Samskara

Samskaras have been likened to grooves we carve and recarve based on our experiences. It's like a rut or pattern we seem to just fall into. Eventually I end up asking, or rather lamenting, why something happens to me. But the truth is somehow I am actively inviting that energy in---whether it's dating a certain type of person, or thinking I'm not good enough, or falling into the trap of creating a system of weights and measures---that I have to earn my privledges or joys by practicing certain behaviors to earn them (for example, working out so I can eat a cookie). I remember one of the most heart breaking aspects of teaching to survivors of trauma was hearing a statement like this: The first time I was raped, I was 9. And seeing how this singular experience evolved into a string of rapes, assaults, damaging relationships.

One of the things yoga teaches is that trauma finds its hold in the body. Attending Ray Crist's class today, he said that this trauma becomes like a beacon, calling energy towards it, making the knots tighter and the practice is for us to unwind them and let them go so that we don't create a chain of samskara in the body. That the practice is about coming more into the heart meridian and the prefrontal cortex, home of compassion and wisdom and out of the adrenals and the fight and flight response.

The intention I created today was not to do anything out of fear from, but rather excitement and curiousity and joy.