Searching for sadhana
How to develop your own personal practice. Plus a contemplation on the Warrior Goddess Kali for Savasana Challenge Day 10.
Something funny happened when I got pregnant with my son. It wasn’t actually funny at the time; on the contrary it was quite distressing. I thought it would resolve itself after my son was born. That, perhaps, was the funny part. When I was pregnant with my daughter, the same thing happened all over again, except this time it was even worse. And then with two kids, I gave up.
In hindsight, I should have seen this coming. I’m a naturally bendy person and I knew that in pregnancy the hormone relaxin courses through the body to loosen up your pelvic muscles, joints, and ligaments in preparation for birth. This loosening often makes pregnant women feel unstable and can cause pelvic girdle pain. Relaxin also causes pregnant women to be more flexible, which has benefits when you’re carrying around extra weight and need to deliver a 4-10ish pound human through your vagina, but this loosening can also backfire for women who are already flexible enough as it is (hi that’s me 🙋🏻♀️).
Practicing yoga during pregnancy, which is so often touted as incredibly beneficial for pregnant women and frequently recommended by doctors, was painful for me. I stopped doing it because it was hurting more than it was helping. And so began the slow and tragic undoing of my connection to yoga.
*I need to clarify here that I’m specifically talking about asana. I still meditated and read philosophy texts and taught yoga. I just didn’t practice asana anymore. This distinction is important and the West’s obsession with equating yoga with physical movement is highly problematic.
Relaxin doesn’t just disappear after you give birth. It can stay in the body at lower levels for up to 12 months before returning to pre-pregnancy levels, and that timeline increases if you continue to breastfeed. I gave birth to my son in March 2019, finished breastfeeding in May 2020, got pregnant with my daughter in November 2020, and finished breastfeeding her in August 2022. It’s entirely possible that my body didn’t return to pre-pregnancy levels of relaxin until 2023. That’s this year!!! No wonder I’ve felt so incredibly disconnected from and dejected about my asana practice.
Yoga is more than the poses
The problem with the colloquial Western understanding of yoga is that yoga=postures. Despite the fact that I know and teach differently, I still fell prey to this deep-rooted Western belief that to practice yoga you must practice poses. It felt like I had no practice when I wasn’t showing up on my mat to put my body through the motions. Even though I was deepening my meditation practice, studying the Yoga Sutra and Bhagavad Gita, and diving deep into many different aspects of yoga teaching for my 300HR Teacher Training, I still felt like my personal yoga practice was elusive. In hindsight, I realize this disconnection was a because postures didn’t help me feel more connected to my soul. They just stretched my hamstrings.
In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali defines yoga practice like this:
1.13: Practice means applying continuous effort toward steadying the mind
1.14: Steadiness of mind is achieved when one practices for a long time, consistently, without interruption, and with sincere devotion
Practice, in yoga, is less about what you’re doing and more about making sure that you keep showing up for the practice(s) over and over again, without interruption and with sincere devotion. I was not doing that. I had no personal practice. My practice was completely in service to my career and my body, not to my Self.
The origin of Sadhana and yoga practices
Sadhana is the Sanskrit word for spiritual practice. It refers to the time you set aside each day and the set of exercises (not always physical) you perform to connect to your body, mind, energy, and spirit. It may involve asana, but it can also include meditation, chanting, pranayama, contemplation, study, connection, rest, prayer, or reflection. There is no one right way to practice connecting with yourself, but there is a right way for you.
The creation story of life in the Vedic tradition, of which yoga derives from, weaves an intricate, interconnected story in which Shiva—both an energetic and (un)manifested force said to support the entire universe—created Brahma, who in turn created all that we know. At a certain point Shiva became despondent with what was becoming of this universe (lots of fighting amongst the creatures), and so he joined with the energetic, feminine force of Shakti to re-discover universal consciousness. Shiva realized that the creatures of the universe had become distracted and disillusioned with the true reality of their existence—unity, peace, and harmony.
