.

Functional movement improves not simply because muscles become stronger or joints become more mobile.

It improves because awareness, safety and adaptability begin to return.

How Yoga Supports Functional Movement

At its best, yoga is a laboratory for human movement and awareness.

Through standing, sitting, balancing, reaching, twisting, folding, breathing and resting, we encounter ourselves in motion.

We begin noticing habits.

Where do we grip unnecessarily?

Where do we avoid effort?

Where do we compensate?

Where do we hold tension?

Where do we disconnect?

Yoga offers an opportunity to explore movement slowly enough for awareness to catch up.

Strength develops.

Mobility improves.

Balance refines.

Breath becomes more available.

Coordination increases.

Yet perhaps more importantly, the relationship between awareness and movement deepens.

The body becomes less something we control and more something we learn to listen to.

Functional movement emerges naturally from this dialogue.

Not because we have perfected ourselves.

But because we have become more responsive.

More adaptable.

More embodied.

How We Explore Functional Movement at Yoga Nature

At Yoga Nature, functional movement is not approached as a separate system layered on top of yoga. Rather, it informs how we practise.

We explore movement as something to be felt, not simply performed.

Sometimes this means slowing down enough to notice how we transition into and out of a posture. Sometimes it means exploring multiple ways of moving rather than searching for a single “correct” shape. Sometimes it means strengthening. Sometimes it means resting. Sometimes it means recognising that what serves one body may not serve another.

Within our classes, we encourage curiosity about how movement feels rather than how it looks.

Can the breath move freely?

Can effort and ease coexist?

Can we notice when we are compensating, gripping or holding ourselves against gravity?

Can we discover new possibilities rather than forcing old patterns?

This approach recognises that every body carries its own history. Injuries, habits, occupations, life experiences and nervous system patterns all influence the way we move. Rather than asking students to conform to an ideal, we seek to create a space where each person can develop greater awareness, adaptability and confidence within their own body.

Over time, this process often leads not only to improved mobility, strength and balance, but also to a deeper sense of embodiment, a feeling of being more at home in oneself.

Returning to Ourselves

Ultimately, functional movement is not about optimisation.

It is not about becoming the strongest, most flexible or most efficient version of ourselves.

It is about restoring relationship.

Relationship with breath.

Relationship with sensation.

Relationship with the intelligence of the body.

A functional body is not a perfect body.

It is a body capable of responding appropriately to life as it unfolds.

A body that can adapt rather than merely endure.

A body that can sense, respond, recover and participate fully in the world.

This is where yoga becomes far more than exercise.

It becomes a practice of remembering.

Remembering that beneath the compensations, protections and habits accumulated across a lifetime, the body remains profoundly intelligent.

And when we learn once again to listen, movement can become not merely something we do, but a way of coming home to ourselves.

In our previous essay, Embodied yoga is not modern wellness. It is a Tantrik practice of recognition through the body, What embodied yoga really means, and how we hold it within Yoga Nature classes, we explored embodiment through the lens of non-dual Śaiva Tantra.

For some readers, the ideas felt intuitive.

For others, terms such as Śiva, Śakti, spanda, and pratyabhijñā may have seemed beautiful but difficult to grasp.

This is completely understandable.

The Tantrikas were attempting to describe something that ultimately resists language: the nature of consciousness itself.

No metaphor is perfect. Every comparison breaks down eventually. Yet metaphors can help us approach ideas that are difficult to understand conceptually by pointing towards something we already know through experience.

What follows are several different ways of approaching the same insight.

Not different truths.

Different windows looking into the same room.

1. The Music

Imagine listening to a piece of music.

There is the melody.

The rhythm.

The rise and fall of intensity.

The silence between notes.

The feeling that the music is alive.

In this metaphor:

Śiva is the silent possibility of music itself, the ever-present capacity from which sound emerges.

Śakti is the music as it unfolds: melody, harmony, rhythm, expression.

Spanda is the pulse within the music, the subtle aliveness that gives movement and flow to the whole composition.

Pratyabhijñā is the moment you stop hearing isolated notes and recognise the music as a whole.

Nothing new has appeared.

The music was always there.

Only your perception has changed.

2. The Oak Tree

At Yoga Nature, we spend a great deal of time beneath trees.

So perhaps this metaphor feels closer to home.

Imagine an oak.

Its roots reach deep into the earth.

Its branches stretch towards the sky.

Leaves unfurl in spring.

Acorns fall in autumn.

Bark thickens with age.

Yet all of these seemingly separate parts belong to one living process.

In this metaphor:

Śiva is the life of the tree itself.

Śakti is that life expressing itself as roots, bark, leaves, branches, acorns, and seasonal change.

Spanda is the continual movement of life through the tree, the rising sap, growth, decay, and response to wind and weather.

Pratyabhijñā is recognising that the leaf was never separate from the tree.

Nor the branch.

Nor the acorn.

Everything was always the tree expressing itself.

Likewise, thoughts, sensations, emotions, breath, body, and world may appear separate, yet are expressions of a single living reality.

3. The Breath

Perhaps the simplest metaphor is one we carry with us every moment.

The breath.

Before we think about it, analyse it, or control it, breathing is already happening.

In this metaphor:

Śiva is the simple capacity for breathing.

Śakti is the movement of inhalation and exhalation.

Spanda is the subtle rhythm running through the process.

Pratyabhijñā is the moment we stop thinking about breathing and become directly aware of participating in it.

The breath does not suddenly begin.

We simply notice what was already occurring.

Recognition works in much the same way.

4. The Human Experience

Perhaps the most direct metaphor is simply ourselves.

Imagine sitting quietly.

You notice your breathing.

You notice sensations in the body.

Thoughts arise.

Emotions move.

Sounds appear and disappear.

Awareness remains.

In this metaphor:

Śiva is the fact that experience is being known.

Śakti is everything that is known: body, breath, thought, feeling, memory, imagination, and world.

Spanda is the continual movement and unfolding of that experience.

Pratyabhijñā is the recognition that awareness is not separate from life.

The observer and the observed are not two independent realities.

There is simply experience arising within awareness.

From Metaphor to Practice

Metaphors can help us understand ideas intellectually.

But the Tantrikas were never primarily interested in intellectual understanding.

They were interested in direct experience.

The question was never merely:

“What is Śiva?”

or

“What is Śakti?”

The question was:

“How do we recognise these realities within our own lived experience?”

Perhaps the simplest way to explore this is to imagine yourself standing quietly beneath a woodland canopy.

You feel the earth beneath your feet.

The movement of breath in your chest.

Wind against your skin.

Birdsong drifting through the trees.

Sunlight moving through leaves overhead.

Śiva

In this moment, Śiva is the fact that all of this is being known.

The simple presence of awareness.

Not something distant or mystical.

Simply the capacity for experience itself.

Śakti

Śakti is everything appearing within experience.

The breath.

The sensation of your feet touching the earth.

The sound of birdsong.

The movement of thought.

The warmth of sunlight.

The feeling of being alive.

The entire field of lived experience.

Spanda

Spanda is the continual movement of that experience.

Nothing remains static.

The wind shifts.

Birdsong appears and disappears.

The breath expands and releases.

Sensations change.

Attention moves.

Life pulses.

Pratyabhijñā

Pratyabhijñā means recognition.

The moment we begin to notice that awareness is not separate from this living experience.

Not somewhere outside it.

Not observing from a distance.

But already present within and as the unfolding of experience itself.

This is where embodied yoga begins. Not with philosophy. Not with perfect postures. But with direct participation in experience itself.

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So Where Does Proprioception Fit?

Proprioception is one way Śakti becomes known.

It is the body’s capacity to sense itself in space.

You notice:

• your feet on the earth

• the position of your shoulders

• the movement of your spine

• the weight of your body

Proprioception refines our ability to perceive embodied experience.

In Tantrik language, it helps bring awareness into clearer relationship with the way consciousness is appearing as form.

Not because form is more important than awareness.

But because form is one expression of awareness.

Where Does Interoception Fit?

Interoception is another way Śakti becomes known.

Instead of sensing the body’s position in space, we sense:

• breath

• heartbeat

• tension

• temperature

• emotion

• subtle feeling tones

Interoception allows awareness to perceive its own interior expression.

This is why interoception is so central to embodiment.

Without it, much of our experience remains unconscious.

The more refined our interoception becomes, the more deeply we are able to participate in the living reality of our experience.

So What Is Embodied Yoga?

In this framework, embodied yoga is not creating Śiva.

Nor creating Śakti.

Nor creating spanda.

They are already present.

Embodied yoga is refining our capacity to recognise them.

The practices become ways of noticing.

A slower movement.

A breath-awareness practice.

A body scan.

Meditations such as Ajapa Japa or Antar Mouna.

A mindful walk through woodland paths.

All become opportunities for recognition.

Not because they add something new.

But because they help us perceive what is already here.

Where Does Trauma-Informed Yoga Fit?

This is where the philosophy becomes practical.

Imagine someone standing in the same woodland.

The same birdsong.

The same sunlight.

The same breeze.

Yet their nervous system has learned that the world is unsafe.

Their attention may be pulled into:

• vigilance

• dissociation

• numbness

• overwhelm

They may struggle to sense the subtle movement of breath.

They may struggle to feel the body clearly.

They may struggle to remain present with sensation.

The issue is not that Śiva is absent.

The issue is not that Śakti is absent.

The issue is not that spanda has disappeared.

The capacity for recognition has become obscured by protective adaptations.

Seen in this light, trauma-informed yoga is not simply about being gentle.

Nor is it merely a collection of safeguarding principles.

It becomes the creation of conditions in which recognition can safely unfold.

Choice matters because coercion contracts awareness.

Agency matters because awareness recognises itself most readily when force is absent.

Slowness matters because subtle experience becomes easier to perceive.

Safety matters because a dysregulated nervous system is often occupied with survival rather than recognition.

The Vagus Nerve and Recognition

The vagus nerve is not Śakti. It is not a nāḍī. It is not spanda.

But it is one of the physiological pathways through which human beings experience regulation, connection, and safety.

When vagal regulation improves:

• interoception often improves

• proprioception often improves

• the capacity to remain present often improves

In other words, the nervous system becomes more capable of perceiving experience clearly.

From a Tantrik perspective, this does not create awareness.

It simply makes recognition easier.

A Final Reflection

In Śaiva Tantra, awareness (Śiva), its expressive power (Śakti), and its living pulsation (spanda) are already present within every moment of experience.

Proprioception, interoception, breath awareness, nervous system regulation, and trauma-informed practice do not create these realities.

They refine our capacity to perceive them.

Embodied yoga therefore becomes a practice of recognition (pratyabhijñā): not escaping the body, but learning to listen so deeply that awareness recognises itself through the living experience of being human.

