Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:11] I am Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today we're going to be talking about the art of letting go. So we will understand viragia, or letting go beyond this sense of detachment. So, welcome, everyone. It is early August, and I don't know about you, but this time of year always feels a little different.
[00:00:36] The excitement of summer starts giving way to fatigue.
[00:00:40] The days are still long and the calendar is still full, and there is still plenty to do. But many people begin feeling mentally cluttered, maybe emotionally drained, perhaps physically tight, maybe a sense of overwhelm. Not because something is wrong, but because we've been moving for months and because it is so dang hot and humid here in the Northern hemisphere. Summer can be incredibly joyful, of course, but it also tends to be busy with vacations, with kids home from school and travel and projects and social events. And did I mention the heat? We spend months saying yes, and eventually our nervous system starts whispering that it needs some space.
[00:01:24] So today's episode is about one of yoga's most misunderstood teachings of vairagya. It's usually translated as non attachment, or letting go, but I think it's actually much more beautiful than that. One thing that yoga teaches us is that we aren't just carrying physical tension.
[00:01:42] We're also carrying this mental, emotional, psychic load with us. So it might look like unfinished conversations, expectations of others, stress, worry, even our successes, sometimes our failures, maybe the different roles we play in our lives and the identities that we attach to, perhaps our relationships, our jobs. So even if you clean your house every week, when was the last time you cleaned your mind or your nervous system or your fascia? The body accumulates experience and the mind accumulates stories. The nervous system accumulates activation without intentional release.
[00:02:22] We simply just keep adding to that. And when we're carrying, carrying around this heavy load, we're going to feel things like fogginess, physical tension, maybe decision fatigue, this overwhelming emotional load. Maybe it's this constant sense of stimulation.
[00:02:38] And our modern lives unfortunately, don't give us a lot of opportunities to empty the cup, so to speak. So when we're carrying all of this, yoga can become such a wonderful tool, not just for learning, but about unlearning, about letting go, about setting the load down, so to speak. That's where varagia comes in. So varagia spelled V A, R A G Y A. It means non attachment. Of course, it's sometimes easy to think about non attachment as not caring, maybe even as disinterest. But that's not really it. The Sanskrit word for vragia literally suggests freedom from coloring.
[00:03:17] So imagine putting on colored sunglasses and eventually you forget you're wearing them. Everything appears tinted, so it's almost like there's this filter over our lives. Yoga says that our minds become colored or filtered by our preferences, our fears, our identities, our expectations, even our successes and disappointments. And vragia isn't asking us to get rid of all of these elements of our life, but it is learning to take off the filter and learning to see clearly so we're not constantly putting every experience through the lens of things like I like this or I hate this, or I wish this were different. Instead, we get to truly be with our experiences without judgment. Vragi is mentioned in the Yoga Sutra 112 from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast. But it comes coupled with abhyasa. Abiasa and viragia are practiced and letting go.
[00:04:16] They're not one or the other, they're both. They have to come together. You can think that one foot on your body is effort and one foot is surrender, and being able to walk requires both. So we need to put in effort with enthusiasm and steadiness and earnestness. But we also have to let go of the results. That's really the key. That's the approach to yoga. If we veer too far into either the practice or the letting go, our life becomes really offbeat. Balance and summertime, when things are hot, when there's a lot of activity and expansion and movement and doing it veers us more into the Abiasa territory. At times, this isn't a bad thing. But eventually, every season asks for a sense of balance. You can think about gardening, for instance. Healthy plants need watering. They don't just need sunlight, for instance. Think about athletes. They don't just need training, they also need recovery. Think about breathing. Even we inhale. And we also need to exhale. So life is constantly moving through these cycles of effort and surrender, of practice and letting go. But many of us are trying to live in this perpetual inhale, if you will. And we also need to know that exhaling or letting go isn't giving up. This is a common misconception. Letting go doesn't mean quitting. It doesn't mean apathy or indifference. Instead, we can ask, what am I gripping onto? What am I holding onto too tightly? Maybe that's expectations, perfectionism, comparison, resentment. Maybe it's busyness, control, identity. Sometimes the thing that is making us tired isn't what we're doing, it's what we're carrying while we're doing it. So how do I grip less tightly? How do I soften more? How do I show up in the practice or in the effort? With a sense of letting go, with a sense of ease, with a sense of softness and receiving. How do I balance both? So for me, thinking about viragia is often more about how I'm doing things.
