Saucha Talk: Cleanliness, Clarity And Purity Of Self

As we start to jump into this exploration of the Niyamas,

Yoga's internal observances,

This is the information that we are given that guides some of our inner patterns and specifically the way that I like to explore this aspect of yoga philosophy is how it informs our relationship with ourselves,

How it helps us to have a deeper,

Stronger connection to the true self at our core.

That's where I like to approach my yoga practice,

Meditation practice,

All of these things that I teach and I share because I feel like that gets to the core of what yoga is,

Of what we're working toward.

And Saucha as the first of the Niyamas,

The experience that is often talked about as cleanliness,

As purity,

And this experience of clarity.

Those are kind of the three words that I like to work with here with Saucha and seeing how that gets us closer to the true self or how that helps to peel away the veils that cover the true self so that we can see what is already there,

What is already inside of us.

And Saucha,

We know to be quite an important one because when we look at the yoga sutras and we see that most of the time there's just one sutra explaining each of the yamas,

Each of the Niyamas,

But with Saucha there's two.

The external practice of cleanliness,

Our environment,

The things around us,

Our body,

And the internal practice of cleanliness.

So it's interesting that we get to explore this piece of yoga philosophy from two different angles and see how both of those experiences of cleanliness are very helpful to support our connection with truth,

What really exists.

So I invite you to think about Saucha today as an experience of being your pure authentic self.

And like many things in yoga and meditation and spirituality,

We can talk about this very easily.

We can have an intellectual conversation about it and think about it.

But actually doing it,

Actually living in this way,

Takes a lot of deep work and exploration.

It takes a lot of learning and unlearning.

And that's another way that we can think about this process of cleansing.

What patterns do I need to unlearn and let go of that keep me separated from what is true,

What is real?

We can think about the kosha system,

The layers of our being.

We have these five layers that we talk about in yoga philosophy that wrap around the core or the soul.

And especially the outer layers,

Our physical body,

Our energetic body,

And the mind and emotional layer can get very churned up.

There can be a lot of fluctuation and ripples and turmoil that might be happening on those layers.

And that makes it very difficult to look down and see the deeper layers and connect to the deeper layers to feel that support that comes from our layer of wisdom,

That comes from our layer of bliss,

And that comes from the core of our true self.

Those outer layers become cloudy and cluttered.

So we're no longer able to see down deep enough to feel that connection and support from our deeper layers.

And that can really leave us feeling a lack of internal support,

A lack of inner guidance,

And just kind of feeling like we're floundering in our life.

And one of the ways that yoga tells us to work our way through that process is to become aware of the things that are clinging to us on those layers.

So think about the end of a really busy,

Hectic day.

Maybe you had some difficult interactions or difficult tasks that you had to carry out.

When you walk through the door at the end of the day,

How do you feel?

Is there tension in your physical body?

Is there an energetic residue of just feeling drained or drained or maybe bringing some of that negativity with you into the next situation?

Are there thoughts that are rolling around in the mind of rehashing what you did,

What you said,

Questioning and doubting if you did it well or you did it correctly?

And then the emotional residue that might be there from that difficulty,

Still kind of clinging to you.

So there we start to see how these layers start to build up and to create this block that prevents us from seeing the deeper sources of support.

And that can be a very common day-to-day experience where things are clinging to us and we get that residue.

Sometimes it is a physical residue.

If you were out in the garden and there's dirt on you or you were doing a task that was involving a lot of physical dirt,

It's easy to see that,

That,

Oh,

I have dirt on my hands.

I need to go wash them.

I need to go through that cleansing process.

But when it comes to things like tension in our body or the energetic residue or the mental residue,

We're not as quick to recognize that that is something clinging to us that we need to actually cleanse and drop away.

But the wonderful thing is that yoga steps in and says,

Okay,

Here are a whole set of tools that you can use.

Here are these yoga postures that will move your body in all sorts of different ways.

It will help you to let go of that physical residue.

It will help to create a free flow of energy again.

It will drop your mind into the present moment and it will show you a way to release the emotion that has followed you into the next space in your life.

And it might be from the prior day,

The prior week,

But there's also some of that residue that comes from the entire span of our life.