Like hearing the music.

Like recognising the tree in the leaf.

Like noticing the breath.

Or like standing quietly beneath a canopy of trees and realising that life has been speaking all along.

Līða is understood as the gentle, navigable season of midsummer, when winds and waters were calm, and travel was possible.

A time of ease, passage, and openness.

Today, Litha is used in modern traditions to describe the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, when the sun reaches its highest point.

And yet even here, at the peak of light, the turning is already present.

We enter this practice at that threshold. The fullness of illumination, already carrying the turning toward return.

Embodied yoga is the practice of recognising awareness through the living intelligence of the body. It is not the cultivation of something separate from life, but the direct intimacy with life as it is being experienced, through breath, sensation, movement, and stillness.

In the non-dual Śaiva Tantrik traditions that influence our teaching at Yoga Nature, reality is understood as a single, indivisible field of consciousness. This is Śiva: pure, self-luminous awareness, unfragmented, ever-present, and prior to all distinction. Nothing exists outside of this awareness, because everything appears within it.

Śakti is not separate from Śiva. She is the intrinsic power of Śiva, the capacity of consciousness to appear as form, sensation, perception, and world. Where Śiva is stillness, Śakti is expression; not as two different things, but as one reality experienced in two inseparable aspects.

Within this non-dual understanding, practice is not a movement away from the body or the world, but a shift in recognition: from forgetting to remembering what has always already been the case. That awareness is present as the very fabric of experience, and that its expressive power unfolds as the entire field of perception.

This unfolding is sometimes described as spanda, the subtle pulsation of consciousness itself. Not a physical vibration, and not a metaphorical energy field in the modern sense, but the immediate, lived throb of awareness recognising itself as experience, moment by moment.

Embodied yoga, then, is the cultivation of this recognition through direct attention to the lived reality of being human.

A simple orientation

To make this way of understanding more accessible, it can help to hold a few simple threads lightly in awareness as you read and practice. These are not separate teachings to memorise, but ways of orienting attention within experience.

Śiva — awareness itself: the simple fact of being conscious, prior to anything we perceive.

Śakti — the living movement of that awareness: breath, sensation, thought, emotion, body, and world arising as experience.

Spanda — the subtle pulse of experience: the felt aliveness of each moment as it unfolds and is known.

Embodied yoga (pratyabhijñā) — recognition: the direct noticing that this is already happening, through lived experience rather than conceptual understanding.

These are not separate parts of reality.

They are different ways of describing the same living field of experience from slightly different angles.

You do not need to hold them tightly or intellectually work them out. They are offered here as a gentle reference point, something that can be felt in practice, rather than understood as theory.

Rather than asking us to transcend the body, this tradition invites us into intimacy with it. The body becomes a place of discovery, a living doorway through which awareness recognises itself.

At Yoga Nature, this understanding sits at the heart of how we teach. Whether we are moving gently, resting deeply, sitting in meditation, sharing breath, or walking through woodland paths, we are continually invited to return to sensation, awareness, and relationship with the body. We approach the body not as a problem to solve or a vehicle to perfect, but as a living landscape of experience. Through curiosity, presence, and compassionate attention, the body becomes a doorway to deeper self-understanding, connection, and remembrance.

Not because the body is separate from yoga. Because the body is where yoga happens. Where awareness meets its own living expression.

The Forgotten Language of the Body

Most of us spend much of our lives living from the neck up.

We think, analyse, worry, plan, remember, predict, and problem-solve.

Modern life rewards this.

Schools teach us to trust our minds.

Work often requires us to sit for long periods, disconnected from sensation.

Technology constantly pulls our attention outward.

The hum of traffic replaces birdsong.

Artificial light extends our days beyond sunset.

Many of us know the rhythm of notifications better than the rhythm of our own breath.

Over time, we become highly skilled at thinking but less skilled at feeling.

Yet the body continues to speak.

Through breath.

Through tension.

Through fatigue.

Through pleasure.

Through the subtle feeling of sunlight on skin, damp earth beneath our feet, or the quiet settling that happens when we step beneath a woodland canopy and finally exhale.

Embodied yoga helps us remember this forgotten language.

Through movement, breath, stillness, and awareness, we begin to rebuild two remarkable capacities that are fundamental to human wellbeing:

Proprioception and interoception.

These are not abstract concepts, but ways of knowing through lived experience, how form is known in space, and how sensation is known within the field of awareness.

Proprioception: Knowing Form in Space

Proprioception is often called our “sixth sense.”

It is the body’s ability to know where it is in space.

Without looking, you can tell where your hands are.

You can walk without watching your feet.

You can climb stairs, turn around, and navigate your environment because your nervous system is continually receiving information from receptors in muscles, joints, fascia, tendons, and skin.

This creates an internal map of the body in space.

Yoga refines this beautifully.

Every time we sense the placement of the feet on the earth, the orientation of the pelvis, or the movement of the spine through space, we are not simply “doing a posture.” We are recognising form as it is being known within awareness.

In Śaiva Tantra, form is not separate from consciousness. It is Śakti, the expressive power of awareness appearing as structure, movement, and spatial relation. To feel the body in space is, in this sense, to feel awareness expressing itself as form.

The clearer this internal map becomes, the more grounded and coherent we tend to feel. A restless mind often settles when attention returns to embodied presence.

This is one reason why practising outdoors can feel so profoundly regulating.

Uneven earth beneath the feet, wind against skin, shifting light through trees—these are not background details. They are part of the living field of perception in which awareness is constantly orienting itself.

We remember that we belong not only within ourselves, but within a world that is also alive with perception.

Interoception: Knowing the Inner Field

If proprioception reveals form in space, interoception reveals sensation within form.

It is the ability to sense the internal state of the body:

• Breath
• Heartbeat
• Temperature
• Tension
• Fatigue
• Emotional tone
• Subtle waves of sensation and feeling

Interoception allows us to recognise the difference between anxiety and excitement, contraction and openness, overwhelm and ease.

It is essential to emotional regulation and nervous system resilience, yet it is often underdeveloped in a culture that encourages override rather than listening.

Embodied yoga reverses this tendency not by adding more information, but by refining attention.

We begin to notice what is already here.

In Tantrik language, this inward sensitivity is not separate from Śakti, it is Śakti becoming knowable as lived interiority, and the subtle pulsation (spanda) of experience as it arises within awareness.

We do not create sensation.

We recognise it.

We do not manufacture awareness.

We return to it.

Embodiment Is Not New

Although the terms proprioception and interoception belong to modern neuroscience, the lived intelligence they describe is ancient.

Long before scientists began studying how human beings perceive the body from within, Tantrik practitioners were exploring the relationship between awareness, sensation, breath, and perception through direct experience. Their inquiry was not primarily anatomical but experiential: What happens when attention becomes refined enough to perceive the subtle textures of being alive?

In non-dual Śaiva traditions, reality itself is understood as Śiva (undivided awareness) and Śakti, its inseparable expressive power. The body is not something to overcome or leave behind, but the very appearance of consciousness as lived experience.

Within the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, practitioners are invited to rest attention in direct experience:

the breath,
the pause between breaths,
sound,
touch,
the subtle pulsatory unfolding (spanda) of being alive.

The aim is not escape from embodiment, but recognition through embodiment.

Suffering, in this view, arises not from the body itself, but from forgetting its nature as consciousness expressing itself.

Healing begins as remembrance.

Ancient yogis did not speak in the language of neuroscience. They spoke of awareness, attention, prāṇa, and the subtle dynamics of lived experience. Yet many contemporary researchers are exploring remarkably similar territory through a different lens. While the maps are not the same, both are concerned with how human beings experience themselves, relate to their environment, and move between states of contraction and ease.

This is where modern understandings of the nervous system can enrich, rather than replace, the wisdom of the tradition.

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The Vagus Nerve and the Physiology of Safety

As proprioception and interoception deepen, the nervous system becomes more capable of recognising safety.

The vagus nerve forms a major communication pathway between body and brain, continuously transmitting information about internal state.

When the system registers safety, physiological settling occurs:

breath deepens,
heart rate slows,
digestion improves,
muscle tone softens,
attention becomes less reactive.

Embodied yoga supports this not as a mechanical intervention, but as a return to relational awareness, body, environment, and attention in conversation.

Slow breathing, mindful movement, and grounded sensory awareness all help the system orient towards the present moment.

Rather than “fixing” the nervous system, we are learning to listen to it.

For those familiar with yogic philosophy, there are intriguing points of dialogue between these modern understandings and the subtle body maps developed within Tantrik traditions. The vagus nerve is not the same thing as the nāḍī system, and it would be inaccurate to equate the two directly. One belongs to the language of anatomy and physiology; the other to the experiential cartography of the subtle body.

Yet both recognise the profound relationship between breath, awareness, and human experience.

Many Tantric and Haṭha Yoga practices place attention on the body’s central axis and the dynamic relationship between breath, sensation, and consciousness. Practices such as gentle prāṇāyāma, breath awareness, Antar Mauna (inner silence), and Ajapa Japa (the spontaneous awareness of the natural mantra of the breath) invite practitioners into increasingly refined states of embodied attention.

Traditionally, these practices were understood through the language of prāṇa, nāḍīs, and the subtle body. Contemporary neuroscience may instead speak of interoception, attentional regulation, and vagal tone. The maps are different, yet they often point towards similar territory: the recognition that how we breathe, where we place our attention, and how we inhabit the body profoundly shape our experience of being alive.

From a Tantrik perspective, the body is not merely a biological organism to be regulated. It is a living expression of Śakti, animated by the movement of prāṇa and alive with the subtle pulsation of spanda. Through practice, we become increasingly sensitive to these dimensions of experience, not as abstract concepts, but as direct realities known through the body itself.

Seen in this way, nervous system regulation is not the ultimate goal of yoga. It is one of the many gifts that arise when we learn to listen more deeply to the intelligence already present within us. The deeper invitation is one of recognition (pratyabhijñā): awareness coming to know itself through its own expression. In Tantric language, this is the dance of Śiva and Śakti, revealed through the subtle pulsation of spanda and known directly through embodied experience.

Why Trauma-Informed Yoga Matters

From this perspective, the body is not only shaped by present-moment experience, but also by patterns formed through past experience.

These patterns are not simply psychological, they are embodied. They influence breath, posture, attention, and the capacity to feel safely present within sensation.

In Tantrik language, we might say that trauma can feel like a contraction in the field of awareness. A narrowing in which the free expression of Śakti becomes less fluid, and the subtle pulsation of spanda is harder to perceive.