In Shiva’s exploration of the cosmic mind he recognized that the human mind often gets pulled in many different directions by the senses and the external world. These distractions distance humans from the natural laws of Mother Nature. Because of this, Shiva enacted the laws of dharma as a way for humans to protect their minds and stay connected to universal consciousness and the true reality of harmony. From this edict sprang forth Manu, the Hindu equivalent of the Christian figure Adam, who upheld the laws of dharma and decreed that humans must observe dharma by recognizing the gifts of the universe in three ways.
Pay respect to your ancestors and elders, for they are the carriers of wisdom, nurturance, guidance, and love
Pay respect to your teachers for they also guide you through your journey
Pay respect to your god(s) and Mother Nature
These three obligations form the basis of sadhana—spiritual practice—and lay the foundation for yoga. Yoga practice is meant to connect you with your True Self. Your ancestors, teachers, spiritual beliefs, and Mother Nature all guide you along the way. Chanting, meditating, moving, praying, breathing, eating, are all activities meant to help you remember, connect with, and honor your ancestors, teachers, and Mother Nature.
That’s a far different interpretation of yoga than what most Westerners associate with “practice.”
Searching for Sadhana in all the wrong places
When I was working in the marketing department for CorePower Yoga, we would often get this question from beginning students: How often should I practice? The standard (somewhat arbitrary) answer was 3-5 times a week and the more you practice the better. This answer is convenient for a business in a capitalist society, and membership prices are often set based on the assumption that if a practitioner comes to class 3x a week they are able to pay significantly less per class than if they were to pay the drop-in for one class. This answer was loosely based on advice for maintaining overall fitness. The real answer to this question, independent of profit, is that you practice yoga every single day. But you don’t have to show up at a studio, pay $119/month, or own a yoga mat in order to show up for your sadhana.
Ironically, the one thing I never learned attending yoga classes in a studio was how to develop a personal spiritual practice. Even when I was in teacher training, personal practice, for me, was about showing up at the studio and taking a class. The more often I could do this the better I was at being a yogini. It was all about bodily fitness. It’s also convenient that showing up at the studio provides accountability—other people get to see that you’re showing up and that makes you feel good. But this falls apart when life gets busy and you have kids. There is no longer any time for one hour yoga classes at studios that are twenty minutes away. The accountability and feel-good feelings disappear. You’re left with your mat gathering dust in a corner because you’re too tired to push a couch out of the way so that you can practice poses at home. This all falls apart as you age and your body starts to change. Fitness starts to mean different things and the Power Yoga found in many yoga studios no longer fits all those needs.
I tried substituting online classes. I especially liked not having to be wed to an hour timeframe. If I only had 30 minutes, I could find a class for that amount of time. But it takes a lot of work choosing what class you’re going to take, what teacher you want on any given day, what length of time you’re going to commit to. In some ways it was easier to just show up to the studio at the time you could go, roll out your mat in the classroom, and take the class offered. But this was still all based on a fitness-oriented understanding of yoga.
By the time the pandemic rolled around, I was over online classes. I had very specific needs that I couldn’t easily find online and this is when I started to lose my asana practice. I could have done some research, created a practice for myself and added in other elements that supported me in my specific situation. But that felt like too much work and responsibility. When I got to the point in my life where I needed personal practice the most I had nothing to build from. This, despite the fact I had been practicing in yoga studios for almost 10 years. It’s not that I didn’t know what I needed to do. I didn’t have the conviction or the devotion to do it. I needed deeper, more powerful, authentic practices that could actually connect me to my Self, not just my body.
Building sadhana
Sadhana keeps you honest. It keeps you abreast of what’s going on in your body but also in your energy and your mind. It helps you navigate your days, weeks, months, seasons, years so that you can maintain balance, health, vitality. It helps you build longevity and inner resolve so that you are strong when it’s time to face the challenges of life. It connects you to universal consciousness and reminds you that you’re not alone in this world. The universe has your back. You are the universe.
