Know Yourself: The Ancient Practice That Changes How You See Everything

So if you're new here, I've been working through an ancient set of yogic principles called the yamas and niyamas.

And today is the fourth of the five niyamas.

So if you wanna go back and start from the beginning, please feel free to.

They're all there, all the episodes are just waiting for you, but you can absolutely start right here as well.

So today is the fourth niyama.

Svadhyaya, self-study.

And before you think that this is just about hitting the books, let me tell you what Deborah Adele writes in her book, The Yamas and Niyamas, about what self-study actually means.

We suffer because we forget who we are.

Svadhyaya is about knowing your true identity, understanding the boxes you have been wrapped in, the conditioning that started in childhood, the beliefs you picked up somewhere along the way, the layers you have been living inside of without even realizing it.

It's the practice of getting genuinely curious about who you actually are underneath all of that.

So I have been studying myself for as long as I can remember.

I started, I think, with astrology.

I don't even remember how old I was.

I don't know how it happened.

My parents aren't into it.

My godmother is, but I don't remember her ever having a conversation with me.

But somehow there I was reading books, anything I could get my hands on.

So I am a Capricorn sun, Taurus rising, Cancer moon.

And then started working.

And there's, of course, Myers-Briggs.

I'm an INFP.

There's also the DISC system.

I am a C. There's Enneagram, which I don't know a whole lot about, but I think I'm a four.

There's meditation, books.

And then human design found me, or I found it, however you want to look at it.