For some, the return to embodied awareness feels natural and grounding. For others, it can feel unfamiliar, overwhelming, or unpredictable. Both responses are intelligent. Both arise from lived experience.

This is why trauma-informed yoga is not a separate style, but a way of holding practice itself.

At Yoga Nature, this means creating conditions where recognition (pratyabhijñā) is not forced, but gently supported.

There is no demand for a particular inner experience.

No expectation that sensation should feel a certain way.

No requirement to override or push through discomfort in order to “do the practice correctly.”

Choice becomes part of the practice itself.

So does slowness.

So does permission to soften or withdraw attention when needed.

In this way, practice becomes less about achieving a state, and more about restoring the conditions in which awareness can safely recognise itself through the body.

This is not separate from Śiva, Śakti, and spanda. It is their lived expression in the human nervous system: the gradual return of capacity to feel life directly, without overwhelm, fragmentation, or disconnection.

How We Practice Embodied Yoga at Yoga Nature

Embodied yoga is woven through every class.

You might hear invitations such as:

“What do you notice?”

“How does this feel right now?”

“Where is your attention moving?”

“What happens if you soften effort slightly?”

“What happens if we change the breathing pattern?”

“How does it feel to have space and choice to rest rather than perform a shape?”

These are not instructions towards achievement.

They are invitations into relationship.

Posture becomes secondary to perception.

Shape becomes secondary to sensation.

A simple movement becomes a meeting between Śiva (awareness) and Śakti (its expressive expression).

A breath becomes the recognition (pratyabhijñā) of awareness knowing itself through life.

Stillness becomes a field in which the subtle pulsation of experience (spanda) can be felt more clearly.

This is why our classes often move more slowly than many contemporary yoga spaces. We are less interested in how a posture looks and more interested in how it is experienced from within. Rather than striving towards an ideal form, we explore the relationship between awareness, sensation, breath, and the living environment in which the body is always already held.

Whether in class, online, or beneath open skies, the practice remains the same: returning again and again to direct experience, until recognition becomes familiar rather than abstract.

Yoga as Remembrance

At Yoga Nature, we often speak about yoga as remembrance.

Not because it is poetic language, but because it reflects lived experience.

Beneath conditioning, speed, and constant stimulation, there is a quieter intelligence already present.

The body knows how to breathe.

Life knows how to regulate.

Śakti is already moving as all experience.

Nothing essential is missing.

The oak does not search for how to be an oak.

The river does not wonder how to flow.

Yet human beings forget, not because they are separate, but because attention becomes narrowed and absorbed in forgetting.

We begin to experience ourselves as isolated from nature, from each other, even from our own sensing bodies.

Embodied yoga is the gentle return of recognition (pratyabhijñā).

Not a movement towards a different state.

But a recognition of what is already the case.

Awareness is not elsewhere.

It is here, as this breath.

As this sensation.

As this living moment.

Every posture.

Every breath.

Every moment of attention.

An opportunity for Śiva to know itself through Śakti.

An opportunity for spanda to be felt as life.

An opportunity to come home.

Even now, many yoga spaces prioritise external form over internal experience.

The assumption can still be felt beneath the surface: the teacher knows best. The body should comply. Discomfort is framed as growth. Silence is interpreted as consent.

For many people, this approach causes harm.

Not always intentionally.
Not always dramatically.
But quietly, cumulatively, in ways the nervous system remembers.

A hand placed on a body without permission.
A room too loud, too hot, too exposed.
A teacher praising endurance over discernment.
Language that encouraged people to override pain, dissociation, exhaustion, panic, or instinct.

And beneath all of this sits a deeper cultural story: that healing comes through pushing through.

Trauma-informed yoga begins by questioning that story.

It asks:

What if safety matters more than performance?
What if agency is part of healing?
What if the body is not a problem to conquer, but something to listen to?

At Yoga Nature, trauma-informed practice is not a separate “specialist” class hidden at the edge of the timetable. It is woven into the way we teach, speak, structure space, and understand yoga itself.

Because trauma is not rare.

And because many people arrive at yoga carrying histories that may never be visible from the outside.

Trauma Lives in the Nervous System

Trauma is often misunderstood as being the event itself.

But contemporary trauma research - from figures such as Bessel van der Kolk, Stephen Porges, and Peter Levine - suggests something more nuanced.

Trauma is not simply what happened.

It is what happened inside the nervous system when a person did not have enough safety, support, agency, or capacity to process what occurred.

This means trauma can emerge from many experiences:

• abuse

• neglect

• chronic stress

• grief

• illness

• racism

• homophobia or transphobia

• poverty

• war

• coercive relationships

• medical trauma

• sensory overwhelm

• unstable childhood environments

• repeated boundary violations

• living in systems where the body never fully relaxes

Trauma can also be collective, ancestral, cultural, ecological.

The nervous system does not separate neatly between “big trauma” and “small trauma.” It responds to overwhelm, threat, unpredictability, and disconnection.

And often, long after an event has passed, the body continues to behave as though danger is still present.

This is why someone can intellectually know they are safe while their body remains hypervigilant, frozen, dissociated, anxious, numb, exhausted, or unable to settle.

Yoga, when taught with care, can support nervous system regulation.

But yoga taught without sensitivity can also recreate dynamics of powerlessness, exposure, shame, or coercion.

Trauma-informed yoga understands both possibilities.

Trauma-Informed Yoga Is Not “Gentle Yoga”

This is one of the biggest misconceptions.

Trauma-informed yoga is not defined by whether a class is slow, restorative, spiritual, accessible, strong, dynamic, chair-based, or physically demanding.

It is defined by how power operates in the room.

A trauma-informed approach prioritises:

• choice

• consent

• predictability

• agency

• interoception (the ability to sense internal experience)

• nervous system awareness

• non-coercive language

• body autonomy

• invitational teaching

• emotional and sensory safety

That may look subtle from the outside.

But subtle things matter deeply to the nervous system.

For example:

Instead of saying:

“Everyone close your eyes.”

A trauma-informed teacher might say:

“If it feels comfortable, you might soften your gaze or close the eyes — though keeping them open is equally welcome.”

Instead of:

“Push deeper.”

They may say:

“Notice where your edge is today.”

Instead of assuming touch is helpful, they ask.

Instead of treating stillness as morally superior, they recognise that some nervous systems feel safer in movement.

Instead of glorifying intensity, they make room for discernment.

This is not about removing challenge from yoga.

It is about removing coercion.

The Myth of the “Perfect” Yoga Student

Modern yoga culture often rewards compliance.

The “good” student is frequently imagined as calm, flexible, quiet, regulated, able-bodied, emotionally contained, and endlessly resilient.

But real bodies are not like this.

Some people fidget when anxious.
Some need to leave the room.
Some cannot tolerate incense or loud music.
Some panic in silence.
Some dissociate in long holds.
Some have chronic pain.
Some have ADHD.
Some are autistic.
Some are grieving.
Some are survivors of assault.
Some are carers holding impossible amounts.
Some are simply exhausted from surviving modern life.

Trauma-informed yoga does not ask people to perform wellness.

It creates conditions where people can arrive as they are.

How We Hold This at Yoga Nature

At Yoga Nature, we do not claim to “heal trauma.”

Yoga teachers are not psychotherapists unless specifically trained as such, and we believe clarity around scope and responsibility matters deeply.

What we can do is create classes that reduce unnecessary harm and support greater nervous system safety, embodiment, and self-awareness.

This shapes many aspects of how we teach.

We Use Invitational Language

Rather than commanding bodies, we offer options.

We try to teach in ways that encourage students to notice their own experience instead of overriding it.

That means people are continually reminded they can:

• rest

• adapt

• pause

• opt out

• change shape

• leave the room

• keep eyes open

• move differently

• choose what feels supportive

Choice is not treated as failure.

Choice is the practice.

Consent Matters

Physical adjustments are never assumed.

For many people, unexpected touch can activate survival responses - even when the intention behind the touch is kind.

Consent is not a formality. It is part of rebuilding trust between body and awareness.

We Consider Sensory Experience

Nervous systems respond to environment.

Lighting, temperature, music volume, spatial arrangement, scent, pace, unpredictability, and noise can all affect whether a person feels settled or overwhelmed.

At Yoga Nature, we recognise that sensory sensitivity is not “being difficult.” It is often a nervous system trying to protect itself.

This is especially important for many neurodivergent students, trauma survivors, highly sensitive people, and those living with chronic stress or burnout.

We Do Not Worship Flexibility

A body folding deeply into shapes tells us very little about wellbeing.

Some traumatised nervous systems actually overperform flexibility because boundaries and protective muscular responses have been disrupted.

We are far more interested in whether someone can feel themselves clearly, breathe steadily, and remain connected to choice than whether they can place a foot behind their head.

We Honour Rest

In many modern cultures, rest is treated as laziness.

But exhausted nervous systems cannot heal through endless stimulation.

Sometimes the most radical thing a person can experience is a space where they are not demanded from.

Where they do not have to achieve calm.
Perform spirituality.
Optimise themselves.
Or become “better.”

Just breathe.
Feel.
Exist.

Trauma-Informed Yoga and Traditional Yoga Philosophy

Ironically, many trauma-informed principles are not separate from yoga philosophy at all.

The deeper teachings of yoga were never solely about achieving extreme physical postures.

Practices rooted in ahiṃsā (non-harming), satya (truthfulness), svādhyāya (self-study), and deep listening already point toward relationship, awareness, discernment, and care.

Yet contemporary commercial yoga has often absorbed wider cultural patterns of productivity, perfectionism, aesthetics, and hierarchy.

Trauma-informed practice asks us to remember another possibility:

Yoga not as performance.
Not as self-erasure.
Not as obedience.

But as relationship.

A gradual remembering that the body is not an enemy.

Healing Is Not Linear

One of the most important things trauma-informed spaces recognise is this:

Healing does not move in straight lines.

A person may feel grounded one week and overwhelmed the next.

A posture that once felt supportive may suddenly feel activating.

Grief may surface unexpectedly.
Joy may feel frightening.
Stillness may feel unsafe before it feels peaceful.

None of this means someone is “failing” at yoga.

It means they are human.

The nervous system unfolds in layers, rhythms, spirals, seasons.

And often healing begins not with transcendence, but with something far quieter:

The moment a person realises they no longer have to abandon themselves in order to belong.

A Different Kind of Practice

At Yoga Nature, trauma-informed yoga is not about perfection.

It is about relationship.

Relationship to breath.
To boundaries.
To sensation.
To fatigue.
To grief.
To instinct.
To choice.
To the Earth beneath us.
To the possibility that the body may already carry wisdom -

even after everything it has survived.

Sometimes the most meaningful yoga practice is not the deepest posture.