There are things that are clinging to us all the way back from when we were a teenager,

When we were a child,

All the way back.

So there's some residue that's been there a long time and it's kind of like a dish that you left in the sink for a while.

That dirt that's been there and kind of hardened and dried into place is going to take much longer for you to figure out how to cleanse and remove that.

Some of the newer things that are clinging to you,

The newer residue,

You might be able to release that with a bit more ease.

So we see how yoga is guiding us toward this process of understanding how important it is to recognize why we do cleansing practices,

How they support us on all of our different layers of being.

And it returns us to that space of being purely yourself,

Dropping everything that is not you so that you can be purely yourself.

Now if the idea of purity or being purely you conjures up a feeling of perfection,

Of doing everything completely perfectly,

Having no flaws,

That is kind of an ego way of looking at purity.

And I'd like you to step back and kind of zoom out to find a more supportive understanding of what purity is,

And that is wholeness.

Thinking about purity as taking all of your parts,

The good ones,

The positive ones,

The difficult ones,

The messy ones,

And holding them all together in a whole experience and saying to yourself,

All of these things are purely me.

This is exactly how I am right now.

The opposite of that would be fragmenting,

Of looking at those negative qualities and pushing them away or ignoring them.

I don't want to look at that.

That's not a part of myself that I am proud of,

That I want others to see.

So instead,

I'll lean into this perfection on the outside to make it look like I have everything together.

But that process actually creates fragmentation and disconnection within.

So purity invites us to look at the whole experience of being us,

Not the perfect experience,

But the whole experience.

And that's a big step.

It takes a lot of courage to be able to look at all the parts.

And that's one of the supporting characteristics that I like to bring along when we go into the next week as well and we talk about Santosha.

There is also this experience of courage,

Being really supportive,

Because we need courage to look at the patterns that are not helpful.

It kind of hurts.

The fact that we've been doing this for so long,

That doesn't feel good when you actually look at it.

So it does take quite a bit of courage to work through these things.

The deeper you go into that work,

The more courage that you have to bring with you to support yourself through that practice.

But it is worth it.

And I will encourage you to go through this process of understanding your personal relationship with cleansing and what you need to let go of,

Putting down the things that are not you,

That you may have gathered up because people told you this would be a good job,

Or you should have this role or this position,

Or you should take up this hobby,

It would be good for you.

But it didn't really fit with who you actually are.

It was coming from that place of external expectation that we absorbed.

So it's a deconstructing process of recognizing that actually wasn't me.

That was my family.

That was society telling me that this is what I'm supposed to want.

This is the way that I am supposed to act.

But it doesn't actually fit me.

So when you come to that realization,

It can be vulnerable,

Scary,

Uncomfortable.

So that's where courage is coming along with us to give us that support to do those things that feel kind of icky.

But once we work through that,

And we recognize what we have to drop and let go of,

The other side of that is an experience of wholeness.

It is an ease and an incredibly solid feeling of internal support that is unshakable.

Once you have it,

It can't be taken away from you.

You have that inner connection that nobody can touch.

No external circumstances can pull you away from that or make you unsee what you have seen.

So going through that vulnerability,

Looking at those icky patterns and those things that you absorbed from the world around you,

Your family patterns,

All of these things,

Working through that gets us to that place of freedom and ease on a deep internal level that we're all looking for.

We all want that.

But it can be a challenge to get there,

Because we have to be really truthful with ourselves,

And that can hurt.

It can feel like a lot.

On the other end of that,

If you've been practicing for a while,

Yoga has given you the tools to go through the discomfort.

Your posture practice,

If you do Your posture practice,

If you do physical yoga,

Can be supportive to you.

Your meditation practice,

Your connection with chanting and mantra,

All of these things are there to support you as you work through the difficult pieces.

So you're not put on this journey without the tools to succeed,

I promise.

That's the wonderful thing and the reason why yoga as a holistic practice is so incredibly effective.

Now,

The other side that I like to think about with this is we're using satya to connect to our deep inner personal relationship of yourself at your core.

And you're going through a practice of dropping what is not you,

Letting go of the patterns,

The habits,

The roles that weren't actually you,

So that you can step into this authentic experience in your life.

