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.
Coming to the practice
as a group, it is so profoundly ironic and telling that the Aram community that
came together and held the conversation so beautifully, could do so simply
because, the larger awareness of Life unfragmented by identities and
conditioning breathed in the group space. It would not have been possible for
the group to hold this space of response-ability, Love, if it had also
fragmented itself. The process that emerged, the different questions and
sharings that co-sadhakas asked, the silences and utterings, each feels like a
whole part of life itself; that anchored it in a whole Life. It was possible to
hold everywoman and everyman in the space because there was a larger container
of awareness.
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.
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| Slowing down, working with Prana and its channels |
Priya, April 2026