It is the moment someone notices:

“I am allowed to listen to myself.

If the early history of mantra (Part 1) is a story of interiorisation, the later history, beginning with Tantra, is one of expansion and reconfiguration. In Tantric traditions, mantra is not merely a support for meditation; it becomes the central axis of practice, cosmology, and embodiment. From there, it flows into Haṭha Yoga and eventually into modern global yoga, undergoing profound transformations along the way.

Tantric Revolution: Mantra as Reality Itself

Beginning around the mid-first millennium CE, Tantric traditions (both Śaiva and Buddhist) radically re-envision the role of mantra. Rather than treating mantra as a representation of the divine, Tantra asserts that mantra is the deity.

This is grounded in a sophisticated theory of sound (śabda) and vibration (spanda). The universe is understood as emerging from primordial sound, and mantras are condensed forms of this creative power.

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The history of mantra begins not with yoga as we commonly understand it today, but with sound: sacred sound as revelation, power, and cosmic ordering principle. In early Indian traditions, mantra was not merely a tool for meditation; it was the very fabric through which reality was understood, invoked, and sustained. To understand mantra in yoga, we must first situate it within its earliest context: the Vedic world.

Mantra in the Ṛg Vedic World

The earliest surviving layer of Indian religious literature, the Ṛg Veda (c. 1500–1200 BCE), is fundamentally a collection of mantras. These are not “mantras” in the modern sense of short meditative phrases, but poetic invocations addressed to deities such as Agni, Indra, and Soma. The Sanskrit word mantra derives from the root man (“to think”) and the suffix -tra (“instrument”), suggesting “an instrument of thought.”

However, in the Vedic context, mantra is far more than cognitive. It is performative and efficacious. The correct recitation of mantra (precise in pitch, rhythm, and pronunciation) was believed to sustain ṛta, the cosmic order. Sound itself was ontologically potent. A mispronounced mantra could disrupt ritual efficacy; a correctly uttered one could compel divine presence.

Mantra and Ritual Power (Brāhmaṇa Period)

In the later Vedic texts known as the Brāhmaṇas (c. 1000–700 BCE), we see an increasing systematisation of ritual and a deepening reflection on mantra’s function. Here, mantra becomes embedded in elaborate sacrificial procedures (yajña), where its role is tightly integrated with gesture, offering, and priestly specialisation.

The Brāhmaṇa texts begin to articulate a theory of correspondences: the ritual mirrors the cosmos, and mantra is the verbal component that activates this mirroring. Speech (vāc) is elevated to a cosmic principle, sometimes even identified with creation itself.

At this stage, mantra is still externalised. It belongs to the domain of ritual specialists and is tied to outward sacrifice. Yoga, as an inward discipline, has not yet fully emerged. However, the seeds of internalisation are already present.

Interiorisation in the Upaniṣads

The Upaniṣads (c. 700–300 BCE) mark a turning point. Ritual is not abandoned, but its meaning is reinterpreted. The focus shifts from external sacrifice to internal realisation. Correspondingly, mantra begins to move inward.

The sacred syllable Om (praṇava) becomes central in this transition. No longer just a ritual utterance, it is described as the essence of the Vedas and the sound-form of ultimate reality (Brahman). Chanting Om becomes a contemplative practice, a way to align the individual self (ātman) with the universal.

In texts like the Chāndogya and Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣads, mantra is no longer primarily about invoking gods but about realising identity with the absolute. Sound becomes a bridge between the finite and the infinite.

This is the first clear integration of mantra into something resembling yogic practice: an inward, meditative use of sound aimed at liberation rather than ritual efficacy.

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Mantra and Early Yoga Traditions

Between the Upaniṣadic period and the classical codification of yoga, various ascetic and contemplative traditions developed across India. These include śramaṇa movements (such as early Buddhism and Jainism) and proto-yogic practices focused on breath control, sensory withdrawal, and mental discipline.

While these traditions often deemphasised Vedic ritual, they did not entirely abandon sound practices. Repetition, recollection, and internal recitation (japa) began to emerge as techniques for stabilising the mind.

Mantra in this period becomes less about cosmic manipulation and more about psychological transformation. Its power lies in repetition and concentration, not in sacrificial correctness.

Patañjali and the Yogasūtras

By the time of Patañjali’s Yogasūtras (c. 2nd century BCE to 4th century CE), yoga has been articulated as a systematic path centered on the stilling of mental fluctuations (citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ). In this framework, mantra occupies a modest but significant role.

Patañjali introduces the concept of Īśvara (a special puruṣa, or pure consciousness) and prescribes devotion to Īśvara as a means to samādhi. Crucially, he identifies Om as the verbal expression (vācaka) of Īśvara.

He states:

• The repetition (japa) of Om and contemplation of its meaning leads to inward awareness.

• Obstacles to practice are reduced through this method.

This is one of the earliest explicit integrations of mantra into a formal yoga system. However, its role is limited and specific. Mantra is not central to all aspects of yoga but is one method among others.

Notably, Patañjali does not elaborate a wide repertoire of mantras, nor does he delve into their esoteric structures. His approach is minimalist and pragmatic. The emphasis is on mental discipline, with mantra serving as a support.

From Sound as Power to Sound as Tool

Across this early historical arc, we can observe a gradual transformation:

• In the Ṛg Veda, mantra is cosmic speech that sustains reality.

• In the Brāhmaṇas, it becomes a technical component of ritual power.

• In the Upaniṣads, it is interiorised as a means of realising ultimate truth.

• In early yoga, it becomes a psychological aid for concentration.

• In Patañjali, it is codified as a specific technique linked to devotion and meditation.

What changes is not only the function of mantra but its locus of authority. It moves from the external ritual domain to the internal experiential domain.

Conclusion

The early history of mantra reveals that its relationship to yoga is not original but emergent. Mantra begins as a ritual technology embedded in Vedic sacrifice and only gradually becomes integrated into yogic practice as traditions shift toward interiorisation.

By the time of Patañjali, mantra has been transformed into a contemplative tool, stripped of much of its earlier ritual complexity but retaining its association with sacred sound and transformative potential.

This evolution sets the stage for later developments (particularly in Tantra) where mantra will once again expand in scope, regaining its cosmic significance while being deeply integrated into yogic practice.

To be continued…

A…

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The archive of yogic and tantric traditions is not silent about women, but it speaks of them in ways that require careful listening. Their presence is diffused, refracted through layers of symbolism, encoded in the language of śakti: the dynamic principle without which consciousness itself remains inert. Yet between these metaphors, and sometimes despite them, we can discern the contours of lived female participation: practitioners, initiators, visionaries, and transmitters whose voices were gradually softened or obscured as traditions crystallised into textual and institutional forms. To attend to these voices is not merely an act of historical recovery; it is a reorientation of how we understand yoga and tantra as living, evolving fields of practice.

Within early tantric milieus, particularly those oriented around fierce goddess traditions such as Kālī, the boundaries of social order appear more permeable than in later orthodox frameworks. These were not egalitarian utopias, but neither were they governed by the rigid exclusions that would come to define many scholastic traditions. Practitioners gathered in cremation grounds, forest hermitages, and initiatory circles, seeking direct engagement with the processes of life, death, and transformation. The goddess was not distant, she was immediate, embodied, and often terrifying in her intimacy. In such contexts, women were not merely symbolic vessels of power; they were its mediators and embodiments.

The Krama lineage of early medieval Kashmir offers a particularly compelling, if fragmentary, window into this world. Centred on the sequential unfolding (krama) of awareness through a series of Kālī energies, this tradition articulates reality as a dynamic pulsation: emergence and reabsorption, expansion and contraction. Texts preserved through figures such as Abhinavagupta describe practices that are deliberately confrontational: meditations on decay, encounters with liminality, and ritual transgressions designed to unsettle fixed identity. Within these practices, the presence of women (yoginīs and dūtikās) is essential. They appear not as peripheral assistants, but as embodiments of the very śakti the practitioner seeks to realise.

And yet, these women are rarely named. Their voices are mediated, encoded, or subsumed into archetypal categories: “the yoginī,” “the consort,” “the goddess.” Tantra’s modes of transmission (oral, initiatory, often deliberately obscure) mean that much of its living texture resists textual capture. When traditions like Krama are later systematised, what survives is often the framework rather than the voices that animated it. The result is a paradox that echoes across tantric literature: the feminine is elevated to the highest ontological principle, while the historical women who embodied that principle recede into anonymity.

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In the natural world, this balance is not static.
It is responsive. Alive. Sensory.

Water begins to move beneath the soil.
Sap rises through trees.
Animals emerge, guided not by thought, but by deep internal rhythms.

Your body is part of this same intelligence.

Your nervous system is constantly sensing, responding, recalibrating.
Finding balance not by holding still, but by adapting moment to moment.

Not abruptly,
but through a quiet tipping,
where light begins, almost imperceptibly,
to overtake the dark.

After a long season of holding,
something within the land, and within your body,
begins to rise.

This Yoga Nidra practice is an invitation to feel that directly.

Here is the text of the Yoga Nidra for Paid Subscribers only

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This essay sets out to explore the links between yoga and veganism. We will begin by surveying pre-Patañjalian Indian spiritual traditions to see if one can find ideas here that point towards veganism. We will meet groups such as the Jains for whom all beings had a jīva or soul and who were (and continue to be) staunch followers of ahiṃsā or ‘non-harming’. We will then focus in on the well-known core text of yoga, the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali and the accompanying commentary of Vyāsa. Specifically, the essay sets out to find some answers to the following important and interrelated questions:

1. Is there any evidence for the endorsement or practice of veganism within the school of yoga or related Indic spiritual traditions?

2. If not, then can the arguments put forward in these traditions nevertheless be extended to build a strong contemporary case for veganism amongst aspiring modern yogis?

3. Finally, in the modern context, does one have to be vegan in order to properly practice yoga?

Pre-Patañjalian Yoga and the Origins of Ahiṃsā

Of course, there has long been an association between yoga and vegetarianism. India, regarded as the homeland of the yoga tradition, has the highest percentage of vegetarians of any country in the world (ranging from 20% to 40% of the population depending on where you look) and as for vegans, some sources put India at the top of the list, whereas others put Israel at the top.

