A world made up of opposites
In the second chapter of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, we find the phrase Pratipaksha Bhavana, which speaks of “cultivating the opposite”. He believes that whenever difficult thoughts crowd the mind, we must try to conjure up their opposites. Broadly speaking, instead of thinking negative thoughts, we ought to cultivate those of kindness and compassion.
This might sound all well and good, but the reality of switching your thought process when you’ve hit a rough time, is difficult. Cultivating the opposite is ultimately about changing our attitude rather than attempting to change the person or situation that makes us unhappy. In the context of a yoga practice for example, you can’t change the length of your hamstrings overnight, but you can shift your reaction towards being frustrated with your body’s range. The opposing view here is to practice patience and compassion with where your body is at.
Whilst the notion of cultivating the opposite will be different for all of us and dependent on varying circumstances, it offers the chance to pay attention to the present. To be aware and connected to our emotions is reflective of a key tenant within the yoga discipline: to live each moment with consciousness.
When we are open towards shifting our perspective, we can create the freedom to be flexible. When something isn’t going right in your job, when you’re over-anxious of world events that you have no control over, when you’re unable to achieve “that pose” in your yoga practice. All of these examples ask us to be flexible enough to do something different: the opposing view.
Recognising opposites, and subsequently living in a way that achieves balance is difficult - both in our yoga practice and in life. With so many distractions and situations in the world that, at times, seem to conspire against us, it’s easy to be thrown off balance. It is important to remember that when we stay focussed, we have free will to choose how we shape our lives. When we create flexibility to shift our perceptive and respond to change, how we can better navigate the challenges that inevitably lie ahead.
3 examples of “CULTIVATING THE OPPOSITE” in Our YOGA PRACTICE
Lengthening vs strengthening. Many of us come to yoga to increase our body’s range and use the practice to feel good in our body, often undoing the stressors of modern life (sitting, inactivity etc.). But if our yoga practice is made up of a lot of stretching and not much strengthening, there creates imbalance. In this instance, cultivating the opposite by combining active physical engagement in our yoga practice, helps to achieve harmony and balance.
Opposites exist everywhere. Opposite leg and opposite arm. The feet grounding and the arms reaching in a Sun Salutation. The front half vs. back half of the body in Warrior 2, the relationship your right glute has with your left lat muscle. These are just some of the many examples of opposites working within our body. Yoga gives us the a platform to explore these, learning how they work together to create harmony and happiness.
“X” marks the spot. The letter “X” represents diagonal lines, which exist everywhere within the body. Many modern yoga practices move in a vertical plane (think of a Sun Salutation, it’s primarily up and down both ends of the mat). But our body, like our lives, is not polar or operates in a “straight line”, we are dimensional and vastly connected beyond linear lines. An opposite to this structure, is working in diagonal lines. When we cross-reference our movement patterns, we set up an “X marks the spot”. This is important to support mechanical movements that are embedded within our structure, of which yoga can bring awareness to.