Rooted Sangha - Session 17 - Svadhyaya

Theme: Svādhyāya in Everyday Life: Self-Study Through Action

At this week’s sangha, we turned to svādhyāya - the niyama of self-study - as it appears in The Yamas and Niyamas. After a pause over Christmas, our conversation felt more like a gentle catching up. Still rooted in philosophy, but woven through with lived experience, reflections from the season just passed, and the realities of everyday life.

I’ve found myself musing on some of the themes that surfaced, letting them settle and unfold in the days since. What follows are a few of those reflections - threads we’ll return to and explore more fully together in next week’s session.

Svādhyāya is often translated simply as self-study. That can sound cerebral or introspective, as though it belongs primarily to reading, journalling, or time spent alone on or off the mat. But in the lived tradition of yoga, svādhyāya is far less abstract. It isn’t something we do instead of life. It happens inside it.

The Bhagavad Gītā reminds us that our daily duties, even the ordinary, messy, emotionally charged ones, are not distractions from the spiritual path. They are the path, when approached through the lens of karma yoga: conscious, selfless action.

Krishna’s teaching in verse 2.47 is often quoted:

You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.

When we explored this teaching in sangha, the conversation naturally turned towards relationships. Not only romantic ones, but the relationships that shape our days - colleagues, family, friends, and the often-overlooked relationship we have with ourselves.

In relationship, this teaching can feel both clarifying and deeply uncomfortable. We show up. We speak as honestly as we can. We act with care. And still, we don’t get to control how we are received, understood, or met. Much of our suffering arises from forgetting this - from unconsciously negotiating love, approval, safety, or belonging through outcome.

This is where svādhyāya becomes essential, because it asks us to notice who is doing the negotiating.

Often, we discover that we don’t really know ourselves as well as we thought. In sangha, this emerged as the image of a Russian doll - layers within layers. A capable adult self on the outside, perhaps, but inside that: a people-pleaser, a protector, a frightened child, a rebel, a perfectionist. Svādhyāya is the slow, gentle work of opening those layers without tearing them apart.

Difficult work cultures and challenging colleagues tend to reveal this most clearly. A sharp email, a dismissive comment, a lack of recognition - and suddenly we are no longer responding from the present moment. Old conditioning rises. A need to prove ourselves. A habit of staying quiet. A reflex to over-function, appease, or withdraw. The body reacts before the mind has caught up.

When we look more closely, many of these responses were shaped long before our current circumstances. The ways we learned to survive our family environments (to be good, to be useful, to keep the peace, to stay out of the way) often travel with us into adulthood, unexamined. Svādhyāya doesn’t ask us to blame our parents, but to see clearly how we were formed.

Seen through this lens, Krishna’s teaching is not about emotional detachment or spiritual bypassing. It’s about freedom. We act from integrity rather than strategy. We speak from truth rather than fear of consequence. We do our part, and then we notice, with honesty and curiosity, what arises within us when the outcome is no longer ours to manage.

The Gītā also speaks of samatvam, even-mindedness, describing it as the true skill in action. This doesn’t mean we never wobble. It means that when we do, we notice. Svādhyāya lives in the moment we realise we’ve tipped into agitation, resentment, or withdrawal. The practice is not self-correction, but self-understanding.

Even qualities we tend to judge harshly in ourselves; procrastination, avoidance, exhaustion are reframed through this lens. In yogic thought, these can be expressions of tamas, a quality of heaviness and inertia. Seeing them this way removes the moral weight. Svādhyāya invites curiosity instead of criticism: What is present here? What is obscured? What might support clarity returning?

The offering of action, isvarapranidhana, deepens this inquiry further. When our work is dedicated to something larger than personal reward, the identity of “the doer” begins to soften.

Then svādhyāya asks a quieter question: Who am I when I am not chasing recognition? What remains when approval is no longer the goal?

Practices like śaucha (cleanliness), tapas (steady effort), and mindfulness are not about self-improvement here. They create the conditions for clearer seeing. Svādhyāya needs space. Simplicity. A reduction of noise. When life is less cluttered, patterns become visible.

Seen this way, karma yoga and svādhyāya are inseparable. Karma yoga is the field - the place where life happens. Svādhyāya is the lens - how we see ourselves within it.

We act.

We observe how we act. Without judgment.

We learn who we are through that observation.

This is not withdrawal from the world, but a deepening intimacy with it. A practice of meeting ourselves honestly, again and again, in the midst of ordinary life.

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Giving Back

After covering room and fuel costs, all proceeds from Rooted are being saved to support a local cause, to be chosen together later this year - as a small act of Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion in action.

On 21st September, we made our first donation (£110) to Kettering Samaritans.

On 23rd December, we donated £100 to Johnny's Happy Place, a wonderful mental health support cafe in Kettering.

Next week we will name our next beneficiary. There is currently £20 in the pot!

Going Forward

Thank you for taking a moment to pause, to rest in the gentle honesty of this teaching.

May you begin to notice yourself more clearly in the midst of your daily actions and relationships.

May you see where old patterns surface, not as something to fix, but as something to understand.

May you honour the many layers that have shaped you, meeting each one with patience rather than judgement.

May you tend your practices of movement, rest, truth, and care as acts of self-study, not self-improvement.

May you trust that awareness itself is transformative, even when nothing appears to change.

And may you remember that each time you choose to notice, to reflect, to return - the practice is already alive.

With love,

Vicki x