Yoga Sutra vocab

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Ok Guys here a some key words used in the Yoga Sutras

Yoga – the practice of living in absolute truth (versus relativity)

Vṛtti – mental habits -cyclical permutations of the mind (as we rotate to and from what we want and don’t want)

Citta – [chitta] the sea of vṛttis (the mind’s present condition)

Nirodha – to stop the momentum (prevent further growth of våttis). It can also be understood as redirecting or reversing, from the word rodha, which means to grow or move in a particular direction and nir from nis meaning away from.

Saṃskāra – mental impressions – the accumulated impressions produced by the vṛttis (that which is created together: in a sense a synonym for yoga.) Every experience you have is recorded in the chitta (store house of memories). [N.b. don’t confuse this word with saṃsāra – the cycle of birth and death.]

Pratyaya – the building block of våttis /mental habits: it is a mental impression held in the short-term memory before it becomes a saàskära

Guṇa – the energetic building blocks of matter; everything in the world is composed of some blend of the three guṇas: sattva-guṇa, rajo-guṇa, and tamo-guṇa.

Sattva – clarity: goodness, virtue,

Rajas – color: passion, creativity,

Tamas – obscurity: ignorance, inertial, darkness, sloth…

Abhyāsa to practice something repetitively

Vairāgya – dispassion, freedom from worldly desires (in the yoga process this means detachment from outcomes, not a repression of feelings or emotions)

Yukta vairāgya –engaged detachment, freedom from worldly desires by connecting to spirit

Japa – the quiet repetition of Mantra

Mantra – sacred Sanskrit sound vibrations capable of expanding consciousness

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