September 2025: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Golden Thread of Lineage
Hello, sweet Galaxy friends! We’re a few days into September, and there is SO MUCH back to school energy in the world and in the studio. People are diving back into their routines after the manic non-adherence to schedule and time that summer asks of us. To me, fall always symbolizes the new start that sometimes people associate with the new year. I was talking with studio teacher Charlotte about that this morning, and she agrees! Have you been to her Monday 9 am class yet, by the way? Just wondering…
That back to school vibe is squarely behind my choice of the Yoga Sutras as the studio theme every September. Often, I’m diving back into it so that I can discuss it and teach it to my 200-hour and 300-hour teacher trainees (still spots left in both of those programs if you’re mulling it over). This year, I’ve gone off the deep end and decided to just try and chant the whole thing already. I’ve been wanting to try that for literally a decade, and sometimes you just have to put something on the calendar and do your best to make it happen. Wish me luck - better yet, come and join me and do 108 sun salutations when you’re not chanting.
We’ve chatted about the Yoga Sutras in these dispatches before, so I’ll be brief with my recap of them: they’re short, sharp aphorisms designed to be chanted and memorized, and designed to be unpacked via accompanying explanation, discussion with a teacher, and one’s own contemplation and consideration of the words. They come from around 200BCE, and are a bit of an amalgamation of Buddhist, Samkhya, and other acetic philosophical traditions prevalent at the time.
Through Swami Vivekananda and the Congress of World Religions of the late 1800s, as well as the father of modern postural yoga practice, Krishnamacharya, The Yoga Sutras have come to be the main philosophical text that accompanies the practice of yoga, which is a little funny, because there’s really only one sutra that mentions yoga postures, and it’s more about meditation (That would be Sutra 2.346: Sthiram Sukham Asanam, “The seat (asana) should be steady and comfortable). If you want more info, come to class this month, or email me back and ask - you know how much I love emails.
The author of the Yoga Sutras is a mysterious figure named Patanjali. Patanjali may or may not have actually existed, and there are several different philosophical and grammatical texts that are attributed to him. In the Tamil Tantric tradition, Patanjali is said to be an avatar of Vishnu, and a descendant of the world supporting snake, Adi Shesha, in whose coils Vishnu reclines, and who holds up the world. Patanjali may also be one of the first Tantric yogis who learned Tantric yoga in early 10th centure AD from the Shaivite Guru Nandhi Deva, along with a few other disciples.
In iconography, Patanjali is really bad-ass: he’s depicted having a hood of cobras over his head, which suggests the awareness of Samadhi, or pointed concentration. His lower half is a coiled serpent body, representing the union of consciousness and divine energy. He typically holds in his hand a conch shell (representing divine sound), a wheel (representing infinite time), and a sword (representing discrimination, or cutting through illusion)..
And his hands (and the inspiration behind my post): they’re in Anjali Mudra (hence the name Pat-Anjali). Anjali translates roughly as “divine offering,” and Anjali Mudra is the gesture of hands brought together in prayer. Pat means to fly, or to descend, so the rough translation is something like a divine offering falling from heaven. The story is that Adi Shesha, the snake that Vishnu reclines on and who holds up the world, was watching Shiva’s cosmic dance. Wishing to mimic and learn it, Adi Shesha started to wiggle a little bit. Vishnu sensed the stirring from his serpent couch, and blessed Adi Shesha with a rebirth in human form, as Patanjali, to bring wisdom to the world, and to receive the gifts of illuminated study. He then fell from heaven as a little baby snake, and was caught in the hands of a devout yogi who had been praying for a disciple to pass her knowledge to.
Which brings me by slightly circuitous route to lineage and knowledge-sharing. In many stories of the sages, the gods, and the disciples, it’s not enough that one amasses knowledge and skill in the contemplative practices - it’s important to be able to pass on knowledge, and preserve the teacher/student relationship.
