Now — Reflections on the First Three Sutras of Patanjali

These sutras have passed through my life more than once.

It wasn't until I was ready that they stayed to teach me.

A pathway into understanding — not the world, but myself.

What follows is a personal reflection — how these three ancient phrases continue to move through me, and how they shape, again and again, the way I understand myself and the world I move through.

Sutra 1.1 — Atha yogānuśāsanam

Now begins the instruction on the practice of yoga.

Atha. Now.

For me this word lives in the ordinary moment — the early morning when the mat is waiting, but I want to sleep in, and something inside that I try to ignore simply says: now...not later... now.

It's an invitation. A call that rises from somewhere deeper than thought, deeper than plan or intention.  It arrives when the soul says yes. And that yes can come in any conditions — in clarity, in uncertainty, in the middle of unraveling. It's the quiet moment when something inside keeps calling: "I'm ready to begin."

And then, there is something in the word instruction worth pausing at.

To receive instruction is to resist the mindset of the ego — the piece of us who thinks they already know.

It is an act of surrender — to the teaching, to the lineage, to the wisdom that has been passed down through an unbroken line of those who walked this path before us.

We don't arrive at yoga. We are received by it.

Yoga begins in the now — in this breath, this body, this awareness.

In that yes, a living inquiry opens — into who we are beneath the roles, the effort, the becoming.

Sutra 1.2 — Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ

Complete mastery over the roaming tendencies of the mind is yoga.

— Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Samadhi Pada

I'll be honest — I've always translated this as the calming of the fluctuations of the mind. It felt accessible. Approachable. Something I could at least aim for on a good day.

And then there's Panditji's translation.

Complete mastery.

I'm not going to pretend that doesn't intimidate me. And living it? Easier said than done — whatever translation we choose.

The word vṛtti points to the roaming tendencies of the mind — thoughts, emotions, memories, projections. For some of us they may feel like gentle ripples across the surface of a pond. For others, on certain days, they feel more like giant waves crashing against the shore — consuming, relentless, building into stories that swallow us whole.

So how do we release the tendency to let the story build? To let it consume us?

We witness.

And in that witnessing, something begins to shift. The waves don't necessarily stop — but we stop drowning in them. We begin to see them for what they are.

Just movement. Just stories.

It's the moment we see our own face reflected in still water — undistorted, luminous, whole.

Pūrṇam - whole. The stillness doesn't create wholeness. It reveals it.

What arises in that stillness isn't emptiness. It's expansion. ( I have glimpsed this. And there is a story from Khajuraho — one I will share when it is ready to be told.)

With breath and presence we come home to the spacious awareness beneath it all.

More ease. More clarity. Less distortion.

We sit quietly enough to hear what's underneath all the noise. And in that stillness, we remember: I am not the ripple. I am the water.

Sutra 1.3 — Tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe avasthānam Then the Seer becomes established in its essential nature. — Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Samadhi Pada

Tadā. Then.

That single word carries everything that came before it — the willingness to begin, the witnessing, the gradual quieting of the waves.

And then something shifts.

Established. Rooted. Settled. Complete.

The draṣṭuḥ — the Seer — is the one who was present all along. And svarūpe — our essential nature — the part of us that has always been here, that existed before the story, before the identity we carried into this life. That inner luminosity Panditji speaks to. The light that lives in us that no experience, no story, no accumulation of time has ever been able to extinguish.

Then — after the mind begins to settle, after the ripples soften, there's a moment. A spark. A knowing.

And it's not quiet or passive for me. It's like the soul exclaims: TADA!!!

A flash of understanding. A lifting of the veil. The masks fall away, and we no longer need to be anything other than what we already are.

For a moment, there's no reaching, no becoming. Only being. And it is radiant.

For most of us this arrives in glimpses. Aha moments where the layers fall away and something luminous shines through. When we touch even the smallest glimpse of this in practice — it's fuel. It's the reason we return.

Effort cannot bring us here. Only stillness. Only surrender.

A Final Note 

These three sutras are patient teachers. They meet us exactly where we are — and they keep meeting us, differently, as we grow.

If something here stirred in you, I'd love to hear from you. And if you feel called to explore the Yoga Sutras together — a small study group, moving through them slowly and intentionally — you're warmly invited to join the email community. If there's enough of us, we begin.

With grace, Lisa 🙏