If Anger was Music in Me…
…Then,
अथ योगानुशासनम् ॥
atha yoga-anushAsanam.
Herein begins the practice.
Drumroll-s starting
faint-
sounds of beats coming closer,
Louder now;
more and more pronounced-
Matthalam and
Mridangam,
Dholl and Tabla and Nagada-
Ghatam and Kanjira and Udukku
An orchestra of beats,
Getting louder and louder…
His hand holding the Damroo;
Leading the rhythm of Life.
Building into a crescendo
Thundering in the Universe’s ears
Erasing all the dust of thought clean-
Wiping pure all the stains of memory-
Until
only heart-beats are heard,
Heart-beats of the Here & Now-
Gathering into Herself;
Resting
in the Final refrains of Silence-
Of the Beginning and the Aftermath.
一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一
Sound arises from and subsides into silence. Movement arises from and rests again in stillness. A fundamental practice of Yoga is the constant and committed effort to becoming aware of these elements of life, watching them and dancing in tune with Life’s music.
Background reflections
While the subject is one of a few threads of ongoing examination for me as a Yoga practitioner, this set of reflections and “emotional labour” as a friend called it, comes from an intense and intimate conversation that we had in my community of Sadhana, Aram, with soul mates in one of our Purnam Café online meets, end of March 2026, about 10 days back.
We were discussing self-reflectively, the ideas from Vimala Thakar’s life and message, through her essay, Awakening to Total Revolution, and a film about her, In the Fire of Dancing Stillness.
I think many of us were feeling that we had touched a profound sense of communion and rawness during the conversation. The qualities of a good Sadhaka had been up for discussion next. We didn’t have time to go into this discussion – as always Life happened propitiously and the process that unfolded played out an exploration of one quality of a Sadhaka at the very least – emotional awareness, intelligence and regulation.
I will eschew the word “control” in favour of “regulation”. Self-regulation, co-regulation, emotional regulation…so on. Regulation feels more like a flow of water, flexible, allowing for the mysterious logic of the Universe to work its magic, sometimes steadily aligning to the shores of context and geography while at other times breaking banks and dams to make its own paths and landscape, fathomable only to a degree by the human mind caught in its limitations.
Below is my reflective map of the movement of energy that happened within me at a point in the conversation, resulting in a feeling of anger. The map depicts this movement through the layers of the self. These layers and movements are based on and interpreted from fundamental frameworks of Yoga and Sankhya philosophy that I have studied and work with actively.
The awareness is that, not only is the experience being articulated through the lens of the framework, it is also that the experience itself maybe coloured by the lens. Hence the practitioner cannot say that she is experiencing reality as is and thereby simply purely conscious of it. |
| Movement of Energy into the emotional charge of anger |
Natya Yoga Book reference in the illustration above - please see footnote [1]
Process reflections
A questioning-examining statement had been made during the conversation, “What if I am raped?” The question was asked by a woman, sitting in a woman’s body and the primary response to the question came from a man (also because it was directed at him as a response to a comment he had made). My body reacted to that question. As a woman. And I sensed that the question was coming from a particular situation and understanding as a woman. (It was, I found out later)
The practitioner and co-sadhaka/group member in me saw me fragment into the identity of a woman; saw the emotions and the challenge that the woman in me was facing with her anger; her silent protest that the question was not being given its experiential due, and was being treated “intellectually” and that we were missing the point. The practitioner simply wanted to pause a certain line of narrative that was building and ask to retrace our steps and begin from our respective, lived experiences of this question, woman or man or any gender.
Initially,
the practitioner started speaking, of the challenge and that she possibly
needed help to try and hold the fragments together and stay located. However,
the moment she spoke of the woman’s anger, the woman started taking increasing
control, and I use the word ‘control’ here deliberately. The movement of energy
as depicted in the illustration above was swift and moved away from the
underlying layers. The practitioner who could be anchored at the deeper layers
of the self was forgotten and her narrative shifted swiftly to become only the
woman’s.
 |
| Life holds me, us and the contexts that we live in |
Reality check #1 – The statement, “what If I am raped”, yes, is a very strong statement and needs to be made carefully, not lightly. However, in today’s larger context and the compelling chilling reality of the Epstein files, the multiple cases of rape that come up daily, case in point the horrific Ghaziabad rape case [2], is it any surprise that this comes up as a practical question in a spiritual quest-conversation, trying to reconcile these individual human fragments and a collective consciousness? In a group setting, each will need to become aware of their level of engagement with the intensity and charge of what is brought into the group. We all consciously or unconsciously do make our choices of our recognition and engagement with what is arising.
Reality check #2 – But, do we have to load the context and group with our recognition and intensity of a matter, even if it is both larger scenario in which we are living and we may have a personal hook to it? Is there a disproportion in the action-reaction quotient for the current group purpose and discussion?
The above are not questions that can be answered conclusively and objectively. Any community that is committed to Sadhana, to human evolution and transformation, to forging new ways of living that uphold Life, cannot afford to have answers etched in stone. (Even stone alters over time with water).
