Which "self" are we studying?
There's the person you think you are. The things you say when someone asks you to describe yourself: your personality, your history, your job, your relationships. The things you're good at, the things you're definitely not good at and the things that have happened to you.
Then there are the things you believe about yourself because, somewhere along the way, you decided they were true.
- I'm an anxious person.
- I'm terrible at conflict.
- I've always been independent.
- I'm not very disciplined.
- I'm the one who holds everything together.
We collect these ideas over a lifetime. Eventually they stop feeling like casual descriptions of parts of us and start feeling like who we are at our core.
If you can notice it, is it you?
This is the interesting question yoga asks. You can notice a thought. You can notice an emotion. You can notice yourself falling into an old pattern. You can even notice the story you're telling yourself about who you are.
Which means there is, at the very least, some distinction between the thing being observed and the part of you capable of observing it. That's where svādhyāya starts to get interesting.
Isn't that just overthinking?
No. Svādhyāya isn't about endlessly analysing yourself or trying to fix everything you find. It's about creating a little space between you and the thing you're noticing. In that space, you can start asking questions:
- Why did that affect me so much?
- Why do I always respond like this?
- Is that actually true about me?
- Where did I learn that?
- What changes if I don't immediately believe this thought?
Sometimes self-study gives you answers. Sometimes it gives you better questions. It always gives you a fresh perspective, on yourself and on the world.
What does this have to do with the poses?
More than you might think. Most people start yoga for straightforward reasons: to move, to get stronger, to become more flexible, to switch their brain off for a while. Keep practising, though. Something shifts. You become more aware of how your body feels, not just what it can do. You notice how moving changes the thoughts passing through your mind and the emotions passing through your body.
That noticing is svādhyāya already at work. Holding a pose that's uncomfortable and watching what your mind says about it ("I can't", "I'm not good at this", "everyone else finds this easy") is self-study in miniature. The mat is a safe place to catch those stories, because the stakes are low and the pose ends.
Svādhyāya is one of the niyamas, the personal practices that sit alongside the poses, breath and meditation in the wider system of yoga. We've written about how yoga is more than poses if you'd like the bigger picture.
Where can I explore it further?
Start small. Next time you're in a long hold in Yin or the last few breaths of a Dynamic sequence, notice what your mind is telling you. Then ask whether it's true. No philosophy background required, just curiosity.
If you want to go further with other people, we run yoga study groups and philosophy workshops from time to time, which you'll find on our workshops and events page. If you'd rather go deeper on your own, our Yoga Foundations online course works through poses, breath and meditation in nine modules.