But has vegetarianism and ahiṃsā always been part of Indian culture? Let us travel back in time to the Bronze Age Harrapan or Indus Valley Civillisation (3300 – 1300 BCE). Located in what is now the area of Pakistan, north east Afghanistan and north-west India, this ancient and sophisticated civilisation may at one time have been the equal of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Sadly, we know very little about them. One of the most intriguing finds from these sites are the numerous small clay seals that measure approximately two inches by two inches. A few of these seals have been interpreted by some as representing yogis in a meditative posture, but I go along with Samuel (2008) in remaining cautiously sceptical about these claims. Other scholars, noting the frequency with which animals are depicted, have suggested that the origins of ahiṃsā might be discernible in these seals. For example, here is Chapple discussing one of the seals featuring the so-called proto-yogi:

“This particular image, depicting a contemplative figure surrounded by a multitude of animals might suggest that perhaps all the animals depicted are sacred to this particular practitioner. Consequently these animals would be protected from harm. This might be the first indication of the practice of ahiṃsā.” (Chapple, 1993: 6-7)

Now, I have to say, I find this all a bit of a stretch! It may very well be that this ancient civilisation venerated animals and were closely attuned with nature, but this hardly makes them unique. Our ancestors were just generally more deeply connected with nature, and there was simply much less capacity for doing harm, as the modern ‘apparatus of harm’ such as factory farming was still far, far into the future. But this does not necessarily make these Indus Valley peoples practitioners of ahiṃsā and it certainly does not make them vegetarians or vegans, and indeed findings of the bones of animals in the ruins of these cities (Schmidt, 1968) could be seen to point away from this thesis.

Moving further along in history we find the Aryans, semi-nomadic pastoralists who according to many historians had lived on the steppes of what is now southern Russia since about 4500 BCE, but who eventually migrated into Europe and Asia in about 1500BCE. Because they spoke a language that would form the basis of many Asiatic and European tongues, they also often go by the name of Indo-Europeans. They are often credited with introducing Vedic culture to India. One would be struggling to postulate the origins of ahiṃsā amongst these early Vedic peoples. All the literary and archaeological evidence we have seems to suggest that they were generally speaking a raucous lot, into drinking, gambling, and carrying out animal sacrifice. As Alsdorf notes:

“The Aryans, whose immigration during the middle of the second millennium BCE is the crucial event in Indian history, are presented in their ancient literature as meat-eaters, who certainly did not shrink from slaughtering and consuming their numerous cattle.” (Alsdorf, 1962 [2010]: 2)

This actually presents us with something of a puzzle. How and why did such a strong ethic of ahiṃsā arise in such a culture? One thing is for sure, it didn’t happen overnight, and as the centuries passed and as we move into the later Vedic period we begin to see a progressive internalisation of ritual. Animal sacrifice begins to fall out of favour, along with other elements of ritual violence and aggression. This process came of age in the scriptures known as the Upaniṣads, also called the Vedanta or ‘end of the Vedas’. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣhad, usually dated to around the 7^th or 8^th century BCE, we find the earliest known reference to the concept of ahiṃsā (3:17) where it is listed as one of the five essential virtues. However, here ahiṃsā only extends so far, as the text later (8:15) goes on to state that one who practices ahiṃsā towards all ‘living beings’ except at holy places, or in another translation, except as approved by the scriptures, escapes the cycle of rebirth. This evidently suggests that violence towards animals at such holy places or by scripturally approved means was still considered apropos.

It is only with the growth of the śramaṇa movements that the concept of ahiṃsā really begins to take off. These were groups of heterodox renunciates which began to emerge from about the 6^th century BCE onwards, and which include Jainism and Buddhism, amongst others. Much has been made of the centrality of the concept of ahiṃsā in Buddhist thought, such as in the pañcasīlāni or five ethical precepts of Buddhism, where the non-harming of living creatures comes top of the list. However, textual evidence seems to suggest that these ancient Buddhists, including the Buddha himself, frequently partook in the eating of meat. As Alsdorf notes:

“Nevertheless, it is, to begin with, absolutely certain that the Buddha was not a vegetarian and did not forbid meat-eating to his monks either… there is no doubt that the Master and his disciples, as the texts report, ate also meat on numerous occasions when they were invited to the houses of the laity.” (Alsdorf, 1962 [2010]: 4)

The crucial distinction here is that between the harming of living creatures by oneself, which is obviously frowned upon if you are a Buddhist monk, and the intake of the flesh of creatures harmed by others, namely laypeople. As the Buddha himself is reported to have said, fish and meat are pure under three conditions: when the monk has not seen, nor heard and has no suspicion that the animal was killed on purpose for him. This might sound like pretty dodgy ground to some. After all, in modern times, the only reason that most people can continue to eat meat and animal products is by conveniently erasing from their mind the violence that has been undertaken by others to get that food to their plate. Be that as it may, for some Buddhists this policy of eating meat offered by the laity continues right up to the present day. In addition to this ambivalent attitude to meat eating, Vegan blogger Rama Ganesan argues that much of the Buddhist scripture (along with most other ancient Indian scripture I might add) is basically highly speciesist:

“Most important, Buddhism does say that misspent human life means being reborn as an animal - implying that it is a lesser birth. Buddhism says that the human birth is ‘precious’, but not that a cow birth is precious, or a bee birth, or a snail birth… Buddhism might talk about compassion and loving-kindness and karuna, but they are only talking about humans.” (Ganesan, 2015)

The school of Jainism seems to be somewhat more steadfast and consistent in its commitment to ahiṃsā. For the Jains, each human being had a jīva or soul, which was luminous, blissful, and intelligent. However, animals, plants, water, fire, air, and even rocks and stones each had jīvas too. All beings must therefore be treated with the same courtesy and respect that we would wish to receive ourselves. These early Jains became aware at a profound level that even apparently inert entities, such as stones, had a jīva and were capable of pain, and that no living creature wished to suffer, any more than they themselves did. The entire life of the Jain was centred around ahiṃsā. In addition to not intentionally killing or harming animals, Jain monks had to move with consummate caution lest they inavertedly squashed an insect or trampled on a blade of grass. They were required to lay down objects with care, and were forbidden to move around in the darkness, when it would be easy to damage another precious creature.

Of course, the Jains were realistic enough to realise that some degree of harming was necessary to simply survive; eating necessarily involves the talking of life, even if vegetable. They thus crafted an elaborate hierarchy of life-forms which was essentially based on the capacity for sensation and consciousness that each life-form was considered to possess, with human beings at the top and more lowly things like worms and plants towards the bottom. Again, this could be seen as a form of speciesism. However, this hierarchy helped to prioritise which offenses against life were most serious and prescribed how best to minimise violence. Whenever it become clear, however, that the life of a Jain was coming to a natural end, they were encouraged to accept and embrace their imminent death through engaging in a final fast, facilitating their own demise in such a way that no further harming would be caused. Indeed, this sallekhanā or fast unto death was considered to be the most auspicious way that a life can end, pretty much securing an end to the cycle of rebirth.

However, having said all of this, once again Alsdorf finds canonical evidence which seems to testify to the eating of meat by Mahavira, the very founder of the religion himself! For example, there is an instance in which a seriously sick Mahavira sends one of his disciples to the laywomen for the leftovers of some cockerel meat which had been killed by a cat. Mahavira apparently recovered quickly having eaten the meat. If we accept this testimony as truthful, one has to assume that the eating of meat was again considered okay so long as the actual harming had not been performed by oneself or purposefully and solely on behalf of oneself, just as in the Buddhist case. The injunction placed upon these monks was not against the eating of meat per se but against the actual act of harming living beings, an act which would of course have very negative karmic repercussions.

There is plenty more ground that we could cover, for example, the Mahābhārata epic and its well-known Bhagavad Gītā portion contain plenty of important material regarding the concept of ahiṃsā. However, this essay is not meant to be an exhaustive survey of ahiṃsā. As you may have noticed by now, little has been said of veganism so far. And the reason for this is pretty simple. I have never seen any direct and specific recommendations for the practice of veganism in any ancient scripture. For all their endorsement of ahiṃsā, neither Buddhism nor Jainism advocated veganism, and as we have just seen it does not appear that these renunciates were even strict vegetarians! Next then, we turn to the classical Yoga tradition associated with Patañjali. Do we come any closer to seeing clear arguments for veganism here, and if this turns out to be not the case, can we nevertheless extend the rubric and logic of the Yoga Sūtras to build a solid case for veganism for the modern yogi?

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Vegetarianism and Veganism in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras

Yoga had been around in one form or another for many centuries before Patañjali came along and systematised the teachings in a work known as the Yoga Sūtras. Most scholars nowadays date this text to shortly after the turn of the Common Era, somewhere between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE. The term sūtra literally means a thread and essentially refers to a succinct, pithy philosophical statement in which the maximum amount of information is packed into the minimum number of words. In total there are about 1200 words in the text contained in just 195 sūtras. This succinctness of the Yoga Sūtras indicates that they were understood to be a manual requiring unpacking, and this is exactly what the many commentaries that have been written over the centuries attempt to provide. In modern times our understanding of Patañjali’s text is completely dependent upon the interpretations of these later commentators, particularly the bhāṣya or commentary of Vyāsa. This is particularly important to understand for the purposes of this article, as this commentary provides very strong support for the unequivocal requirement of vegetarianism for the Patañjalian yogi.

The main portion in which the argument for vegetarianism appears strongest is in the famous aṣṭāṅga or ‘eight-limbed’ yoga of chapter two. This is particularly significant as it is this aṣṭāṅga yoga portion of the Sūtras that is by far the most well-known and which many modern yogis base, or allege to base, their practice upon. The very first yama or restraint given in the very first limb of this eight-limbed yoga is that of ahiṃsā or non-harming. This is not down to pure chance. All commentators seem to agree that it is this founding principle of ahiṃsā upon which the rest of the yoga edifice is built. Vyāsa’s bhāṣya or commentary claims that “the other abstentions and observances are rooted in it” as are the other limbs. The clear message here is that making significant progress on the yogic path requires that we are the very least making a sincere and determined effort to abide by ahiṃsā.

These yamas are listed in YS 2.30. In the very next sūtra, something very unusual occurs. Here, Patañjali devotes an entire sūtra to reiterating just how central and non-negotiable these yamas are, and how they constitute a māhavratam or ‘great vow’ for the yogi. I say unusual because you simply do not see Patañjali being so dogmatic and assertive anywhere else in the Sūtras and the fact that he includes a whole precious extra sūtra to do so is telling. It’s almost as though he knew wannabe yogis would try and wiggle out of it someway or another! Here is the sūtra in full:

“[These yamas] are considered the great vow. They are not exempted by one’s class, place, time or circumstance. They are universal.” YS 2.31

So, regardless of your social status, and regardless of where you live, in which time period you live, and other extenuating circumstances (such as your career), adherence to the yamas, including especially ahiṃsā, the foundation of them all, is the sine quo non of being a yogi as defined by Patanjali’s system. Vyāsa is equally emphatic in his bhāṣya, and it is here that the link between ahiṃsā and vegetarianism is explicitly and unequivocally made, and several examples are brought to bear. The example of the fisherman rebuffs any suggestion that an individual’s livelihood and sustenance might justify acts of slaughter. Note that Vyāsa isn’t necessarily saying here that no one should become a fisherman but that one cannot be both a yogi and a fisherman, or hunter, or work in an abattoir etc. A fisherman can’t get out of the restriction by saying that he will kill only fish and nothing else. Nor can the hunter say he will kill only in certain locations. Nor can the ritualist say that he will only kill on certain days or only for certain gods. Ahiṃsā and the other yamas that constitute the great vow are absolutely unconditional for the yogi, no matter the circumstances.