[00:06:36] It's not about not doing anything at all. So how am I showing up? Am I doing it with tight expectations? Am I doing it while gripping, hoping super hard, being angry if things don't turn out the way that I want them to? Or can I show up and try and put in the effort and accept? Accept what happens. And I love the word acceptance, really, instead of non attachment for viragia, we practice and then we accept.
[00:07:07] And that means that we aren't in denial of reality, that we can allow for things to be as they are even amongst our effort, that we cannot control everything and every outcome. It's not possible. And I also love that on this train of thought, allowing or accepting also can mean receiving.
[00:07:29] So are we pushing so hard? Are we practicing so hard? Are we efforting so hard that we aren't allowing things in that we aren't receiving? That we aren't aware of the gifts of the present moment? So how are we approaching the effort? How are we approaching the heat of the summer? How are we approaching the activity? And are we letting go of the grip a little bit? So you might ask yourself as you're reflecting on this, what am I holding that no longer needs to be held? Maybe what expectations have become too heavy and where could I soften instead of pushing harder? We also need to keep this in mind for our bodies. The body needs ways to let go. So is movement important?
[00:08:18] Is strength important? Absolutely, of course. And it needs to be balanced out. And we can do that through things like myofascial release. We don't have to force the tissues that we're working with into relaxation.
[00:08:33] Instead, we can go softly and give our nervous system permission to soften with time. And with breath, we can change the tone of our muscles. Rather than just trying to stretch harder. We can do the same through Yin Yoga. Maybe we're staying in a posture. We're listening to our bodies and our minds and emotions. We're receiving the present.
[00:08:55] We're practicing patience. At the same time, we can practice this with breath as well. Perhaps we lengthen our exhales to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
[00:09:06] Maybe we find cooling practices in these hot summer months like Sitali is one of my favorites, where you roll the tongue and breathe in and out. If you can't roll the tongue because you're genetically not equipped for that, you can also make a pursing shape with your lips like you're blowing out a candle and breathe in and out that way. And there are so many different breathwork techniques that create this parasympathetic and cooling and calming response. Maybe we can find Dragia through stillness.
[00:09:35] And this is a practice that modern people avoid a lot. And not stillness while we're couch rotting or binging a show, but true stillness, where we are receiving the present moment, we're receiving the sounds around us, our own heartbeat, our own breath. Maybe nature receiving the present moment. And whatever the practice is, myofascial release, yin breath, stillness, they don't have to be separate practices. They're just different doorways into the same experience, which is creating space. So I challenge you this week to this practice, this practice of letting go. Maybe you can release an obligation or a habit, an expectation. Maybe it's the automatic scrolling that you do at certain times. Maybe it's rushing through your meals or working through lunch. Maybe you can spend 10 minutes doing absolutely nothing and notice what comes up. Because often what comes up is exactly what needs our attention. So that yoga isn't asking us to become detached from life, it's inviting us instead to loosen our grip, to participate fully without carrying everything forever. As we move toward late summer, perhaps this is your invitation to ask, where could I create a little more space?
[00:10:49] Where could I soften? And where might I allow myself to release rather than accumulate? And for those of you who are local to Kansas City, this conversation is actually the inspiration behind our upcoming, upcoming seasonal Varagio workshop that I'm leading at True Love Yoga. We'll spend an afternoon exploring these ideas, not intellectually, but experientially through myofascial release, Yin yoga, calming breath work, guided reflection and deep yogic rest. If that sounds supportive to you, I'd love to practice with you in person. Ragia Cool, Clear and Restore is coming up this Sunday, August 9, from 12:30 to 2. It's $30 a person and True Love members save $5 with the code work. You will receive relief from physical and mental tension, a nervous system restoration, a very cooling counterbalance to summer's heat, and a sense of deep rest and renewal. You can find all the details and sign up on our website and in the show notes. And if you aren't local, I hope you'll carve out your own version of a variety of practice wherever you are. As always, thank you so much for listening. Om Shanti Om. Peace.
