Sutra 1.30: Obstacle #2: Dullness of Spirit: Styana

In Yoga Sutra 1.30 we were presented with nine different Antarayas or obstacles on one’s path to self realization. These obstacles are disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, fatigue, sensory attachment, wrong perspective, non-achievement, and non-steadiness.

Today we are understanding more about Styana which translates as dullness of spirit, lack of enthusiasm, or boredom. Often times when we first encounter a new subject, an interesting person, an unfamiliar food, or an unknown source of entertainment the novelty adds such a sparkle to our lives. Motivation dive bombs our days and nothing can stop us from making it to that new Ashtanga class or from logging on to Duolingo or from spending time chatting to that spicy guy or gal we fancy.

Patanjali warns us that this desire to dive in head first on the daily will absolutely wither and wane and what once required not much will at all, will, require our willingness to decide what’s important to us and how we will follow through after all the sparkles settle and subside. So after our 1,750th vinyasa, it becomes our duty to dive into the depths of what we believe we know so that now we can learn not just about vinyasas but the very beliefs we are believing that may very well be broiling the aliveness from our brains.

Perhaps we might consider this broiling to be the overstimulation of what has become our normal. We have become a society that gets off on notifications. Wether it’s from IG or FB or email or WhatsApp or telegram or holy guacamole, our so called connections have become covid-like contagious and have contorted our reality. The deeper into our screens we allow ourselves to fall, the more dull our lives become. When I look around and see a society face deep into screens, this is equal to blood curling screams. Let us ditch the screens and decide to dive into nature, into our journals, into our breath, into our partnerships, into the depth of which we see and taste and smell. Turn off the notifications and turn up the brightness of your very real life.

Gracias Dear Readers,

What if we chose to remove our phones and screens from our lives at least 1-2 hours per day? What would emerge/ What would become more “bright”? I believe we can only become more ALIVE by living, and to do so, we must choose to stop tuning into a device and start tuning into our dreams and desires, which can never be fully experienced on the second hand experience of a screen. Whose with me?

All my love,

Andrea Dawn