Rakśana: Tending the Hearth

This post is part of an ongoing series on why we practice what we practice at various stages of life. If you would like to listen to this blog post, I share all posts via the Atha Yoga podcast titled Yoga Happens Now. It also is available in all the places where you find your podcasts!

People who are past the student or early stage of life enter the stage of life called rakšana (rakshana). This is generally considered to be from around the mid-20s to about 70 yo. It is the time of life when our attention is put on developing our careers, building intimate partnerships and creating a family. In other words, much of our time and energy is externally focused. In Ayurveda, it is considered a pitta time of life where we need to be focused on doing, making, being organised and generally getting shit done.

All of this also points to the flipside, which is that we should not be using our energy on energetically challenging yoga practices, as we saw in the previous post on śikśana. If we are devoting our time and energy on forcefully moving prāna and cultivating samādhī, then we will not have the proper amount of energy to tend to our home life and career. Rakšana is sometimes called the maintenance phase of life and rakšana practices are designed to help us maintain good physical and mental health. For most people, this means that prānāyāma becomes central to the practice. But I caution here - I don’t mean wild breath ratios that are going to radically alter our state! In general, this means samavrtti ratios ie. breathing practices where inhale = exhale.

I like to think of rakšana as tending the hearth. If we imagine our system as a fire (which also relates to our pitta time of life), then we will want to make sure that the fire burns efficiently: not too fast and not too slow. We offer it enough fuel and enough wind to keep it going without smothering it or starving it. We want a steady burn. For me, thinking of it this way implies that it is a time of learning how to offer ourselves care even as we are primarily caring for others.

Some of us were raised to think that offering ourselves any care is selfish. But even the Buddha said that we need to take care of ourselves first so that we can care for others. Somehow this part of the message has been lost (insert historical context of patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism here). If we don’t tend to our own hearth, the fire will go out. And then what? From the Yoga perspective, then we find ourselves in cikitsa, needing a therapeutic practice to bring us back to rakšana. I have observed this in myself and others - a continuous cycle of getting injured, taking care of the injury, feeling better, getting a little bored with feeling better, going too hard, getting injured (rinse, repeat).

What’s up with the “getting a little bored” part? Many people in this stage of life, which is already very busy and full, find the idea of maintenance or hearth-tending to be kind of dull. The thrill of a śikśana practice is not there (by design) so it can seem like nothing is happening. They ask, “Are we supposed to live life like it is beige? A plate of mashed potatoes? A single midrange note without any highs or lows?” Who wants their yoga practice to be a tasteless, colourless slog?

It is easy that think that life is supposed to non-stop skydiving highs - wheeeeeeeeee! Obviously that kind of life is not sustainable so let’s put that idea aside as a fantasy created by advertisers to get us to buy stuff, ok? So, that done, let’s look closer at what is really happening in our rakšana practice. Is it really just a beige, one-note practice?

For me, there are a couple of things at play. One is related to our trust in the practice. When the results of practice are quiet, subtle, less immediately visible, then it is easy to think that nothing is happening. It takes some trust to keep going even when it feels like there aren’t any big pay-offs. This is why the concept of śraddhā is so crucial. Śraddhā is often translated as faith or trust. In my mind, it is a particular kind of faith or trust - it is faith in the process itself. Do you trust your yoga practice? Do you trust it even when what’s happening isn’t visible to you? It is such a good question!

Personally, it has taken me many, many years of practice to learn to trust that things are happening even when I can’t see them or even when it seems like I am going backwards. There are times when my mind is as busy and full of chatter as the first day when I stepped on the mat. The difference between that day and the present day is my trust in this process. I know that, even practices that I might have previously labelled “bad” are doing something. Maybe it isn’t for me to know exactly what this is right now.

Rakšana requires a healthy does of śraddhā.

The other aspect about a rakšana practice that feels worth mentioning is that, often, the effects of the practice are not so much felt during the practice as in the rest of one’s life. That slow, steady burn creates a kind of stability and clarity so that relationships improve, goal setting is realistic and clear, and joy is found in all aspects of life, not just in bursts of brilliant insight but in making the bed, doing dishes, having a conversation, or looking out the window. Rakšana increases our capacity to see the brightness of our ordinary world, which is the truth of it, with greater clarity and more consistently.

This is the heart of lay practice and it is a most wonderful gift.

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May I take this opportunity at the end of 2021 to thank my teachers for all that they have so generously shared with me and for their trust and patience as I have stumbled along my path. I also want to thank my students, clients and mentees. It is an enormous privilege to be on this journey with you.

Let’s close out 2021 with The Four Immeasurables:

May all being be free from suffering and the root of suffering.

May all beings know happiness and the root of happiness.

May all beings live in sympathetic joy, rejoicing in the happiness of others.

May all beings live in equanimity, free from passion, aggression and delusion.