Any community / group will by default have, said and unsaid norms about group behaviour for the purpose of functionality. A community of Sadhana will need to surface such conditioning and also dynamically reexamine, recalibrate and make a constant effort at holding such norms consciously for group and individuals’ safety and expression.
Learning reflections
A true response-ability arises out of an attempt to hold these truths together, in simultaneity. Not making it into an Either-Or situation. Both, in an individual and as a group.
Herein was also the sort of double bind that Priya was not slowing down enough to see, had been running away from in fact. The response-ability of simultaneity and inclusion is Love, Shringaara, for her and what she swears by. However, staying at that layer meant encountering the meaninglessness of love that she is currently holding. There is an existential tiredness about all the old meanings and actions of love and none of them seem to make complete, joyous sense as before. There are easy platitudes of course, a comfort zone and lip service that she slips into – Arunachala’s love and her eternal path around her centre. However, the true, REAL feeling and a sensation of love that used to flood her just at the name, at the thought, has increasingly eluded her and there is an emptiness. The swift progression into anger is an escape from staying with the emptiness of meanings, an escape from the pain of this search coming up empty-handed and empty-hearted. The anger holds the question, Arunachala, what the ____ is your love that makes this insane world, and this violence and this war inside and out and this loneliness? The seeker needs to walk through yet another dark night of this soul. She has to slow down enough and walk barefoot, which she hadn’t done in a while [3].
 |
| Natural henna leaves paste kept overnight, a labour of love |
There is also a sort of threshold or Bardo that she is going through, very significant for a woman’s body – the menopausal threshold. There are natural life events that are thresholds and social, cultural customs and rituals as well that we have traditionally built around such passages. The physiology & physicality is the gross manifestation of the passage. The menopause is a phase when the biological function of the body as a woman is ceasing. There is a natural ask of Life to look further than the identification of a woman. However, Priya’s Yoga therapy work and stances and meanings have been quite attached to the pains and joys of being a woman. Her student-clients are 80% women, most of whom have faced violence of one kind or another on account of being a woman. She holds her personal experience as well as that of her students and the collective everywoman experience of no general group space being appropriate for the woman’s emotions, questions and difficulties, and this work and holding being relegated to ‘therapy’ or ‘women’s circles’ or some such specialised spaces [4].
At an individual level
these two pull-pushes seem to be connected and something she is sitting with in
her practice.
Emotional investment, regulation and intelligence cannot be bypassed. No matter at what level of engagement and intensity – where we choose to place ourselves, a community of Sadhana needs to be aware that the journey of spiritual awareness cannot but include emotional awareness and work. Emotions are portals into deeper parts of our being. Just as asana-pranayama is not merely about the physical appearance of the body, but really to plumb the depths of what the body is holding and manifesting from various layers of the self, all the way in to psychological, energetic and spiritual; emotions can be traced back to their energy components and natural states of being. This can allow us the balanced deployment of this energy for action.
The way the group held the space and this process was a manifestation of Shraddha for Priya. She feels grateful and blessed that her practice of Shraddha, a trust in the process of Life no matter what, remains uninterrupted and unwavering. The group process manifested and illumined her practice for her.
 |
| Slowing down, working with Prana and its channels |
Priya, April 2026
Foot Notes
[1] What I have drawn and the interpretation is my own. However, the book Natya Yoga is a beautiful, solid reference for understanding emotions & is one of my primary go-to wisdom. Sriram is a senior Yoga teacher from the Krishnamacharya tradition, one of the wisest Elders and for me someone who comes from a silence often. It was a deeply joyful and humbling experience for me to work on the draft of this book, offering my comments and suggestions to Anjali and Sriram.
[2] Both the instances mentioned have children being assaulted, raped, murdered, who are not even in any awareness of themselves as gendered bodies yet. And multiple, numerous cases of rape of persons who identify themselves with other genders.
[3] At this present time
of writing this piece, she has already started some slowing down practices that
she’d not done for a while and picked up again during conversations with soul
mates in the Aram circle – 1) drawing kolams (thank you G), 2) vipassana-type
sitting practice (thank you P, what you said about Mula Prakriti was like an illuminating
flash of reminder), and 3) recognising the existential tiredness, grief, & giving
it time and space through self-care (thank you N)
[4] An additional note about
healing, wounds and victimhood - it seems standard to describe these experiences
of a woman, as being victimised, and to talk about the archetypal Victim in
psychology and Antaranga Yoga Sadhana. I
am not negating the process of being hurt, of feeling helpless, resource-less,
suppressed and so on. However, nowhere in the Yoga sutras, which I consider a
primary text of psychology and human mind, there is any description or
definition of a Victim, in the popular and archetypal ways this term has come
to be understood. (At least that I am aware of) Also, my healing grammar of
Reiki and my fundamental practice of Shraddha that considers anything as part
of the healing journey feels that this is a degenerative way of framing that in
fact escalates the feeling insidiously. This examination is on and alive, I do
not have any bright alternatives to offer. The jury is out on this one.