That’s something I think about quite a bit at this time of year, when I welcome new cohorts into the yoga school I’ve created, and inevitably explain to them the history of these practices, and who my teachers were who passed these teachings to me (I blogged about a few of my favorite teachers last November, and enjoyed revisiting it while preparing to write this post). There’s a concept called the golden thread, and it’s a beautiful image of how we are connected, student to teacher, teacher to teacher, by this golden thread of the lineage that conveys these teachings. It’s like the most sacred and beautiful version of the telephone game.
And Anjali mudra - it’s not just two hands brought together to touch in a prayer gesture. You’re supposed to hold Anjali mudra with the hands slightly cupped away from each other, so that the prayer is slightly opened to the heavens, ready to catch the blessings of the teacher or student who will someday, when you intend reverently enough, fall into your lap.
Most of all, the grip on the teachings has to be open and soft. I use the term “open palm, soft grip” both when I am teaching about hands on assists, and when I am talking about how I’d like to pass along the legacy of what I have learned (and am still learning). If I hold too tightly to the teachings, and define them as “mine,” they’ll get stale, and that energy doesn’t honor the fluidity of that golden thread of lineage. It has to keep moving, keep passing from person to person, to stay alive, vibrant, and to be a conduit of connection. And on the student end - the grip on that thread has to be strong enough to keep you connected, but not so tight that it stops you from continuing to grow and evolve.
And of course, there’s a Sanskrit term for that: parampara, the passing of knowledge, uninterrupted in tradition of the guru-shishya, or the guru to disciple. I was reminded of that recently when my friend out in Washington, Cat, completed a training immersion that included a chant that I had “given” her at the conclusion of her time in my 300-hour program way back in 2020. In her words: “the right teachers find you at the right time, and the journey continues.” Indeed it does, and as I like to say sometimes: onward.
Here’s a beautiful chant to Patanjali that is recited at the beginning of every Ashtanga yoga practice. I’ll be sharing it in studio this month, but this is a great recorded version, if you’d like to hear it now.
vande gurūṇām caraṇāravinde
sandarśita svātmasukhāvabodhe
niḥśreyase jāṅgalikāyamāne
saṁsāra hālāhala mohaśāntyai
ābāhu puruṣākāraṃ
śaṅkhacakrāsi dhāriṇam
sahasra śirasaṃ śvetaṃ
praṇamāmi patañjalim
I bow to the lotus feet of the Guru who reveals the happiness of pure being which is beyond any joy we have experienced (beyond better):
who like the jungle physician removes the delusion caused by the great poison (Hala Hala) of conditioned existence (Samsara)
I bow before the sage Patanjali, who has thousands of radiant, white heads (as the divine serpent, Ananta) and who has, as far as his arms, assumed the form of a man holding a conch shell (divine sound), a wheel (discus of light or infinite time) and a sword (discrimination).
Om Tat Sat,
Anna
What I’m Reading…
Let me first shout out the brilliance that is Brother Bronte, by Fernando A Flores. It’s dystopian fiction, which I’ve really been wallowing in lately, but it’s SO FUN, occasionally funny, real enough to be disturbing, and just an all-around great read.
On that note, and in a non-fiction vein, I’m cracking open “Collapse,” by Jared Diamond. Diamond studies failed civilizations and societies, and probes what caused their collapse - in his words, it’s a look into how societies choose to fail or succeed, and that feels kind of like exactly what I want to understand right now. I was drawn to it when it was mentioned in an article that noted that one failed civilization kept doing the wrong thing for 400 years before it collapsed, which is a sober realignment of what “a long time is.”
Ope! That’s another yoga sutra I like! 1.14 - Sa Tu Dirgha Kala Nairantarya Satkarasevito Drdha Bhumih: The practice becomes firmly grounded when it is attended to for a long time, uninterruped, and in all earnestness. So what is a “dirgha kala” aka a long time, anyway? LMK if you have some ideas about that.