Here I am.

This is me.

I'm not going to hide it.

I'm not going to pretend to be something else.

Recognizing the work and the vulnerability that it takes to show up in the world like that.

And when we see another person doing that,

When we see another person showing up as themselves,

Being completely authentic,

Even if it's different from how we are,

Different from the way we grew up,

The way we conduct ourselves,

Different from the way that we show up in the world,

But recognizing that that person in front of you is being themselves,

Allowing them that space,

Honoring it,

Encouraging it,

Supporting it,

Just as you would want people to accept you when you step into the world as your true self,

Give that same gift to the people around you.

When they show up as themselves,

Recognize it and allow space for it.

Even if it doesn't look exactly the way you think it should look,

Or they should be,

All of these things,

We can very quickly step into should,

Right?

We can do it with ourselves.

And chances are,

If we should ourselves,

We probably should other people.

So this process can include letting go of that.

I should do this.

I should do that.

What am I doing?

What do I need to do?

And allow other people that exact same experience,

Give them the space to be purely and authentically themselves.

So that's a challenge.

And when you start to go through that work and you see somebody else who is also going through that work,

That is a connection because you understand the difficulty that is involved in that.

Now,

If you are a yoga teacher,

The struggle to find your authentic voice as a teacher is very real.

Oh my goodness.

We step into this place of learning from our teachers and very often in the beginning,

Holding our teachers up on a pedestal that they know all of these things and they have it all worked out and they can stand in front of the room so confidently and lead that we think to be a good teacher,

We have to absorb that and maybe parrot some of what they say.

Even if it doesn't feel exactly like what we want to say,

It doesn't feel like exactly the way that we want to teach or share yoga.

It can take a very long time as a teacher to say,

Who am I as a yoga teacher?

What do I truly want to share?

Is that my voice?

Or am I absorbing the words and the phrases of somebody else and trying to fit myself into that external mold of what I think the good teacher is?

And just as I am going through that journey of trying to find my voice as a teacher,

How I want to share yoga with others,

Recognizing when other teachers are also going through that,

The way that they teach might be different,

The way that they explain things or offer things,

The way that they structure their class might be different,

And that's okay.

Allow them that space to teach the way that they want to,

The way that they feel they need to share,

And give yourself that same space too.

So we're not stuck in that external mold of what we have to do.

Our students will benefit a thousand times more when we are finally able to get into that space of being more connected to our own authentic way of teaching.

It will land so much better because it's coming from a deeper place.

That can take quite a bit of work,

So don't think that you're going to snap your fingers one day and just make up your mind like,

Okay,

I'm just going to be my authentic self from here on out,

Every single day,

All the time.

It takes a lot of time and exploration,

And it is like peeling away these thin,

Delicate layers,

Recognizing what doesn't work,

What isn't me,

Letting that drop away until you get closer and closer to what does feel authentic and real for you.

But remember that that looks different for everyone,

And give them that space.

So we've talked about the mind of certain practices in yoga that help to create a sense of clarity,

And for a long time,

When I was going through a tremendously difficult period in my life,

There was a lot of change and uncertainty and fear,

My inner space felt chaotic,

Like there was no direction.

It was complete upheaval,

And the word that I focused on for so long was clarity.

I just wanted a little bit of clarity.

I just wanted to see a little bit in front of me,

Where am I going?

What is this all leading to?

And the way that we finally get to that space of clarity that we all very much want is through these processes of cleansing.

It was a tremendous time of upheaval in my life,

And I was making conscious decisions,

Whether I wanted to or not,

About what was staying in my life,

And what was going,

What I was bringing into my new life,

And what I was choosing to leave out very purposefully.

And that was a multi-year process of that big change,

But the end result was that the outer circumstances of my life were much more in alignment with how I felt internally.

And that is a match and an alignment that I don't think we talk about enough in healing,

Because it's so easy to end up in an external situation that doesn't actually fit you,

Especially when you're making decisions from ego,

From pressures of society,

From expectations of family.

We can very easily end up in an external circumstance that's actually not a good fit for us.

So one of the things that I think of as like the real superpowers that we get from practicing yoga and meditation is a sense of internal clarity,

So we can look down to our inner guidance.

