Lighten your load
What is weighing you down? How would it feel to let it go, and cleanse yourself of the hold it has on you? Whether it be a physical burden or an emotional one, if you’re carrying something around that makes you feel anxious, it can impact you day and night until you feel able to release it. This is where the yogic principle of Saucha comes in; an invitation to purify yourself of toxic thoughts, feelings, words and habits.
Last year’s blogs explored the five yamas - ethical guidelines that offer us a way to interact with the world around us. These were
Whilst the yamas offer us a way to interact with the world around us, they work best when paired with the five niyamas - guidelines that look inside - how we can be the best versions of ourselves, advising on steps we need to take to live our most meaningful lives. I’ll be covering all of these in the coming blogs, but today we start by exploring Saucha, the first of the niyamas, which translates roughly as cleanliness or purification.
It can be tempting when working with the yamas and niyamas to try to understand them with a literal interpretation. These are ancient principles from a past way of living that has evolved into the world we are in today. The principles can still be applied, but their meaning needs to expand and encompass the modern world. So whilst cleanliness and the habit of keeping yourself clean, presentable and neat are baked into Saucha, an expansive look at this niyama is more aligned with the letting go of toxic things. Lightening the load we carry that involves anything that challenges our ability to feel joy and be present. Saucha is a release - a way of moving forwards without traits or habits that weigh us down.
How to bring Saucha into your daily life
If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us could name toxic things in our lives we would like to reduce the impact of. Last year I went on a 28 day sugar detox as I felt sluggish and as if I had too many sweet snacks in my life. The point was not to eliminate sugar entirely, but to give my body a break and offer a cleansing to my system without the stimulating effect of sugar for a month.
It can be tempting to be all or nothing about cleansing, but as we learnt in my blog about Brahmacharya, the path of moderation is the key to success. A sugar detox is fine if it means when you come out of it, you make healthy conscious choices about your diet, but to take it to the extreme and cut something out that interferes with the joy in your life or quit it for a month and then go back to business as usual doesn’t fit with the sentiment of the niyamas.
My advice is to find one thing you can do to help improve a toxic area in your life. If you struggle to eat enough fruit and veg it could be increasing your intake by one or two pieces a day. It could be adding an extra glass of water into your morning routine or making sure you floss your teeth twice a week. The important thing is to step back and recognise the behaviour you wish to cleanse. Then look for a small change you can build into your day that will allow you to purify in this area. Try tracking this change for two - four weeks and notice how you feel. More energised? Lighter, happier? If there is a positive impact from the change, you are more likely to maintain the behaviour. What you are letting go of could be physical or emotional. If it is something weighing you down, no matter how it appears in the body, confronting it and trying to release it should mean a more positive lifestyle moving forwards.
How does Saucha show up on the mat?
Cleansing within your practice can take multiple forms. There are the obvious areas such as wiping down your mat after your class, folding and replacing blankets, and putting away props neatly: small, tangible ways to bring order into your yoga practice. But what about the physical and subtle elements of a practice that invite us to cleanse?
Twists in the body are purported to offer a cleansing quality. When we twist and hold, it’s a little like squeezing out a sponge. As we undo the twist and realign, the sponge bounces back into shape, and, within our bodies, the release is a little like a flush, sending blood flowing and energy moving where previously there had been a block. Twists are reported to aid elimination, the motion of twisting through the centre of the body helping massage the digestive organs and stimulate the digestive function. They’re absolutely brilliant if you’re feeling bloated or sluggish to help relieve any pressure in the abdomen.
Pranayama is another tool we have in our yoga practice that offers a cleansing quality. By shifting the way we use the breath, we can remove stagnant energy from the body and reoxygenate our systems with deep and powerful breaths. Kappalabhati, or Skull Shining Breath, is a brilliant breathing practice to help cleanse the subtle body, that which sits beyond just our physical presence. Any breathwork that invites you to release on the exhale can help with the sense of letting go, visualising the toxic trait you’re releasing being expelled from the body on the out breath.
Try it for yourself
Find a quiet spot to sit or lay down, and take a few breaths here to relax yourself, switching off from the outside world. Visualise your body, and do a quick scan from head to toe. Ask yourself silently, how do I feel today - physically, and emotionally? What is weighing me down? If you can identify something, try to name it in a word. Don’t be drawn into a narrative, rather label it to contain the feeling that you are confronting.
Bring your attention to your breath. For now, allow it to move in and out through the nose and take a few rounds of breath to start to lengthen and deepen the breath you are drawing in. Once the breaths are long and slow, and the body and mind are calm, revisit the feeling you labelled earlier that was weighing you down. As you inhale and fill the body up with breath, focus on this thing, and on the exhale, open the mouth and gently sigh out the breath, making a soft sound like a distant ocean wave crashing. Continue this for a few rounds, imagining as you release the ocean breath that you are releasing the burden from your system, letting it go, letting the ocean cleanse you. You can continue with this breathwork for as long as you need on its own, or if you wish to add a layer and like to work with a mantra, repeat silently on the inhale I release what no longer serves me, opening the mouth and sighing this out on the exhale.
When you’re ready, allow the breath to return to your normal ebb and flow and softly blink the eyes open. Stay there for a moment, enjoying the feeling of lightness from releasing your load, before you move back into your day.
This month I’m reading: One of my yoga students passed forward a book they enjoyed and asked me to do the same once I’d finished reading it. I absolutely love this idea, of loving a book and its message so much that you move it into a chain to share its message with likeminded people in your community. The book was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini, and if it hasn’t wound its way to you yet, I can completely recommend finding yourself a copy to devour!
This month I’m recommending: Swedish Death Cleaning - a concept I was recently introduced to that fits perfectly with the philosophy of Saucha. Whilst the name may sound a little morbid, this isn’t something that has to happen in relation to death, but an approach to keeping your life clean and ordered to purify your spaces, both physical and digital. The Spruce have a great blog to introduce you to the concept.