One may wonder here if the restriction here is on all meat-eating or per se, or whether the eating of flesh might be acceptable if the actual act of killing had been performed by another. Well, a little further on, Patañjali addresses this issue in this very interesting sūtra:

“Dubious thoughts such as harming, etc., whether committed by oneself, for oneself, or approved of, preceded by greed, anger, or delusion, and mild, medium, intense, result in unending suffering and ignorance - this is a consideration of the opposite.” YS 2.34

This is an extremely nuanced probing of the concept of ahiṃsā. In this sūtra Patañjali is following his line of argument to an extreme that even most modern vegetarians and vegans seem reluctant to consider. Here, the Sūtras are clearly stating that not only must one refrain from harming by one’s own hand, but she or he cannot have the harming performed by another, and nor can she or he approve of or assent to an environment in which acts of harming are carried out. Not only does the practice of ahiṃsā in the Yoga Sūtras mandate the unconditional renunciation of all flesh eating, it appears to stretch to a withdrawal of consent for the societal practice of killing and harming.

Take a moment to think about this. Taking this sūtra at its word would mean, as a yogi, refraining from supporting in any way any establishment that causes harm to living beings. For the committed vegan, this would mean abstaining from patronising any supermarket or restaurant that continues to sell meat or animal products. For the modern wannabe yogi, this is quite a tall order. We live in such a complex world, and almost every aspect of our lives, from our banks, to the electronic equipment we use, to the suppliers of our gas and electricity, all are embroiled in a messy and complex network of harm. One would surely have to disappear off into the forest and live totally self-sustainably to minimise one’s footprint of harm, and that, of course, is exactly what these renunciate yogis did do!

Before we move on let us examine again sūtra 2.34 above. This sūtra continues its subtle exploration of ahiṃsā, identifying three basic motivations for harming (greed, anger and delusion) and then three possible intensities (mild, medium and intense). The sūtra then boldly links the practice of hiṃsā or harming with ‘unending suffering and ignorance’, the very things that the whole yoga edifice is designed to eliminate. Harming in any form then (including the consent to societal harming discussed above) is therefore completely antithetical to one’s progress on the path of yoga, and moreover, ultimately leads in the opposite direction, towards greater pain and ignorance.

Having demonstrated that a strong case for vegetarianism can be found in the Yoga Sūtras and the accompanying bhāṣya, to what extent does the text suggest that the practice of ahiṃsā extends beyond meat-eating to other uses of animals and their products? Well, it certainly extends to the use of animal skins, particularly if their procurement requires the execution of animals. The example of hides is included in the bhāṣya and given almost equal weight as the consumption of flesh. However, when it comes to edible animal products such as milk, honey and eggs, the commentators remain silent. Indeed, in later yogic texts, like the haṭha yoga texts, we actually find honey, milk and ghee listed as sattvic or pure foods recommended for the yogi! From a textual and historical perspective, one has to come to the conclusion that the extraction and consumption of dairy and other animal products were not considered violations of non-harming.

To explain why this was so one might suggest that cows manipulated for dairy products during this time period were treated with care and respect and not routinely slaughtered once their productivity ceased. Nevertheless, a contemporary proponent of veganism could convincingly argue that hiṃsā not only involves slaughter but also the forced servitude imposed upon cows for their milk (or bees for their honey), no matter how ‘humanely’ the animals are treated. The claim here would be that any enslavement, confinement, mutilation, manipulation, or any use of animals as means rather than ends in themselves, constitutes a form of hiṃsā. Animal agriculture as a whole is predicated on the forced manipulation of animals for human benefit, and as this inherently involves harming the animals it amounts to a transgression of ahiṃsā. Be this as it may, I have seen no evidence historically to suggest that a link was ever made between consumption of animal products and ahiṃsā, and it does vegans little service trying to rewrite history to suit their values.

A further point can be made at this juncture. A vegan might argue that the yama or restraint of non-stealing (asteya) applies to the forcible extraction of milk, eggs, and honey from animals who naturally produce and ‘own’ these substances. As stealing substantiates a tributary form of harming according to YS 2.30, and these substances are produced for intraspecies purposes, human appropriation can be viewed as a form of stealing and thus harming. A hypothetical opponent may contend that according to the Sūtras, stealing is simply described as the “improper taking-for-one’s-own the things of another”. ‘Improper’ is the key term here and the bhāṣya defines ‘improper’ as “not authorised by sacred texts”. Hence, a vegan must demonstrate that the sacred texts affirm that milk, eggs, and honey ‘properly’ belong to cows, chickens, and bees, respectively. If this cannot be proven (and it is unlikely) and the extraction of these substances is not considered ‘improper’ by the sacred texts, then from a textual, historical perspective there exists no conclusive instances of theft. Of course, one could go further, and claim that the sacred texts must be wrong then! This may well be, but once again there is no value in trying to rewrite history, only highlight and accept its shortcomings and begin building a better future.

Concluding Reflections

It is now time to return to the starting point of this essay and provide some answers to the questions which I posed there:

1) Is there any evidence for the endorsement or practice of veganism within the school of yoga or related Indic spiritual traditions?

As a scholar, one simply has to be honest here and reply negatively. I have not seen evidence of any pre-modern practice of veganism, either in India or elsewhere. There is of course ample evidence of vegetarianism amongst yogis, Jains and some Buddhists in the Indian tradition (though as we have seen there is clear historical evidence of meat-eating amongst the latter group) and also in the wider global context, such as amongst the Pythagoreans. But this does not hold true for veganism, though I am hardly an expert in this field and welcome hearing about any evidence which points towards early veganism. With regards to why this may be, well, as previously mentioned, one could easily suggest that in pre-modern societies such as ancient India the animals from which products were extracted were so respected and cared for that the notion that obtaining and consuming such products could constitute a form of harm was simply unthinkable.

As to why we hear nothing of veganism from yogic sources, another line of argument one could take is to say that, despite the way they are often portrayed, these ancient yogis (and other ascetics) were human and imperfect and that, like many humans today, they were unable or unwilling to take their arguments and principles to their logical, ethical conclusion (i.e. a complete end to animal servitude and the use of animals as means rather than ends in themselves). Whichever line of argument one takes, let us take care not to rewrite history, nor try to forcibly reframe other religions and cultures according to our own specifications, or to better our match our image of what we think they should be like. Though yoga is not a religion, the following quote by Ganesan is salutary here:

“But when Western people take a religion like Hinduism and insist that it conform to their specifications, that is cultural appropriation. Hinduism is not vegan. Buddhism is not vegan. Even Jainism is not vegan. Yet many vegans (and even non-vegans) are particularly incensed that this particular Hindu ‘saint’ eats dairy. Or that Tibetan lama eats meat.” (Ganesan, 2015)

2) If not, then can the arguments put forward in these traditions nevertheless be extended to build a strong contemporary case for veganism amongst aspiring modern yogis?

I would say this is the case absolutely. In modern times, most people (vegan, vegetarian, or otherwise) would hopefully, at the very minimum, concur that the mass manipulation and slaughter of animals that occurs on present day ‘factory farms’ substantiates a blatant violation of non-harming. Even so-called ‘humane’ farming constitutes a non-consensual use of animals that amounts to enslavement and a perception of animals as merely means as opposed to ends. The truth is, given that we cannot speak each other’s languages, we can never truly gain ‘consent’ from another animal for taking and using their products (and isn’t it strange that we use the word ‘product’ at all, a word normally reserved for man-made artefacts intended for sale?) and therefore does this not constitute a clear infringement of asteya or non-stealing? Given all of this, it is my view that whatever the historical and textual evidence (or lack thereof) for veganism in the yoga tradition may be, in the modern context there is a very strong case indeed for veganism amongst anyone purporting to follow ahiṃsā and the yoga of Patañjali

3) Finally, in the modern context, does one have to be vegan in order to practice yoga?

I think this question needs to be preceded by the following one: Does one have to be vegan (or vegetarian) in order to begin practicing yoga? The answer to this is surely no, for this would be to put the cart before the horse. One can make some progress on the yogic path whilst still continuing to consume meat and animal products. Nevertheless, I would argue that this progress has a limit. If one is sincere in their practice, there comes a point in the path when one can no longer countenance causing intentional harm to other living creatures, directly or indirectly, though this point comes sooner for some than others of course. How can one truly reside in one’s true nature, in the pure joy of awareness, if one is living with the knowledge of causing pain and suffering to other creatures?

Let us move now to the question as posed. A large percentage of contemporary yoga practitioners (largely outside India) regard the Yoga Sūtras as the textual and philosophical foundation of their sādhana or practice. As should be clear by now, if one alleges loyalty to some form of Patañjala yoga, then the goal of an unconditional vegetarian diet at minimum must be strongly prioritised. There is no way to reconcile the Yoga Sūtras with a conscious decision to kill, have killed, or approve of the killing of an animal for human consumption. A more nuanced interpretation of the text could argue for the refusal even to support any non-vegetarian establishments, and also the need to adopt veganism in order to satisfy non-harming and non-stealing to satisfactory degrees in the modern era. Yoga scholar Edwin Bryant makes the case about as strongly and concisely as it can be made:

“Without following ahiṃsā, one can not claim to be following the Yoga of Patañjali, or of any other of ancient India’s soteriological spiritual traditions”. (Bryant: 2011)

Given everything we have discussed I have to agree with Bryant’s assessment, and would further assert that all those claiming to be serious yogis must sincerely strive to make their diet (as well as all other aspects of life) as harm-free as possible, and yes, this means making veganism, or at the very, very least vegetarianism, an urgent goal of their practice.

Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu
May all beings everywhere be happy and free

References

Alsdorf, Ludwig (1962) [2010] The History of Vegetarianism and Cow-Veneration in India. Translated from the German by Bal Patil. London and New York: Routledge

Bryant, Edwin (2011) ‘Ahimsa in the Patanjali Yoga Tradition’ in Food for the Soul: Vegetarianism and Yoga Traditions, edited by Steven J. Rosen. Santa Barbara: Praeger

Chapple, Christopher Key (1993) Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions. New York: SUNY

Ganesan, Rama (2015) ‘Vegans Demanding Changes to Ancient Religions’ last accessed at https://medium.com/@ramaganesan/vegans-demanding-changes-to-ancient-religions-46ded205ff12 on 4/6/18.