We can think of it as a wisdom layer,

Maybe the Vijnanamaya Kosha,

And we ask that layer of wisdom,

What is meant for me?

Is this meant for me,

Or is this not meant for me?

And with work and with internal clarity,

You will eventually get a very clear answer,

A soft,

Gentle,

Clear answer of where it is that you are going from your center.

And when you start to listen to that gentle internal voice,

Your life will start to shift little by little.

You will make choices and put your energy toward things that are in alignment with how you are internally.

So purity,

Clarity,

And cleanliness starts us on that path of being able to listen.

If our mind is super cluttered and the ego is yelling about how you need this job,

This makes you important,

People will look up to you,

Your parents will be proud,

And there's this very loud chatter in your mind,

Especially coming from your ego,

You won't be able to hear the soft voice of inner guidance.

It is easily drowned out if there's a lot of clutter and chaos in the mind.

So we have breath work,

We have mantra,

Meditation,

Postures,

All of these things that can eventually soak in to the mind and create even just a little bit more calm and a little bit more space so we can listen.

And we can go through this process of thinking about a time when you felt whole and complete,

Where things just felt natural,

Like they fit,

If you've ever had that experience.

And if you haven't,

That's not unusual.

You can even go through the process of imagining what that would feel like when everything fits in a very natural way.

That doesn't mean that there's no problems,

That doesn't mean that there's no challenges.

It means that you have this unshakable source of inner support,

No matter what is going on in your life.

What would that feel like?

And then on the opposite side of that,

Perhaps a little bit easier for most of us,

Think of a time when you felt disconnected from your true self.

What did that feel like?

And for me,

I have a very distinct moment in my life,

Almost like I woke up suddenly and I was sitting on the front porch of my house with a job that I hated,

A marriage that was in absolute chaos.

My finances were a disaster.

I was deeply in debt and I was sad.

I felt like I had no spark.

And I sat there,

I was in my mid-twenties,

Not that far into life.

And I just thought,

I was in my mid-twenties,

Not that far into life.

And I just thought,

How am I so far away from where I want to be?

How did I get here?

How did all these things in my life come together?

And they feel like none of them fit me.

And at the time I couldn't answer that.

It took me quite a long time to find my answer.

But when I figured it out,

It made so much sense.

In that point in my life,

I was listening to everything external.

I thought everybody else knew better than I did.

I listened to my family,

To my teachers,

Not my yoga teachers,

To my school teachers,

My guidance counselors,

All of these other people who were speaking very loudly and clearly about what I needed to do with my life and what would create happiness.

Buying a house,

Getting this very high pressure job,

Doing all of these things to collect material goods.

That's what will make me happy,

They said.

That was the pitch that I was sold.

Until I finally came to that place of realizing that all of that came from external sources and most of it was not even close to what I wanted.

So then the process of soucha.

How do I let go of the patterns,

The expectations that are not for me?

Those things that were put onto me and I absorbed them.

I took a hold of them.

I carried them with me and I let them guide the direction of my life.

And it took me to a and it took me to a place where I was deeply unhappy and disconnected.

And as I did that work to let go of those patterns over years and years,

We're talking yoga,

Meditation,

Journaling,

Crying,

Therapy,

Having deep conversations with people,

All of those things little by little helped me find that place of being able to create some clarity on the outer layers so that I could see the deeper support that I had and that deeper guidance.

And that's what I could lean on.

That deeper guidance has continually led me in the direction of creating an external life that matches what I want inside.

That match is so powerful.

Not easy.

I will say that.

I always tell my students that when you start listening to your inner guidance,

Buckle up because your inner guidance is not going to put you on the easy path.

Your inner guidance is going to put you on the path that is going to be deeply challenging,

But it is what you're going to use to spur that growth and that change.

But it is going to rock your world.

So buckle up.

But if that end result is worth it to you to step into that place of feeling authentic,

Of being authentic,

Of making choices that support that externally and steering your life purposefully rather than kind of drifting and letting other people steer for you,

Then working through this process of understanding saucha,

Of cleanliness,

And all of the other niyamas that we're going to talk about that are also very helpful on this journey,

It is worth the challenge.

