Going Through You to Get to You by Gabe Hopp

You know how at the end of a yoga class, you just feel like everything is gonna be okay? For a few minutes, your body feels at ease, your breath is soft and full, your mind has finally calmed and settled and you feel a level of bliss that is largely unattainable in any other setting? For me, at the end of class in savasana, and in those brief moments before we rise up and return to the real world, exist the moments in which I come closest to connecting with myself at my core. And, one great thing about yoga, is that it teaches us to relax enough physically and mentally to begin to quiet the chattering mind and tap into the wisdom mind and our calm serene center.

Understanding who we truly are is the project of our lives. And wouldn’t it be handy if we had a map to help lead us there? Yoga maps are predominantly organized from outermost layers to innermost layers. The map of the koshas is a great example of this. The koshas, or the layers of our human experience, provide one map to understand ourselves. I just taught a workshop on the koshas, so they are fresh in my mind. A kosha is a sheath or a layer and there are five layers that surround the core essence of ourselves. In this system, you can parse out the more external layers of yourself, the physical, energetic, mind and spirit layers, in order to discover the more internal you that is truly you.

Through the practices of yoga and paying attention to the individual layers that make up us, we learn to connect to ourselves and understand ourselves better. And, I think this is one of the reasons that we come to yoga! Sure, we might be there to work through bodily stiffness or to learn the basics of meditation, but almost all of the skills we learn in yoga lead us to a better understanding of how we function and what drives us.

Another yoga map with a similar message is the map of the 25 tattvas. In this school of thought, which comes from the Classical period of yoga, there are 25 identified things in the world. One of them (the first!) is the true you, called purusha and the other twenty-four of them are distinctly not you, called prakriti. In the tattvas map, the ancient yogis recognized that the purusha (the true essence of you) is a challenging place to find yourself spontaneously. And so, you need the practices of stilling the mind, breathing intentionally and going inward in order to get there.

Whatever your methodology and motivation for coming to yoga, consider how it has impacted your ability to see and understand yourself. Do you feel more you when you’re in those experiences and as a result of your practice? How have you grown since you began your yoga project?