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Nicki Forman-Levitan discusses how she found her way to personal sadhana through yoga

My life is dedicated to the practice of yoga. Yoga is my life’s calling. I teach, I study, I eat, sleep and dream yoga. It’s my life’s work, my grand passion and my ostensibly “healthy obsession”. Running a home with a husband, two small children and a thriving yoga school affords me the luxurious opportunity to live this dream. Yogic immersion, albeit somewhat tethered by domestic necessity, is essentially my modus operandi, a divine karmic gift I acknowledge with gratitude.

Despite having this plethora of opportunity to practise, I still struggle to maintain a consistent sadhana (practice) that ensures “x” rounds of Surya Namaskaras per day, so many rounds of Kapalabhati and a guaranteed meditative daily Samadhi. “Take one yogic capsule a day,” as Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga teaches and “call God in the morning”.

Abhyasa is the discipline that Patanjali dictates and it demands a consistent practice in order to evolve along our yogic paths. Abhyasa means fostering an attitude of persistent effort to attain and maintain a state of stable tranquility. It’s a devoted path – the fruits of which are an insight into the direct experience of the eternal core of our being. So, finding and committing to a personal sadhana is the goal of the sadhaka or practitioner.

Is this a reasonable or even viable possibility for the Western yogi or yogini, especially those of us attempting to balance jobs, family or studies with a consistent and disciplined practice? To accomplish a full asana practice daily might not always be possible, so the real question then becomes how the practice of yoga can filter from the mat into everyday life? How can one creatively develop one’s own personal sadhana?

Notwithstanding the fact that asana, pranayama and a solid dose of yoga nidra is crucial to yogic evolution, sadhana can also Finding your way to a personal sadhana be found in changed perspective, in seeing one’s reality with yogic-coloured spectacles, a so-called rosy tinted drishti or l’esprit en rose. Allowing all aspects of life, including both its tribulations and joys, to become a screen for yogic projection is paramount to this shift in awareness.

Patanjali offers some tools to aid in this shifted perspective, which he describes in the Ashtanga (eight limbed path) of which asana (posture) and pranayama (control of breath) are merely two limbs. The first limb – Yama – contains the ethics, which have to do with training your actions, speech and thoughts in relation to the external world, particularly with other people. Dedication to upholding and developing these yamas is a laudable sadhana in itself and provides a perfect buffet of potential interpretation from which to choose when developing one’s own sadhana.

The first yama is non-harming (ahimsa) in thought, deed and action. Cultivating ahimsa can be a lifetime’s sadhana. Try being ahimsic after being stuck in traffic or losing a much sought after job promotion. Try ahimsa when faced with a relentless mosquito! This is where to apply your yoga practice – to the places of challenge, not just to the glorious afterglow of Savasana. Using these spaces of discomfort and difficulty becomes a platform for personal sadhana. Not only does it make the challenge surmountable but also keeps your practice alive and pervasive.

In whichever way yama talks to your personal evolutionary needs, be it the development of integrity through the principle of honesty (satya) or striving towards remembering the higher reality (bramacharya), is a personal choice that should make sense to you, the aspirant, relative to your life’s developments and needs. Some yamas are easier to manage than others. Non-violence and not stealing (asteya) might be a breeze for one yogi but a mountain for another. When Patanjali spoke of aparigraha (non-possessiveness) he surely hadn’t been to a side-walk sale or to a rooftop market. How many candles or cute little yoga outfits can a yogini possess without forgetting that yoga needs to come out of the closet, and live its truth!

Perhaps choose one yama to develop as a sadhana or simply try integrating all wherever possible. Whatever your sadhana is of less importance than a consistent and committed awareness. This awareness inspired by dedicated practice to a chosen sadhana, allows us to begin to welcome challenge as an opportunity to set our yogic GPS in action and guide our souls along the path of light. We begin to recognise in this way that the guru (the dispeller of darkness) is none other than our own inner voice intuiting from an omniscient perspective, so that our every thought and its consequent action is a consistent sadhana.

But surely Patanjali, living as he does today in the hearts and souls of his countless yogic progeny, would encourage the idea of the all pervasive, boundless yoga practice, one beyond the mat? One where the realization of Self is evidenced in thought, word and certainly action, including those during that queue, traffic jam or marital tiff.

Finding your personal sadhana in your own way becomes the mantra du jour. Ask yourself what will be useful in the pursuit of your spiritual goals and be proactive – what yogis call kriya (action) in the realisation of these goals.

B.K.S Iyengar outlines the three-fold goal which is one and the same: “Sadhana is a discipline undertaken in the pursuit of a goal. Abhyasa is repeated practice performed with observation and reflection. Kriya, or action, also implies perfect execution with study and investigation. Therefore, sadhana, abhyasa, and kriya all mean one and the same thing. A sadhaka, or practitioner, is one who skillfully applies… mind and intelligence in practice towards a spiritual goal.”

Recently in Rishikesh, on the ghat of the Mata Ganga, following one of my first Kundalini yoga classes with the amazing Gurmukh Khalsa, the following satsang gently changed my perspective forever: “You have a heart, love. You have two hands, serve.”

All the rest is fluff. This turns out to be my sadhana – attempting a daily return to love and service. Listen to your inner guru and find yours.

By  Nicki Forman-Levitan