It is worth the difficulty if you can conjure up that courage to face it.

So let's talk a little bit about the physical body and cleanliness,

Having a reverence for your physical body.

And again,

It is not perfect.

You might have health conditions,

You might have pain,

There might be things about your body that are difficult.

It is not about being perfect.

It is about embracing your body as a whole.

It is about taking care of it,

Showering,

Brushing your teeth,

All of those very basic things.

It is about allowing your body to release,

To cry,

To move,

To shake things out so that they don't get stuck in your physical body and you have to carry that tension with you for the rest of your life.

So we have these processes of cleansing us externally,

But also cleansing us internally.

Yoga poses move us in directions that are so different from our day-to-day movement patterns,

So different.

We're up,

We're down,

We're sideways,

We're diagonal,

All of the things.

And that completely different relationship to movement can have such a cleansing effect.

Our movement and our mood are tied together.

We know that from psychology.

Motion releases emotion.

When there are things trapped in us,

If we stay in this box of very constricted movement,

So hard for us to find a way to release that emotionally,

To release it from our body,

From ourselves.

So our posture practice,

Our asana practice,

Can be a way of physically cleansing the body,

Finding those places where things are stuck and sticky,

Where things don't feel good,

And figuring out how can I restore some clarity,

Some openness.

How can I cleanse and let go of what is sticking to me from whatever I did earlier,

Whether that was a day before or a decade before.

We can think about what we choose to put into our body when we study the kosha system.

The physical body is called the food body,

And the food body is literally sustained by the things that we eat and drink.

So we can think about what we're eating and drinking as looking for something that is going to be supportive of that purity.

Not eating food that's super processed and really far away from how it shows up in nature.

I went to a nutritionist once when I was having some health challenges,

And we went through this whole hour and a half evaluation,

All of this paperwork,

All this information,

And before I walked out the door she stopped me and she said,

Look,

I just threw a lot of information at you,

But I need you to remember one thing.

Eat food that is as close to nature as possible,

And it will help you to heal.

And that's the only thing I remember from that long evaluation,

But it was so simple and so poignant,

And it made so much sense,

Especially at that point in my life.

I needed to move away from the convenience foods that I was eating because I was working too much,

And I needed to get back to that place of eating food as close to nature as possible,

And that was absolutely a piece of my healing story.

So making choices of what you put into your body to support that,

To support that clarity and that cleanliness.

And the next piece of that is in the therapy world what we think of as a sensory diet.

We eat food,

We drink liquids,

That's kind of one aspect of our diet,

But we have this other area of things that we consume,

That we take into our body and our mind and our energy,

And that is everything around you.

The music that you listen to,

The things that you watch on TV,

The conversations that you have,

The people that you are around,

We absorb all of that.

And if we don't make very conscious choices about what is being fed to our nervous system,

You can very quickly become overwhelmed by negative information.

Watching the news and just taking in all of the terrible things that are happening everywhere in the world can create this very skewed view of how the world exists right now.

We don't see the good,

We don't see the good because that's not what they highlight on the news.

It's there,

But that's not what they get paid to show us.

So be intentional in what you feed your body in terms of food and liquid,

But also in terms of sensory input.

What you're seeing,

What you're hearing,

All of these things.

Now it does not mean to be perfect.

Again,

I'm not telling you to eat a clean diet 100% of the time,

Raw,

Vegan,

Organic.

It does not have to be perfection.

And often when we strive for perfection,

It is a protective mechanism.

We're trying to protect ourselves from sometimes an inner critic,

Sometimes the possibility of external criticism,

But perfection is very much a protective mechanism that shows us something we need to work on.

So it's not about being perfect,

But most of the time making choices about what you're bringing into your body,

What you're consuming.

Okay.

So our physical environment.

I laugh at this one because some people are very meticulous about their car,

Right?

I have a friend who like,

You know,

Eating or drinking in the car,

They clean it every weekend.

Everything is shiny and so nice.

And cleaning my car is one of my least favorite things to do.

It doesn't bother me if there's,

Well,

I have a dog.

So there's always a lot of dog hair in there because he's in and out of my car.

