Meditating With Yoga Sutra 1.13

Yoga Sutra 1.13 says tatra sthitau yatno'bhyāsaḥ.

Our practice is the effort to secure steadiness. As we practice together, we bring all of our effort together to restore a sense of steadiness to our minds, our bodies, and our spirits.

Transcript

Welcome to today's meditation inspired by yoga sutra 113 as we intentionally pause the business of our day pause the motion I invite you to settle in right here begin to get comfortable close your eyes if that feels right or maybe as you look around your space you settle on one spot where you can really focus your gaze focus your attention whatever settling looks like for you let's just all take a few breaths together finding our way into this present moment we breathe in we breathe out we inhale together we exhale together a gentle breath in a full breath out our practice together for these few minutes is about trying to stay in the moment noticing as we wander away and inviting ourselves to come right back because today we sit with yoga sutra 113 which teaches us our practice is the effort to secure steadiness listen to that again and just think about what does that mean for you personally our practice is the effort to secure steadiness and as we practice together we bring all of our effort toward one point securing a sense of steadiness comes in our body steadiness comes in our breath steadiness comes in our mind it's something we have to continue to keep inviting back and as we do steadiness comes we practice through our practice concentrating practice through our practice being in the present moment and we practice through this practice cultivating one pointed focus we practice it so much that it becomes our natural way of moving through life we actually practice living our lives with steadiness for the next few breaths I invite you to picture yourself driving down the road there's a car right in front of you you see this car in the middle of the painted lines on the highway at times you notice the card drifting toward the line on the left and then seconds later you see the card drifting back toward the line on the right then you notice the car pulling away from you speeding up seconds later you realize you're getting closer but your speed has remained the same you watch this for a short time and begin to understand that car is not experiencing much steadiness right now you're not judging the driver you're just noticing it just is so you move into the passing lane and as you pass by this car you glance over and you see the driver has a cell phone in one hand and he's talking very animatedly to the person next to him and all of a sudden it makes sense again no judgments going through your mind but you do have an awareness that this car's ability to stay steady was being impacted by the driver's practice of one-pointed focus he was simply trying to do too many things at one time trying to give his attention to too many different competing forces the road the phone the passenger next to him and if we apply that example to what happens in our own mind our own thoughts we could ask ourselves how many times in my day do I try to give my attention to multiple things at the same time as I'm cooking dinner I'm watching the news talking to my partner about my day and already thinking about what I need to do tomorrow we do this kind of thing all day long as many of us have experienced times in our lives as multitaskers we can say with certainty that nothing in life ever gets our full attention when we function that way everything your partner the dinner your present moment they only get a sliver of your attention and of your focus so then what do we do how do we shift this way of being in our own lives how do we truly find and practice the steadiness that yoga sutra 113 was describing if you truly want to practice steadiness of mind I recall the words that Deepak Chopra has said many times when you're doing laundry do laundry when you're doing laundry do laundry nothing else give your laundry the full attention we have to practice concentrating we have to practice giving one thing our full focus all of our energy all of our effort just as when you sit for meditation maybe you give your focus to that spot on the wall and let nothing distract your gaze from it maybe you give your attention to the breath and let nothing draw you away from that next breath coming in we have to practice one-pointed focus in order to bring steadiness into our lives again and again steadiness comes but it will not remain if we don't allow our attention to stay on one thing at a time and so let's pause here and let's practice that if it feels right for you you can use your breath if it feels a bit more concrete you can find a spot in the room that you can really focus your gaze on maybe there's a sensation in your body that you'll focus on like the expansion of your ribcage as you breathe but find one thing upon which you can focus and let's practice that practice steadiness let's just pause here continue to breathe noticing what we notice as you continue to breathe just reflect for a few seconds without any judgment what you noticed in the moments of quiet how natural did one-pointed focus feel or not how difficult was it how much were you able to return as the mind began to go off in another direction as we prepare to close our practice let's first just embrace where we are today with this practice of steadiness and then commit that when we do laundry in the coming days we will just do laundry we'll put things in our life in our schedule where we practice doing one thing at a time until eventually that way of being becomes our default our natural way of moving through the world tatra shito yachno abhyasa our practice is our effort to secure steadiness namaste

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Inspiring!