Ishvarapranidhana

neti, yeah, yeah.

And that's Ishvara Pranidhana.

That's you down on your knees.

Yeah.

And Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra offers a shortcut in the very first chapter.

Or by devotion to Ishvara.

The mind doesn't need to be forced.

It takes the shape of whatever it focuses upon.

This is mirrored in the Yoga Sutra.

Like in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, we talked about the yamas and niyamas before, right? And what's the last niyama?

Ishvara Pranidhana.

Ishvara Pranidhana.

And so the idea is that we just need to hold the greater concepts at least as context while we work on the daily maintenance.

And so then later in Sutra two point one, Patanjali offers another practical formula, Kriya Yoga, the yoga of action, and it's made of three elements, Tapas, which is disciplined effort, Swadhyaya, self-study, and Ishvara Pranidhana, surrender to something greater than the individual ego.

Now, this is often read as a more accessible kind of worldly companion to Sutra one point one two, Abhyasa and Vairagya.

The same underlying principle reframed for someone living an actually active life like you and me rather than a pure contemplative one.

Right.

And when you think about, uh, the yamas and the niyamas, for example, aparigraha, one of the yamas, is the practice of non-grasping.

Yeah.

And this is r- this is related to being able to let things go.

Yeah.

Well, I think what's important with yoga philosophy is understanding that there is a whole system in place.

So yes, there is one of the yamas, aparigraha, is asking us to practice non-grasping, non-possessiveness, but equally, one of the niyamas is asking us to practice tapas.

Um, so have self-discipline.

Then there's mindfulness, meditation, leading with the gut, where's, where I talk about the gut-brain connection and intuition.

And then again, I lean into yoga philosophy to help us with, uh, the power of, you know, h- what it, what happens when we surrender and let go using, you know, inspiration from Ishvara Pranidhana-

Mm

... um, and how we can sort of create, uh, let go of that illusion of control and, you know, move through uncertainty.

But where, where would you look to for guidance?

guidance?Mm, that's a great question.

Um, I think I would use the wisdom from yoga philosophy where, you know, the prac- do you know about Ishvara Pranidhana?

Okay, I do, but there's a lot of different translations.

I mean, there's directly, it's right there in Sanskrit.

Ishvara Pranidhana is one of the limbs of the Ashtanga Yoga system of surrender to the Supreme Lord like that.

It doesn't make clear who the Ishvar is.

That's another thing.

Your soul knows this.

Study of scriptures and mantras, contemplation, and Ishvara Pranidhana, surrender to the divine.

Asana, establishing a stable, steady physical posture for long periods of meditation, 'cause the ultimate goal is, you know, on this path of Raja Yoga, it eventually leads to Kriya.

It even says in the 2,000-year-old text, Kriya, that you, you know, you have certain postures, and then you do the...

So when you sit with what happened in that temple, what do you consider?

I don't, you know, I think there's a space of just, you know, when I think about this, it's almost like Ishvara Pranidhana, you

know,

just something higher than me, I don't know what it is, you know, something pure, something clean, who knows what it was.

You can absolutely start right here and go back to the rest whenever you're ready.

Ishvara Pranidhana.

Say it with me, and I'm probably butchering it.

Ishvara Pranidhana.

It translates as surrender or devotion to something greater than yourself.

Or as Deborah Adele calls it in her book, The Yamas and Niyamas, which we have been following along in.

There's nowhere to be.

You're just lying there, just letting everything kind of land and come together.