So my car is not the cleanest environment,

But to me,

That's not a high priority in terms of things I want to put my time and my energy toward,

And that's okay.

So keeping a certain level of cleanliness in your household,

In your kitchen,

So that when you cook food,

It is actually nourishing.

We're not getting any like cross-contamination between things.

But also what I really encourage you to think about even more is your relationship with the physical things around you.

And think of this as like an energetic cleanliness.

Do you hold onto things from an old version of yourself?

Old clothes that aren't a style or a size that you would currently wear?

Things that you're holding onto that you don't want to let go emotionally,

Energetically.

Look at what's underneath that.

Can we let go and cleanse some of those physical things that are hanging around so that there is more space to be the you that you are right now?

Right now.

I saw something the other day along these lines,

And it was very specific about if you have something in your house from an old relationship.

And for many years,

I had my engagement ring from my first marriage.

It's a beautiful ring.

Beautiful,

Sparkly.

Oh my gosh,

I got so many compliments on that ring.

It was gorgeous.

And I had such a hard time letting it go.

Even after my marriage was done and the paperwork was filed,

That ring was in a box in my safe.

And every once in a while,

I would see it,

And I would think to myself,

I really need to figure out what to do with that.

But then I wouldn't want to go that deep into the process.

And it would go back into the safe,

And I would lock the door and walk away,

Which I feel like is a great metaphor for the feelings that we do not want to process.

That ring in my locked safe was exactly the external projection of what was happening inside of me.

And as I was remarried in a very happy relationship,

And my husband and I were building a new life,

Very intentionally working together to build this new life.

And I finally just got to that point where I said,

Why?

Why am I holding on to this old thing,

This item from a past piece in my life that is very painful,

And the absolute opposite direction of where I am trying to move and what I am trying to build?

Why am I holding on to that?

It's not what I want.

And there was some deeper emotional work that I needed to do to really figure out how that experience was still affecting me.

And as I found the courage to do that work,

It became very easy to let go of that ring.

The day that I sent it off to be sold,

I was so ready for it to not be in my house anymore,

For it to not be one of my possessions that I had to take care of and move around and think about.

It was gone.

It was out of my energetic space.

And that felt really good at that point.

It took me a long time to get there.

But there might be something in your home that has that same kind of power,

Energetically holding that stuckness.

So thinking,

What do I have to clear and cleanse underneath that,

So that I will naturally be able to open my hand and let it go?

That I can create that new space for who I am now,

And the life that I'm building that feels so much more in alignment with who I am internally.

It's an interesting process to watch.

Now,

We've talked about how yoga can be incredibly supportive with this process of cleansing.

Absolutely,

Right?

We get to the end of our yoga practice.

And I always think about those last few moments when you come out of deep relaxation and you sit up,

And you're so calm and still.

It is probably the deepest experience of clarity that we find on most days,

That little special moment at the end of our practice.

We've done all the cleansing.

And that is an incredible thing,

Because it gives us a little window into what that feels like when we've done the cleansing work.

It feels so light and so spacious and effortless.

But there's also another side of this that I've spent quite a lot of time in.

And that is when our old habit patterns follow us onto our yoga mat.

So our mat is not this magical rectangle where all of our problems and past unhelpful patterns just suddenly dissolve,

And we step into this rectangle of bliss.

The more common experience that we seldom talk about is how we bring that residue and those patterns with us onto the mat.

And things like self-criticism,

Not feeling like we're keeping up with the other students.

When I was in teacher training,

I remember thinking,

Why am I here?

Everybody else is so much better at this.

I don't think I belong here.

Maybe I'm not supposed to be a teacher,

Right?

So incredible self-criticism was just running rampant as I was doing my teacher training.

And this feeling of having to perform and meet these external expectations that my practice had to look a certain way.

For the longest time,

I couldn't do the fancy poses.

I still can't do the fancy poses.

And I felt inadequate because of that.

Because there were so many teachers out there showing the worth of their practice by demonstrating these incredible feats of flexibility and these very flashy arm balances.

I couldn't do any of them.

And I felt,

Well,

I must not be good enough.

That was a pattern that I brought with me from other parts of my life that I had learned that I needed to meet external expectations.

