The Five Vrittis: A Yogic Guide To The Mind

Today's topic we will be looking at something called the Panchavritti.

That's the Panchavritti and Pancha this is a Sanskrit word Panchavritti.

Pancha translates to five the number five and vritti it's translated to the fluctuations of the mind.

Our minds are always busy from the time we wake up there's this continuous swirl of thoughts I've got to do this I've got to do that and then suddenly a memory comes in suddenly an anxiety comes in suddenly you remember what you were dreaming about and then you have all these social media scrolls that are going on sometimes it's it's a lot it's a lot that's happening in the mind and over 2000 years ago the sage Patanjali he described the same thing in the yoga sutras The sentence that he said goes like that's and that translates to yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind and these fluctuations these are called the vrittis these are the mental waves that shape how we experience life today we will be looking at the five main vrittis how they show up in our modern world how they affect us and most importantly how we can work with them rather than fighting them so the first vritti is pramana and pramana translates to right knowledge when our perception is accurate what we call as clear thinking this is pranama right knowledge when our perception is accurate when we are able to think clearly and this clear thinking it can come from a direct experience that we have had it can come from logic or maybe it can come by way of referring to some reliable source a good example of pramana in action of right knowledge in action is you see dark clouds you check the weather app and you grab an umbrella and that's pramana in action right knowledge but unfortunately even though it is useful accurate thinking can be overused like when we obsessively research health symptoms and we convince ourselves that we are dying so good question to ask when it comes to whether we are being able to perceive something clearly is asking if this is grounded in real evidence or am i simply spiraling so the first one pramana which is right knowledge the second one is vipadhyaya vipadhyaya which translates to misperception and vipadhyaya is when we mistake something false for the truth a good example is you you text a friend and they don't reply for hours and your mind just simply goes into that spiral they must be mad at me or i may have upset them or they maybe they don't want to be friends with me anymore but in reality their phone probably died and we create a we create this whole story from a false assumption so vipadhyaya this rithi it fuels overthinking it fuels insecurity it fuels conflict and it's what happens when we react without checking the facts so when you are in doubt you can pause breathe and ask yourself what else could be true here like a driver cuts you off in traffic instead of reacting instead of working through your assumptions you could ask yourself what else could be true here someone cuts you off in a queue the same question what else could be true here so simply clearing the misperception by opening ourselves to other possibilities the third rithi vikalpa which translates to imagination or conceptual thinking and this is when the mind starts spinning stories from words alone like fantasy or daydream or worries so imagine you're in bed at 2 a.

M you're planning an argument that hasn't happened or you're imagining the worst case scenario for the presentation at work or the worst case scenario for an examination that you're going to give the next day so the mind spinning stories and vikalpa isn't all that bad it can be good too it's where creativity comes from but if it is left unchecked it pulls us out of the present so notice when you're in a mental movie when you're creating this story in your mind and when you notice that come back to your breath come back to your senses come back to the present moment be here now the fourth rithi which is nidra and nidra in this context not in the context of yoga nidra but nidra in the context of the rithis it translates to sleep or more accurately to mental dullness it's sometimes we have that mental fog or or sometimes we just find ourselves on autopilot and a very relative relevant example is scrolling for 45 minutes and suddenly realizing that you remember nothing you saw or you're driving home and you simply don't remember the route you're just lost in your thoughts you're just moving on autopilot autopilot so that is nidra where you're present in your body but you're not in awareness so a good way to avoid this kind of mental dullness this kind of mental fog is asking yourself if you are awake to this moment and the fifth rithi is smriti which translates to memory and smriti is simply the mind's storage system memories past experiences emotional imprints a good example you're in a work meeting and someone raises their voice and suddenly you feel anxious but it's not because of what they said but it's because it reminds you of a conflict that you had in the past so memory can be useful memory is useful but memory can also be limiting it can be limiting especially when we keep reliving a past pain so the question that you would ask yourself to escape from this rithi would be am i responding to this moment or am i responding to something that has happened already happened in the past so what do we do with these rithis what do we do with these mental fluctuations we cannot change them completely but what we can do is we can change our relationship to them and some of the ways we can do this is firstly being a witness of the mind sitting quietly even five minutes a day is enough simply to observe and label what arises so you sit quietly and you let the mind do what don't control the mind let it do what it does and as things come up simply label them that's a memory or that's imagination or that's a worry and when you do this when you start naming the rithi it takes you out of reactive mode and puts you into witness mode the second strategy is to ground in the present use your breath use sensation use movement to come back to the now and sometimes even becoming conscious of a single breath can disrupt that wave of thought thirdly journaling very useful write down recurring thoughts write down recurring thoughts because this can turn those abstract thoughts into something that you can see and when you can see it then you can shift it and the fourth strategy is to simply ask better questions every time you find yourself in a spiral you ask yourself is this real is this helpful is this now so the mind will always move waves will always rise and yoga doesn't ask us to destroy the mind it simply teaches us to stop identifying with the mind stop identifying with those thoughts stop identifying with those emotions when we recognize the rithis we start living from awareness rather than living in autopilot we get to choose how to respond so we are not reacting to life anymore so the invitation that i would like to extend is to take one to two minutes every day simply to pause simply to notice what kind of rithi is dominating today and what is one way i can respond with awareness it's small steps it's subtle shifts and that essentially is the heart of yoga thank you for listening namaste