Vidya: Clear Seeing through Yoga By: Alison King Tigges

One of the biggest parts of my job as a yoga teacher is to remind students (and myself!) that yoga poses in yoga classes don’t exist in a vacuum. I see my job as being a facilitator of helping people see the connection between what we do in the yoga classroom and how that relates to real life. Because as you know, we spend .01% of our time in a yoga class and the rest of it in the real world. The yoga class is step one. It is a mechanism that helps us learn things about ourselves. It helps us pay attention and process. 

Let’s face it, we are busy and life doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. It’s easy to think we don’t have the time.  But the world keeps on spinning, whether we make the time or not. Given everything going on in the world these days, I think it’s worth noting that oftentimes strong feelings are valid and to be expected. It’s my belief (and others far smarter than myself) that these strong feelings sit in the body. Yoga is all about the belief that our bodies and minds are connected. And if strong feelings (stress too!) are left unprocessed, that rarely ends well. I believe a major part of our practice is to process these feelings, get to know these feelings, walk right into these feelings —and to be really clear about why and where they come from. Once we become really clear, then we can actually act in the way that we think is most helpful. Clarity comes from paying attention. This is how we wake up! Maybe that is quiet action or maybe that action is loud. But at the end of the day when we process and really sit with these feelings, at least that action is mindful.

Clear-seeing (or knowing) in the yoga tradition is called “vidya”.  A consistent yoga practice is a great way to do develop more vidya, and we are here to help you along the way.