Samuel, Geoffrey (2008) The Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Cambridge University Press.

Schmidt, Hanns Peter (1968) ‘The Origin of Ahimsa’ in Mélanges d’Indianisme à la mémoire de Louis Renou. Paris.

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It is tempting to assume that the classical elements (earth, water, fire, air, and sometimes space) represent a shared, ancient wisdom about the building blocks of reality. After all, versions of these elements appear in Indian philosophy, ancient Greece, Chinese cosmology, medieval medicine, and modern spiritual discourse. Surely they must all be pointing to the same thing?

Yet this apparent universality is misleading. While many cultures used elemental language, they did so for very different reasons. The elements were not always simply primitive chemistry or poetic metaphors; they were ways of thinking. Tools for understanding the body, the world, and consciousness itself. To understand what the elements really meant, we have to look at how they functioned within specific cultural worlds, especially in India, where elemental theory developed with remarkable depth and variety.

From Living Forces to Cosmic Principles in Early India

The earliest Indian texts, the Vedas (c. 1500–800 BCE), do not present a tidy list of elements at all. Instead, they speak of fire, wind, water, earth, and sky as living powers. Fire (Agni) carries offerings to the gods. Waters (Āpas) give life and fertility. Wind (Vāyu) moves through the world as breath and vitality. Earth and sky form a cosmic pair, holding existence between them.

These are not abstract substances. They are active participants in a ritual cosmos. The world, in the Vedic imagination, is animated and responsive, held together through sacrifice, invocation, and relationship.

Only later, in the Upaniṣads, do we see a shift toward abstraction. Here, the elements become part of a cosmic unfolding: space gives rise to air, air to fire, fire to water, and water to earth. This is not a chemical process but a metaphysical one. Reality moves from the subtle to the dense, from unity to multiplicity. The elements mark stages in manifestation, linking the structure of the cosmos to the structure of the human being.

This shift reflects a deeper concern that runs through Indian philosophy: not merely how the world works, but how one might be liberated from misunderstanding it.

The Elements as Experience: Sāṃkhya and Perception

In the classical Sāṃkhya system, the elements become part of a highly sophisticated theory of perception. Each element is associated with particular sensory qualities. Space carries sound; air adds touch; fire adds form; water adds taste; earth adds smell. Each successive element includes the qualities of the ones before it.

What matters here is not matter, but experience. Why does the world feel solid? Why does sound behave differently from taste? The elements offer an explanation grounded in how consciousness encounters reality.

This is a striking contrast with modern interpretations that treat elements as personality traits or emotional moods. In classical Indian thought, the elements explain why perception itself has structure.

Ayurveda: Elements in Motion

Ayurveda adapts elemental theory to the practical needs of medicine. The elements combine into three doṣas (vāta, pitta, and kapha) which govern movement, transformation, and stability in the body. Health is not about eliminating elements or identifying with them, but about understanding how their tendencies manifest in daily life.

Even here, the elements are not inert substances. They are patterns of activity, always contextual, always relational. Balance is situational, not idealised.

Tantra: Working With and Beyond the Elements

Tantrik traditions push elemental thinking in yet another direction. In many Tantrik systems, the elements are internalised within the body and used in ritual, visualisation, and meditative practice. One might consciously dissolve the elements back into their source, reversing the process of manifestation itself.

The goal is not harmony in the modern wellness sense, but liberation through insight and transformation. To recognise the elemental structure of experience is, ultimately, to see through it.

This point is often missed in contemporary adaptations of Tantra, where elements are treated as aesthetic categories or spiritual identities. Traditionally, they were something to be mastered and transcended, not celebrated as fixed aspects of the self.

A Tantrik Case Study: Bhūta Śuddhi

In our classes recently we have been exploring the important yet very seldom taught practice of Bhūta Śuddhi. This Sanskrit term literally means the "purification (śuddhi) of the elements (bhūta)."

In the Tantrik traditions (Śaiva, Śākta, and later Vaiṣṇava Tantras), Bhūta Śuddhi was a core preliminary ritual. For example, in Śaiva Tantrik manuals Bhūta Śuddhi is described as the ritual in which the practitioner dissolves the five gross elements back into their subtle sources, ultimately into Śiva himself. In Śākta Tantras, it became crucial for worship of the goddess, ensuring that the practitioner’s body was no longer ordinary but a divinised body suitable for further, deeper practices.

In time, Bhūta Śuddhi was not only a ritual but also became a yogic visualisation technique. The process usually involved:

1. Dissolution (laya) of the elements in reverse order (earth into water, water into fire, fire into air, air into ether…)

2. Void experience (śūnyatā), where the body is visualised as dissolved into pure consciousness.

3. Reconstruction (sṛṣṭi), where the purified elements are reconstituted as a divine body inhabited by the deity.

This mirrored cosmological creation and dissolution cycles (sṛṣṭi-pralaya) and aligned the practitioner’s microcosm with the macrocosm.

The version of the practice we have been exploring is beautifully depicted in the image below, by artist Emilia Cornwell. I hope to make available a video recording of the practice in due course.

Greece and China: Similar Words, Different Worlds

Ancient Greece also spoke of earth, water, air, and fire, but in a fundamentally different way. Greek philosophers such as Empedocles used elements to explain what physical things are made of and how they change. Fire rises; earth falls. Health, in Greek medicine, depends on balancing bodily fluids, not on aligning consciousness with cosmic processes.

China’s system, often translated as the “five elements,” is different again. Wood, fire, earth, metal, and water are not substances at all but phases of transformation. They describe how processes generate and restrain one another, how seasons turn, governments function, and bodies stay in dynamic balance. Asking what reality is “made of” would miss the point entirely.

What Gets Lost in Modern Elemental Spirituality

Today, elemental language circulates freely in yoga studios, personality quizzes, and spiritual self-help books. Earth becomes “grounding,” fire becomes “passion,” air becomes “ideas.” While this can be evocative, it also strips the elements of their original intellectual seriousness.

Across cultures, elemental systems were never merely symbolic. They were rigorous frameworks for understanding reality, ethics, health, and liberation. To collapse them into a universal set of traits is to overlook what made them powerful in the first place: their precision, their context, and their philosophical ambition.

Thinking With the Elements, Not About Them

The elements were not just answers to the question “what am I?” but tools for exploring how experience takes shape. They allowed cultures to think across body and world, matter and meaning. Their value lies not in their sameness across traditions, but in how differently they were used. To recover that depth is not to reject modern creativity, but to approach elemental language with humility. The elements were never just earth, water, fire, and air. They were ways of learning how reality appears and how one might, ultimately, see beyond it.

In a world that pushes you toward straight lines, goals, and perfection -
return to the spiral.
Let your yoga be a winding path back inward.
Let your breath spiral like smoke.
Let your practice remind you:

You are the movement of the universe, made visible in form.
You are the spiral - not separate, but sacred.

Spirals are everywhere.
In the coil of a snail shell.
The unfurling of your spine.
The curl of leaves.
The turning of galaxies.

From the spinning of electrons to the vast arms of galaxies, everything turns.

• The Milky Way rotates around a galactic centre.

• Hurricanes, cyclones, and vortexes spiral across oceans and atmospheres.

• Water spirals as it drains, as it dances in streams.

• Even time, some physicists suggest, may spiral rather than unfold in a straight line.

You were never meant to walk a straight line.

You were born into a forest of spirals, of breath, bone, branch, and becoming.

From forest roots to starlit arms, life moves in spirals, not straight lines. From the spiralled galaxies above to the curl of a fern, from the double helix of your DNA to the unfurling of a baby’s fingers, life moves in curves. And so do you. The spiral is not just structure. It’s a movement of energy, a cosmic gesture.

In postural yoga, we follow these curves. Twists and rotations awaken deep core muscles, cleanse inner organs, and align the spine with breath, not to control the body, but to participate in its natural intelligence. Yoga, at its essence, is not a practice of achieving fixed shapes, it is a remembering. A returning. A participation in the pulse beneath all form, the spanda, the sacred tremor of aliveness.

We don’t practice to master the pose. We practice to remember the pattern.
The ancient pattern that dances through galaxies, seeds, synapses and silence.

The Intelligence of Matter

Beneath your skin, the minerals and metals that spiral through your veins, calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium, are the very elements that form the soil beneath you and the stars above. There is no separation.

• Iron, forged in stars, now carries oxygen in your blood

• Magnesium, found in both soil and bone, supports muscle, nerve, and heart

• Calcium gives structure to trees, mountains, and your skeleton

• Copper and zinc regulate energy, immunity, and neural pathways

These elements do not belong to us, they move through us. We are simply one moment in their journey from stone to star to skin. Your body is not separate from the planet. It is a brief arrangement of minerals, remembering how to live.

Yoga reminds us that the body is not less sacred than the sky. Your body is the cathedral of the universe, formed of stardust, sap, breath, and time and the universe is the cathedral of your body, echoing your curves, spirals, and longing to return. You bow to it, and it bows back. One sacred architecture, as above, so within.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson said “Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centres of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

To sit in meditation, to breathe with awareness, to move with reverence, is to participate in this sacred architecture. To place your feet on the earth is to light up the circuitry of a cosmic temple.

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Fractals, Flow & the Forgotten Language

Science now affirms what ancient cultures intuited: that fractals, self-repeating patterns, appear throughout our bodies, in the bronchi of the lungs, the folds of the heart, the neurons of the brain, the costae of a conch shell, the branches of trees, the rivers of the earth, and the galaxies of the cosmos.

The same design echoing at every scale. So it is with spirals. We are made in this same motion. Spirals are nature’s signature of growth, unfolding through time and space with grace and precision.

• Your DNA coils in a double spiral helix

• Heart valves, and fingerprints spiral inward

• Your gut, your muscles, follow spiral movement

• The cochlea of your ear spirals, allowing you to perceive sound

• Your spine curves like a river

• Your breath follows a tidal rhythm

• Your organs nestle in fractal folds

Even the cerebral cortex folds in spirals, increasing surface area to hold memory, sensation, and awareness.

And beneath your feet, the roots of trees twist in sacred geometry, speaking with fungi in a mycelial whisper. We are spirals, made of spirals, inside a spiralling world.

(For a deeper exploration of this concept please watch Gil Heldey’s, PhD, “Unwinding the Heart Centre”. For sensitive viewers please be aware a real human heart is being used.)

Tree-Like Knowing

Trees are some of our oldest teachers.