And I wasn't doing that on my yoga mat.

So it felt very inadequate,

Right?

Took me a long,

Long,

Bumpy road to figure out that I don't need to bring those patterns into my yoga practice.

That the self-criticism and the not feeling good enough and the leaning on external expectations are old habits that I have learned through conditioning.

And those are absolutely part of what I need to let go and what I need to cleanse.

They're not helping me to build that future life that is so in alignment with who I am.

They're actually moving me farther away from it.

So be vigilant.

Watch your internal patterns on your mat.

Watch yourself talk.

Watch some of the things that come with you from the rest of your life.

And they show up very clearly on your yoga mat,

Often even more clearly because we have fewer distractions.

Just understand that when you step onto your yoga mat,

A lot of those things come with us and we can recognize them and we can work through them.

As soon as we become aware that they followed us onto our mat,

We can kindly ask ourselves,

Okay,

I see that pattern of self-criticism.

What is something that would be more supportive?

What is something that would help me in this process to let that expectation go and to be more of who I am at this moment,

Purely and completely me?

There are a lot of things that might come up.

I like to offer people the support of what are called the attitudes of mindfulness.

That is kind of a bedrock that can sit underneath a lot of our practices within yoga and within meditation.

Things like empathy,

Compassion,

Patience,

And non-judgment are just a few of them.

But those create a very strong bedrock of support so that we can recognize these unhelpful patterns,

Soften them,

Release them,

And then find that clarity that comes when we move past them.

So the last thing that I'll say in this deep dive into sautsa and cleanliness,

Because I like to think about things in terms of the elements,

This can be a such a helpful way of understanding yourself,

Understanding others,

Understanding the way that we create change and healing.

And that is the connection between sautsa and cleanliness with the element of water.

And as we go through the five niyamas,

Each one is connected to one of the five main elements.

And you will see how that very unique element connection to the niyama helps us with the healing process.

And in this particular area,

It is the element of water.

This is connected to our emotions.

We know water to be a physically cleansing element.

We take a shower,

We wash our hands,

We wash our face,

All of these things are water-based cleansing.

Things like going swimming,

Standing in front of the ocean and listening to that sound,

Watching the movement of the waves.

As humans,

We're really drawn very intuitively to water.

When things are hard,

We will feel ourselves drawn to that when we're in a healing period of our lives.

There was a time when I spent maybe,

Oh gosh,

Three or four hours sitting next to a waterfall,

Just staring at it,

When I was going through a very difficult time in my life.

And I just sat there and I didn't feel any need to leave.

I needed to be right there by that moving water.

And I wasn't really thinking about anything or processing through anything,

But it was being in physical proximity to the movement of water that has this inherent cleansing quality.

And I absolutely needed help with that at that point in my life.

So there was that drawing toward moving water,

Drinking pure water,

That process of nourishing yourself,

Spending time around bodies of water that are very clean and pure.

All of these things bring in the element of water.

And when all else fails,

We have our internal process of cleansing,

Which is crying.

Crying is so cathartic.

It creates a change in our nervous system.

It allows a very directed release of emotion.

And it helps us to move into a space of calm afterwards.

There's a very specific cascade that happens with our hormones when you cry.

So as you go through your healing,

Cleansing journey,

Most of the time we are taught and trained,

Especially as women,

Maybe even more so as men,

That if the feeling of tears and emotion starts to well up,

You start to get that feeling in your throat,

That watering in your eyes.

The first thing we do is push it down,

Try to squish it,

Try to control it.

See if you can let that go.

When that water element comes up,

When that need to cleanse and let something out comes up,

Let it come up.

Let yourself cry.

Let it out completely.

Don't try to squish it down or minimize it.

Letting it out is going to have that much more effective cleansing process to give it an escape route.

So it's not clinging to you.

You're physically and emotionally and energetically letting it go.

So that is our connection to the element of water.

That is our deep talk about our first niyama.

It's such an important one.

It supports us through so many different aspects of our life and our yoga practice.

But the last thing that I want you to think about if you forget everything else about our talk is that saucha,

Purity,

Purity is about you being your complete,

Whole,

Messy,

United experience of you being purely you.

That is saucha.