Sadhana is also deeply personal. You build it when you are well so that you have something to call upon when you are unwell and need extra support. Most importantly, sadhana is simple, adaptable, and repetitive. This may sound boring, but these foundations make it easy to show up for every day—again and again and again. Your practices will evolve as you grow and move through different seasons and situations in your life. But when you plant the seeds early you allow a healthy garden to blossom. Even if it’s not so “early” in your life, it’s never to late to start building your own personal practice.
I am slowly building my personal practice with gentle asana that supports hormone balance and reproductive health plus chanting, breath work, and meditation. I’m following the cycles of the moon, switching up my practices while I’m menstruating (only deeply restorative practices and meditation), and honoring my energy on the Full Moon. I’m paying attention to seasonal changes, aligning my energy with nature, and reconnecting with my own inner expression of divine feminine energy even though those words make me uncomfortable. I’m still working on building in daily routines from Ayurvedic practices and creating more structure around making these practices work for me. I’m committed to finally, after almost 15 years, building a personal sadhana that I can stick to, that will support and nourish me, and that will carry me through challenging times and joyous ones. I’m building a yoga practice that is more than just the poses.
The simple act of asking for help and prioritizing my rest and my spiritual practice is a first step in building my resolve and discipline for showing up. Accountability is always hard, so it can be nice to have a friend or teacher to check in with. Often, you’ll be your own worst enemy and beat yourself up when you miss a day of practice. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself and show up again the next day.
If you need help building your own personal practice reach out to me. I work with women 1-1 to help you craft the right practices for your unique life situation and provide the gentle, compassionate, loving accountability that will keep you showing up even when you’d rather not.
The Savasana Challenge is a great way to introduce more rest in your practice or help you build the habit of prioritizing your health and wellbeing.
Have you struggled to create a personal practice? Do you have one? What does it include? Share your own relationship with personal practice in the comments below!
Savasana Challenge Day 10
I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s Progressive Relaxation practice. Below you’ll find Day 10 of the Savasana Challenge. Today’s practice includes a guided meditation for cultivating the warrior qualities of the goddess Kali. Invoking Kali can help you destroy negative forces in your life and overcome obstacles. Paid subscribers can access the guided meditation below as well as Days 1-9 on the website and in the Substack app.
Today we will rest for 23 minutes. When I rested for 23 minutesI felt like it took a little while for me to settle in but once I did I was able to access deep rest. I noticed that throughout this rest I was non-reactive to the loud sounds of my children and family. I greatly appreciated this benefit as I am normally quite bothered by loud sounds, especially when I’m trying to meditate or rest. I also started to notice a tingly feeling in my body, almost as if I was floating. I attribute this to the deep physical rest my body was experiencing. I also think this is what philosophy texts speak of when they talk about yogis “floating above the ground.” Finally, I was experiencing some menstrual cramps and I felt the deep rest really helped lessen the pain of the cramps. I could have stayed in this rest much longer and really liked this time length.
Today’s guided meditation is a contemplation of the warrior goddess Kali. Invoking the warrior goddess energy of Kali is appropriate for overcoming the obstacle of building and committing to a personal sadhana practice, among many other challenges and obstacles you may be facing in your life right now.
Kali is often misunderstood as representing destructive forces and energies. She certainly appears as a formidable presence—tongue sticking out, dripping with blood, a garland of skulls around her neck, a severed head in one of her many hands. Yet, as an aspect of the divine Mother, Kali brings forth these energies in your life as a warning and opportunity to make positive changes. If you’re struggling through a a difficult situation, internal or external, use this contemplation to help get rid of the negative forces holding you back and the obstacles preventing you from seeing the clear path forward. The spirit of the Mother, in the manifestation of Kali, provides the tough love, strength, and courage you need to move forward and overcome your fears and limitations.
Contemplating the Warrior Goddess helps you invite the Divine Mother’s healing energy in your life.
Get comfortable and let’s begin.