Teaching the Yoga Sutras as an Inquiry Practice

Inquiry practice is a time-tested yoga practice. In inquiring with a beginners mind, we enter an agni, or a fire of transformation. In this agni we digest our experience into refined knowledge. Jnana becomes vijnana, or applied knowledge. When you are teaching the yoga sutras in your Yoga Teacher Training, a very accessible inquiry practice is to ask your students to reflect on their life’s wisdom. Then, ask them to create 3 sutras that reflect their life’s wisdom. Remind them to be terse and to drop non-essential words. What is left is a personalized sutra, and a reminder or anchor statement for them to use in their lives.

Yoga Sutras from Yoga teacher trainees

• Goodness spreads exponentially! —  Brian Hayden
• It’s possible to find our true nature through form. Our true nature sees the good in all situations.  — Ashley Pitman www.vixi.com
• To more fully embody and express that which is good, and true and beautiful, I must care for my body and do the practices that keep my channels open. And make art out of all my relations. –Lucy
• Philosophy can be experienced in and expressed by the physical body.  The practice is balancing the energy of stability and freedom, of hugging in to expand out, pressing down to lift up. — Phoebe
• Openness:  Learning and growth comes through openness.  Openness of the mind and body.  Be open to what is!  Open beyond and through all contraction. Beth Cable
• Maya is the portal, the gateway, between my self (the mahabhutas) and my Self (the top 5 tattvas). Cate

Yoga Sutras Inquiry Practice

Ask your students:

1. When you drop in to the deepest, most timeless aspect of You, what is your sutra?
2. What are the words that emerges to inspire and guide your actions in the everyday?
3. Synthesize what you have learned from your yoga and meditation practice thus far.