Their wisdom lies not in movement but in rooted presence. Their posture is not a performance. It is the consequence of a deep relationship with gravity, sunlight, and the unseen web below.

Your body, too, is a tree:

• Your spine is the trunk, spiralling gently upward, holding you with grace

• Your nerves branch outward like fine twigs, carrying messages to every cell

• Your limbs arc and reach, like branches seeking sun

• Your breath rises and falls like wind through leaves

• Your feet root down, pressing into earth just as taproots do, grounding and drawing nourishment up

The spiral lives in this body-tree. Every movement is sap rising. Yoga invites us to grow from the root. To turn inward, then expand outward and vice-versa, just like the trees.

When we move on the mat, we are not trying to become something other. We are remembering that we already are part of it all. We are the root and the leaf. The branch and the breath. Each posture a mudra of the forest.

The triskele, an ancient spiral symbol, reflects this knowing, motion within stillness, life within death, pattern within chaos. Found in many earth-honouring traditions, it echoes the triple spiral of life: birth, death, and renewal; mind, body, and spirit; roots, trunk, and crown; maiden, mother, and crone.

Ancient Earth Wisdom: Spirals Across Cultures

In earth-based wisdom, the spiral isn’t a shape, it’s a story of remembering.
Of rooting, rising, returning. Indigenous carvings from deserts to valleys depict spirals as symbols of time, change, and return.

Long before yoga became posture, across the ancient world, earth-based cultures carved spirals into stone and story. The spiral was honoured as a symbol of consciousness, evolution, and return:

• From the Neolithic cup and ring stone of Gardom’s Edge, near Sheffield (see photo above) to the tombs of Newgrange in Ireland to the rock art of the Ancestral Puebloans in the American Southwest, the spiral was seen as a symbol of life’s continuous unfolding.

• The Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand) etched the koru, a spiral shaped like an unfurling fern, to represent new beginnings, harmony, and growth.

• In the Celtic tradition, triple spirals (triskeles) conveyed the sacred interconnection of the balance of elements: land, sea, and sky; the cyclical nature of life: birth, death and rebirth; the inner spiral journey: body, mind and spirit moving as one.

• The Indigenous peoples of Australia, the Pacific Islands, and parts of Africa also wove spiral motifs through ceremony and craft, mapping both time and territory.

For earth-based peoples, the spiral was a map of becoming, inward and outward, again and again. These ancient patterns speak a language of return. Reminding us that movement is not away, but ever deeper into what we are.

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Yoga and Spiral Movement

In yoga, we honour the spiral through breath, movement, and stillness. We awaken the spiral through practice:

• Twisting postures wring out tension from deep in the core, nourish the spine, aid digestion, and support circulation

• Spirals help release held tension, especially in the midline, where fear and fatigue accumulate

• Gentle, circular transitions between postures reflect the body’s preference for arcs over angles

• Curved movements support the nervous system, especially the vagus nerve

• Circular breath softens the body’s inner weather

• Even our attention spirals, inward to stillness, outward to awareness

The spiral reminds us:
Healing is not a linear path.
Yoga is not a ladder. It's a labyrinth.
Yoga is a spiral of becoming. We return again and again, more deeply, truer, wiser each time.

To practice yoga in this way is to trace these patterns. To listen to the body not as a machine to be fixed, but as a field of intelligence, dynamic, responsive, and woven into the world.

Remembering What We Are

This is not yoga as fitness.
This is yoga as memory.

We are not here to sculpt the body, but to listen to its stories, stories carried in fascia, in the curve of the spine, in the tremble of breath. We are not here to strive, but to soften. To spiral. To root. To rise.

Yoga that returns us to our essence does not separate the sacred and the ordinary.
It finds sacredness in the compost, in the sigh, in the imperfect curve of living.

Spiral Back Home

This yoga is a remembering, not a union, not a yoking, but a return to what has always been.

You are a spiral.
You are stardust and soil.
You are a living cathedral of intelligence, curving back toward your essence.

Come Home to the Spiral

At Yoga Nature Sheffield, our practice is grounded in:

• Moving with the spiral flow of the spine, awakening core strength and inner breath

• Following seasonal rhythms, like trees responding to light and soil

• Cultivating rooted awareness in practice, stable, fluid, and awake

• Letting the breath branch out gently, like leaves to light

We don’t practice to master the pose. We practice to remember the pattern. The pattern that is older than language. Older than bones. The spiral of breath, turning again toward life.

If this resonates with you, we invite you to share this essay and to also come and explore our wild, seasonal, soul-rooted yoga at Yoga Nature Sheffield. Practice that remembers what you already are.

You were not born unfinished.
No quiet flaw waits in your bones.
No better version of you
paces the future, tapping its foot.

Before the world named you,
before it taught you how to perform yourself,
you belonged: to breath, to earth,
to the vastness listening through your eyes.

Nothing essential was ever missing.
Only covered.
Only asked to forget.

And so the path is not forward.
It is inward.
Not becoming,
but remembering what has never left.

Pause here.
Let the ache to improve dissolve.
What you are seeking
is already awake.

“Start the journey to becoming your best self.”

We’ve all heard it. On adverts, yoga flyers, influencer captions, motivational posters in corporate hallways. It sounds noble. Uplifting. Inspiring. But what if it’s not?

What if “becoming your best self” is a glossy trap wrapped in self-improvement jargon, quietly whispering: you’re not enough, not yet, not now?

What if the journey itself, this endless reaching toward a shinier version of ourselves, is the very thing that keeps us disconnected from the deep okayness that has always been here?

The Self Is Not a Product

Late-stage capitalism thrives on dissatisfaction. It teaches us to see ourselves as broken projects to be fixed, shaped, refined, upgraded. And so the wellness world has become a paradox:

A place that promises wholeness, while quietly selling us the idea that we are never quite whole.

We meditate to become calm.
We journal to become wise.
We cleanse to become pure.
We hustle to become better.
And in the process, we forget how to be.

We turn our attention toward who we should be, and abandon who we already are.

“Best” According to Whom?

The phrase “your best self” implies there’s a hierarchy within you.
That some parts are better, more valuable, more loveable.
That your rage, your laziness, your softness, your slowness, your body shape, your unproductivity are things to conquer rather than listen to.

But who decided which version of you is “best”?
Often, it’s the most palatable, productive, filtered version.
The one that gets the job. Gets the likes. Gets the praise.

And so we clip our wings in the name of self-betterment.
We contort our essence to fit a dream that was never really ours.
We forget that healing doesn’t always look like light and clarity. It sometimes looks like sitting in the mud, howling.

The Culture of Forgetting

From the moment we arrive in this world, we are taught who to be.
We’re shaped by school systems that reward obedience over curiosity.
Conditioned by media that tells us beauty looks one way.
Trained by families, often lovingly, to fit the mould, not to break it.

We learn to speak their language before we understand our own.
To please. To perform. To achieve.
And slowly, subtly, we forget.

Forget how to rest in mystery.
Forget the way our bodies pulsed with knowing.
Forget that we once belonged completely to this Earth, barefoot, wordless, wild.

This forgetting is not personal. It’s cultural. Systemic. Inherited.
And yoga is not a luxury wellness tool. It’s an ancient antidote.

New Year, Same Forgetting

New Year’s resolutions are perhaps the most ritualised expression of this forgetting.

Each January, we collectively agree to begin again, as if we were unfinished drafts.

To fix our bodies.
Correct our habits.
Upgrade our personalities.
Become more disciplined, more productive, more acceptable.

The calendar turns, and suddenly we are invited, no, instructed, to abandon who we were on December 31st.

But this ritual isn’t neutral.
It’s cultural conditioning dressed up as hope.

New Year’s resolutions are rarely rooted in reverence for the Self.
They’re born from comparison, shame, and the quiet belief that who we are now is not enough to carry forward.

Yoga, in its truest sense, stands in direct opposition to this.

There is no “new you” in January.
There is only the same vast, luminous awareness meeting a new moment in time.

The yogic year does not begin with self-rejection. It begins with attunement, to season, to body, to breath, and to the slow intelligence of nature.
This time of year is not for reinvention.
It is for listening.
For composting what no longer serves.
For remembering what has always been true beneath the noise.

To resolve to become someone else is to miss the invitation entirely.
The deeper practice is to stay.
To keep company with yourself as you are.
To let clarity arise organically, not through force.

Yoga does not ask: Who will you become this year?
It asks: What are you finally ready to recognise: that the one seeking has always been the one sought?

There’s Nowhere to Get To

In many yogic and mystical traditions, the true Self isn’t something we become.
It’s something we remember.
Something we uncover.
Something so ancient and intact that no journey could improve it.

This is what yoga points to again and again.
Not the hustle of self-perfection, but the stillness of self-recognition.
The Sanskrit root of yoga, √yuj, is so often translated as “to yoke” or “to unite,” but it can also mean to reconnect, to restore awareness of something already present but veiled.

That “something” is your svabhāva, your essence nature.
The innate, radiant intelligence that breathes you.
The awareness behind the thoughts.
The stillness beneath the storm.
The open, spacious beingness that was never born and cannot be broken.

As the Taittirīya Upaniṣad says:

“Satyam jñānam anantam brahma”
“Reality is truth, consciousness, and endlessness.”

You are not a self to improve.
You are Being itself, momentarily forgetting its own vastness.

Wholeness Isn’t Earned, It’s Remembered

Yoga, then, is not a staircase to climb.
It’s a veil to lift.
A softening into the already here.

It’s not a path of becoming, it’s a path of unbecoming everything that obscures your essence.

You do not need to hustle toward some version of wholeness.
You are wholeness.
You are presence.
You are the vast sky in which all thoughts and emotions arise and dissolve.

And when that is seen, not just intellectually, but directly. there’s no longer a need to polish yourself into a myth.

There is just the dance of being, imperfectly perfect.

Let Yourself Be

Maybe the invitation isn’t to “start the journey to becoming your best self.”
Maybe it’s to stop.

Stop striving.
Stop fixing.
Stop measuring yourself against a mythical version that only exists in curated feeds and capitalist fantasies.

Start listening.
Start softening.
Start trusting that your essence was never the problem.
That your being is not a project.
That presence, not perfection, is the true path home.

Yoga doesn’t ask you to become better.
It asks you to become still, so still that the dust of becoming settles,
and you remember:

you are already That.

A midwinter nidra for those craving rest, magic, and the quiet wisdom of the long night.

What is a Yoga Nidra?

Yoga nidra (translatable as yogic sleep) is a deeply restful practice that helps you access a state between wakefulness and sleep. All you need to do is arrive into a comfortable lying down posture, listen to the words, aiming to stay attentive and awake, though if you fall asleep that’s fine too.