Aparigraha: the fifth yama of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga. One of the essential practices suggested for right, virtuous and enlightened living. The virtue of non-possessiveness, it often translates to ‘non-grasping ‘non-greed’ or ‘non-attachment’.
Ways to practice aparigraha:
It’s often said that you shouldn’t go supermarket shopping when you’re hungry. Whether you’re working to a household budget or counting calories. Chances are you’ll end up overspending and filling your trolley with foods you didn’t mean to buy. It’s easy for food to become a source of emotional comfort rather than physical nourishment. And our search for comfort isn’t limited to over-eating or breaking good intentions about diet. Many times when we go shopping it’s for ‘retail therapy’, not because we actually need something. Commonly, we hold onto the belief that shopping and acquiring new things will make us happy.
Sometimes it does! But often it doesn’t. Or the happiness doesn’t last. Perhaps we go shopping when we’re ‘spiritually hungry’ or depleted in some way, filling ourselves up with the wrong kind of thing. When we recognise this behaviour in ourselves we might begin to find we focus more on window shopping for example. All the fun, with none of the cost! Or perhaps we might tend to return the items we bought, once we’ve got them home and had time to reconsider. In this way we’re practising non-hoarding, or aparigraha in Sanskrit. We stop ourselves accumulating things we don’t really need. It can be valuable to bear this idea in mind, not because it saves us money, or helps us stick to our diet. But because it helps us recognise that true and lasting happiness isn’t bought in any shop and doesn’t depend on our material possessions.
On a deeper level, practising aparigraha teaches us that nothing truly belongs to us. As we learn first to let go of our attachment to material objects, we come to realise that clinging less tightly actually allows us to feel more contented. When we can let go of the need for things always to go our way and to meet our expectations, we find some deep sense of relief. Letting go can be very liberating – even for the control freaks among us!
Try this on the mat:
- Enjoy practising each asana or pose to the best of your current ability; let go of always chasing poses that aren’t there for you yet.
- Listen to the stories you tell yourself about poses (I’m not strong enough for this, I’m not flexible enough for that, I don’t do inversions) and then practise letting go of the preconceptions you hold about what you can and can’t do. This can be where the magic happens!
Try this off the mat:
- Have fun window-shopping, browsing, or trying clothes on, but don’t make a purchase unless you really want to or genuinely need something.
- Every time you buy something new, give something away so you don’t accumulate more and more stuff
- In arguments or discussions let go of the need to be right. Sometimes it’s better to be kind than to be right. Ask yourself who are you trying to impress and why?
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